Art Market Monitor

Global Coverage ~ Unique Analysis

  • AMMpro
  • AMM Fantasy Collecting Game
  • Podcast
  • Contact Us

Sotheby’s Has 1937 Marie-Thérèse for London Sale

January 12, 2018 by Marion Maneker

Pablo Picasso’s Femme au béret et à la robe quadrillée (Marie-Thérèse Walter)

Starting in Hong Kong on January 30th and making its way through Taipei onto New York before finally arriving in London for the February Impressionist and Modern sales, Sotheby’s is touring a Picasso portrait. There hasn’t been Picasso like this on the market since a 1938 portrait Buste de femme (Dora Maar) sold in 2015 for $67.4m. Sotheby’s clearly thinks the Asian market will be very interested. Here’s how the describe the work:

Pablo Picasso’s Femme au béret et à la robe quadrillée (Marie-Thérèse Walter) brings to a climax a turbulent and highly charged year. The great masterpiece of his career Guernica was created in 1937, and in the final month of that momentous year he painted this vivid, poignant and intense image of his golden muse Marie-Thérèse Walter. This defining work will be offered for the first time as a star lot of Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale in London on 28 February 2018.

The women of Picasso’s life are the fulcrum of his creative genius, unquestionably essential to his creative and intellectual processes. Femme au béret et à la robe quadrillée (Marie-Thérèse Walter) charts Picasso’s evolving relationship with his muse Marie-Thérèse Walter, to whom he was ostensibly still devoted at the time, and the
increasingly dominant presence of his new lover Dora Maar. Indeed, the work appears to have been used as a means for exploring his feelings for the two women. There is a conscious blurring of the two styles inspired by the two muses, reaching its pinnacle in the silhouetted ‘other’ that emerges from behind the main subject. Whether it represents
Maar or indeed a self-portrait, the implication is that of duality and conflict. Picasso is quoted: ‘It must be painful for a girl to see in a painting that she is on the way out’.

The beginning of the decade marked a period of sublime happiness for Picasso, as witnessed in the extraordinarily sensual and lyrical paintings of Marie-Thérèse in 1932 – which are the subject of the current acclaimed exhibition at Musée Picasso in Paris and will feature in a forthcoming show at Tate Modern in London. This extremely dynamic
painting reveals just how much things had changed for him in the intervening five years. The work’s sharp cubistic edges, thick impastoed paint and black outlines give it an immediate visual impact – the emphatic execution and bold palette packed with emotional charge. The depiction of Marie-Thérèse has matured from the voluptuous curves and sleepy, passive suggestiveness to the woman who gave birth to Picasso’s child. The portrait suggests that she continued to be of central importance to the artist.

These personal disruptions in 1937 were mirrored by wider political unrest in the artist’s native Spain, the year marked by a succession of shattering events including the bombing of the small town of Guernica in Basque Spain – which prompted the grand masterpiece Guernica and a harrowing series of weeping women. This portrait, with its green welling tears, has been identified as a continuation of and counterbalance to the sequence of weeping women: ‘[she is] entirely reduced to inner tears – a resigned sadness, nonetheless suffused with love.’

More from Art Market Monitor

  • Sotheby’s Has $25m 1932 Picasso ‘Le Repos’ for MaySotheby’s Has $25m 1932 Picasso ‘Le Repos’ for May
  • Picasso’s Late Matador Looks for £14m at Sotheby’sPicasso’s Late Matador Looks for £14m at Sotheby’s
  • Sotheby’s Picasso Ceramics = £1.04m ($1.28m)Sotheby’s Picasso Ceramics = £1.04m ($1.28m)
  • Sotheby’s to Sell Picasso from Paris During the WarSotheby’s to Sell Picasso from Paris During the War
  • Attenborough Picasso Ceramics Sale Sells Out for £3mAttenborough Picasso Ceramics Sale Sells Out for £3m
  • Sotheby’s Announces $12m Picasso to Lead Joan Oestreich Kend CollectionSotheby’s Announces $12m Picasso to Lead Joan Oestreich Kend Collection

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Picasso, Sotheby's

About Marion Maneker

LiveArt

Want to get Art Market Monitor‘s posts sent to you in our email? Sign up below by clicking on the Subscribe button.

  • About Us/ Contact
  • Podcast
  • AMMpro
  • Newsletter
  • FAQ

twitterfacebooksoundcloud
Privacy Policy
Terms & Conditions
California Privacy Rights
Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Advertise on Art Market Monitor
 

Loading Comments...