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Lot Essay
Maya Widmaier-Picasso has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
L’Entrevue is one of six drawings directly related to the painting L’entrevue (Les deux soeurs) (Zervos I.163; Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg), which is one of the seminal works from the artist’s Blue Period. Of these drawings, this sheet is the largest, and the composition is the most similar to the oil (cf. Zervos VI nos. 435 & 436; Zervos XXI nos. 368 & 369; and Zervos XXII no. 37).
Picasso explained the subject of the series in a letter to Max Jacob dating from the time of execution: ‘It’s a picture of a St. Lazare whore and a sister’ (letter from Picasso to Max Jacob, 13 July 1902). Saint-Lazare was a women’s prison and hospital in Montmartre, run by Dominican nuns. Many of the women there were imprisoned for offenses related to prostitution, and some even served their sentences in the company of their infants and young children. Picasso frequented the prison in search of unpaid models, which inspired his series of paintings from this period on the theme of maternity, in which the women are seen huddled in heavy cloaks, blankets and hoods that recall the head-coverings worn by the inmates.
At the time he was painting the series of L’Entrevue, Picasso was in Barcelona, far from Saint-Lazare. However while Picasso found new subjects among the poor and destitute of Barcelona, he continued to find inspiration in his memories and sketches of these unfortunate women of Paris.
It is a sign of the early recognition of the importance of this drawing that it was one of the 76 paintings and 37 works on paper chosen by Pablo Picasso and his dealer, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, to represent the artist at his first major retrospective, which was held in Munich at Heinrich Thannhauser’s Moderne Galerie in February 1913.
L’Entrevue is one of six drawings directly related to the painting L’entrevue (Les deux soeurs) (Zervos I.163; Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg), which is one of the seminal works from the artist’s Blue Period. Of these drawings, this sheet is the largest, and the composition is the most similar to the oil (cf. Zervos VI nos. 435 & 436; Zervos XXI nos. 368 & 369; and Zervos XXII no. 37).
Picasso explained the subject of the series in a letter to Max Jacob dating from the time of execution: ‘It’s a picture of a St. Lazare whore and a sister’ (letter from Picasso to Max Jacob, 13 July 1902). Saint-Lazare was a women’s prison and hospital in Montmartre, run by Dominican nuns. Many of the women there were imprisoned for offenses related to prostitution, and some even served their sentences in the company of their infants and young children. Picasso frequented the prison in search of unpaid models, which inspired his series of paintings from this period on the theme of maternity, in which the women are seen huddled in heavy cloaks, blankets and hoods that recall the head-coverings worn by the inmates.
At the time he was painting the series of L’Entrevue, Picasso was in Barcelona, far from Saint-Lazare. However while Picasso found new subjects among the poor and destitute of Barcelona, he continued to find inspiration in his memories and sketches of these unfortunate women of Paris.
It is a sign of the early recognition of the importance of this drawing that it was one of the 76 paintings and 37 works on paper chosen by Pablo Picasso and his dealer, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, to represent the artist at his first major retrospective, which was held in Munich at Heinrich Thannhauser’s Moderne Galerie in February 1913.