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Lot Essay
Maya Widmaier-Picasso has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
Picasso first saw Manet's Le déjeuner sur l'herbe at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris. The work had an immediately profound impact on him, yet it was not until 1959 that he would embark on an exploration of his predecessor's 1863 iconic creation. Picasso's ceaseless reimaginings of Manet's composition would eventually come to encompass, as Susan Grace Galassi has noted, "twenty-seven paintings in oil on canvas, some one hundred and fifty drawings, three linoleum cuts, eighteen cardboard maquettes for sculpture, five concrete sculptures, and several ceramic plaques" (in Picasso's Variations on the Masters, 1996, p. 185). And, particularly notable, there is one tapestry commissioned by Nelson A. Rockefeller.
In a canvas from late February 1960, Picasso began to rework the classical composition, distilling his forms down to flat, unadorned areas of colour. In another interpretation begun in early March, an ornate patterning dominates the composition, foreshadowing the intricate texture later seen in the woven version. Here, the greenery recalls the stylised design of embroidery and the figures' contortions become more intricate. Perhaps it is this particular painting's emphasis on ornamental embellishment that led Picasso to use it as a model for further works, for it is this work which most closely resembles the tapestry version of Le déjeuner sur l'herbe.
The present work represents just one of a number of tapestries that the millionaire politician and collector, Nelson A. Rockefeller, commissioned from Picasso. Other examples still hang in the underground galleries of Kykuit, Rockefeller’s Tarrytown, New York estate. This particular woven medium allowed Rockefeller to privately enjoy unique versions of images that were so iconic they were otherwise inaccessible even to him. In addition to the present work, for example, the collector commissioned Picasso's ground-breaking 1907 work Les desmoiselles d'Avignon in tapestry form. The more emblematic the original work, the more successful its translation would be into a tapestry.
While an edition of three tapestries based on Picasso's painting was planned, only one--the present work--was ultimately executed. Mme Dürrbach completed the 1963 commission in 1967, weaving Picasso's design into wool at the Atelier J. de La Baume-Dürrbach, her workshop in Cavalaire, France.
If the original shock of Manet's canvas lay in its open-air exposure of an intimate affair, the tapestry, public and monumentally sized, became the ideal medium to embody this work's ultimate canonization, as reinterpreted by the 20th century's greatest master.
Picasso first saw Manet's Le déjeuner sur l'herbe at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris. The work had an immediately profound impact on him, yet it was not until 1959 that he would embark on an exploration of his predecessor's 1863 iconic creation. Picasso's ceaseless reimaginings of Manet's composition would eventually come to encompass, as Susan Grace Galassi has noted, "twenty-seven paintings in oil on canvas, some one hundred and fifty drawings, three linoleum cuts, eighteen cardboard maquettes for sculpture, five concrete sculptures, and several ceramic plaques" (in Picasso's Variations on the Masters, 1996, p. 185). And, particularly notable, there is one tapestry commissioned by Nelson A. Rockefeller.
In a canvas from late February 1960, Picasso began to rework the classical composition, distilling his forms down to flat, unadorned areas of colour. In another interpretation begun in early March, an ornate patterning dominates the composition, foreshadowing the intricate texture later seen in the woven version. Here, the greenery recalls the stylised design of embroidery and the figures' contortions become more intricate. Perhaps it is this particular painting's emphasis on ornamental embellishment that led Picasso to use it as a model for further works, for it is this work which most closely resembles the tapestry version of Le déjeuner sur l'herbe.
The present work represents just one of a number of tapestries that the millionaire politician and collector, Nelson A. Rockefeller, commissioned from Picasso. Other examples still hang in the underground galleries of Kykuit, Rockefeller’s Tarrytown, New York estate. This particular woven medium allowed Rockefeller to privately enjoy unique versions of images that were so iconic they were otherwise inaccessible even to him. In addition to the present work, for example, the collector commissioned Picasso's ground-breaking 1907 work Les desmoiselles d'Avignon in tapestry form. The more emblematic the original work, the more successful its translation would be into a tapestry.
While an edition of three tapestries based on Picasso's painting was planned, only one--the present work--was ultimately executed. Mme Dürrbach completed the 1963 commission in 1967, weaving Picasso's design into wool at the Atelier J. de La Baume-Dürrbach, her workshop in Cavalaire, France.
If the original shock of Manet's canvas lay in its open-air exposure of an intimate affair, the tapestry, public and monumentally sized, became the ideal medium to embody this work's ultimate canonization, as reinterpreted by the 20th century's greatest master.