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Lot Essay
The present work is a striking example from Picasso’s series of works depicting the classical subject Bathsheba Reading King David's Letter, inspired by the Rembrandt’s Bathsheba at her Bath (1654; Louvre, Paris). The story of Bathsheba and David is a well-known biblical tale, where drama, emotion, and moral complexity have provided artists with a rich source of inspiration for centuries. The narrative revolves around King David's infatuation with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, ultimately leading to a series of tragic events. The scene of Bathsheba reading David's letter captures the pivotal moment when Bathsheba learns of David's desire for her.
Executed on 3 May 1963, this work attests to Picasso’s renewed interest Old Master painting during this later stage in his career. After having wrestled with Courbet, Delacroix, Velázquez, El Greco, Manet and David, in the spring and late summer of 1963 Picasso turned to Rembrandt. Picasso’s admiration for the art of the Old Masters was bound up with an identification with the personalities of the artists themselves. Rembrandt had since the thirties figured in Picasso’s pantheon of noble ancestors; and the Dutch Master’s features, like those of Velázquez, are often found when Picasso invokes a seventeenth-century personage. This same year saw Picasso also become absorbed within the motif of the painter and model, a subject he would work on intensively through a proliferation of works on paper and canvases, exploring the dynamic between model and artist. Bethsabée et la lettre de David belongs to a series of ten works on paper Picasso executed in May 1963, employing Rembrandt’s motif in a similar vein, as an expression of masculine desire.
At this later stage in his career and life, Picasso took stock of his domestic happiness, he may have seen a counterpart to Rembrandt’s Hendrickje in his own Jacqueline Roque. Brought to life in curvaceous, confident line, the distinctive characteristics of her dark hair and strong profile are enhanced by the sideways pose in the present composition. She appears immersed in the content of the letter, her expression and posture reflecting the emotional gravity of the moment.
Instead of preliminary studies which were subsumed into a final, one-of-a-kind work, we find serial works of equal value in Picasso’s late oeuvre, each of which offers a different perspective on the same theme or subject. In the variations on the Old Masters he systematized this technique; the work is the totality of the paintings on the same theme, each of which is no more than one mesh in the weave, a creative moment held in suspense; a way of attaining truth through the exploration of the whole range of available styles. All of them done with an expressive immediacy that has lost nothing of its significance and freshness in the course of the creative process.
Executed on 3 May 1963, this work attests to Picasso’s renewed interest Old Master painting during this later stage in his career. After having wrestled with Courbet, Delacroix, Velázquez, El Greco, Manet and David, in the spring and late summer of 1963 Picasso turned to Rembrandt. Picasso’s admiration for the art of the Old Masters was bound up with an identification with the personalities of the artists themselves. Rembrandt had since the thirties figured in Picasso’s pantheon of noble ancestors; and the Dutch Master’s features, like those of Velázquez, are often found when Picasso invokes a seventeenth-century personage. This same year saw Picasso also become absorbed within the motif of the painter and model, a subject he would work on intensively through a proliferation of works on paper and canvases, exploring the dynamic between model and artist. Bethsabée et la lettre de David belongs to a series of ten works on paper Picasso executed in May 1963, employing Rembrandt’s motif in a similar vein, as an expression of masculine desire.
At this later stage in his career and life, Picasso took stock of his domestic happiness, he may have seen a counterpart to Rembrandt’s Hendrickje in his own Jacqueline Roque. Brought to life in curvaceous, confident line, the distinctive characteristics of her dark hair and strong profile are enhanced by the sideways pose in the present composition. She appears immersed in the content of the letter, her expression and posture reflecting the emotional gravity of the moment.
Instead of preliminary studies which were subsumed into a final, one-of-a-kind work, we find serial works of equal value in Picasso’s late oeuvre, each of which offers a different perspective on the same theme or subject. In the variations on the Old Masters he systematized this technique; the work is the totality of the paintings on the same theme, each of which is no more than one mesh in the weave, a creative moment held in suspense; a way of attaining truth through the exploration of the whole range of available styles. All of them done with an expressive immediacy that has lost nothing of its significance and freshness in the course of the creative process.