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Christie’s unveiled today a $25m Picasso Marie-Thérèse painting for its marquee November sales. This will be the first re-test of the market for Marie-Thérèse works that had been so intense last year before waning earlier this year.
Christie’s will offer Pablo Picasso’s La Lampe, 1931 ($25-35 million) as a central highlight of its Evening Sale of Impressionist and Modern Art on 11 November in New York. The golden light from the lamp’s scarlet flame bares a closely guarded secret, known in early 1931 to only a few of Pablo Picasso’s closest friends and his trusted chauffeur. Disenchanted with his wife Olga, indeed, having fallen far out of love from her and the haute bourgeois life-style that she relished, Picasso had been clandestinely seeing, for more than four and a half years, a lovely blonde mistress 28 years his junior. La Lampe shines on the image of Marie-Thérèse Walter, whom Picasso showcased here—in a large, elaborately orchestrated painting, as today one may instantly recognize her—for the first time.
Max Carter, Head of Department, Impressionist and Modern Art, Christie’s New York, remarked: “During the early 1930s, Picasso’s towering achievements as both painter and sculptor arguably reached their greatest height and in La Lampe we have one of their most vital and outstanding expressions.”
Tan Bo, Director, Impressionist and Modern Art, Christie’s Beijing, continued: “With La Lampe touring to Hong Kong from October 22nd -25th, this masterpiece will once again be on view to the public in Asia after 37 years, where it has not been seen since its first appearance at the Picasso Intime exhibition in Hong Kong and Seibu in 1981.”
Picasso painted in La Lampe the pinnacle of Marie-Thérèse, transforming her sweet, compliant nature and striking physicality into the image of a goddess, his idolized muse, in the form of a head modeled in lily-white plaster, appropriately textured in thickly impastoed oil paint, with the lamp’s yellow light doubling as her distinctive blonde hair. This head and bust rest upon a cloth-covered wooden table, which mimics the appearance of a dark dress with a leaf-form collar showing a tasteful hint of décolletage. The artist depicted Marie-Thérèse’s profile, dominated by her Grecian nose, firmly contoured chin, and modish carré plongeant hair style, from a half-dozen such volumetric heads and reliefs, which he began modeling in the spring of 1931.
La Lampe was shown in Picasso’s celebrated retrospective at the Grande Salle of the Galeries Georges Petit, together with fourteen of the 1932 paintings that featured Marie-Thérèse, including Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, Le Rêve, and Jeune fille devant un miroir. One may presume that by this time Olga was aware her husband had taken a lover; after viewing the 1932 show, she might more clearly but distressfully imagine the young woman’s appearance, and even recognize her, if perchance they crossed paths.
With the addition of two hundred watercolors, drawings, and prints, the Galeries Georges Petit exhibition moved largely intact in September to the Kunsthaus Zürich, thus allowing this venue the honor of having mounted Picasso’s first museum retrospective. Wilhelm Hartmann, the Kunsthaus director, installed the works in a chronological presentation, making it a model for all future comprehensive Picasso shows. La Lampe and Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, together with other recent Marie-Thérèse paintings seen in Paris, also traveled to Zürich. The exhibition was a success, and had to be extended another two weeks to accommodate the record attendance.
Nearly fifty years later, La Lampe again featured as one of the highlights of Picasso’s landmark retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1980.
Enough with Marie-Thérèse, let’s see how the market feels about Dora Maar again. That’s what Christie’s has decided to do for London this year. A 1942 Dora Maar work that was once briefly on the market nearly forty years ago, having come from Jaqueline’s portion of the estate, but eventually was sold privately and has disappeared from view. It is going to be offered at Christie’s in late June with an whisper estimate at £18-22m, a good price:Continue Reading
Katya Kazakina reported late on Sunday that Picasso’s Le Marin, a $70m painting featured in Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Evening sale had been damaged and, thus, withdrawn from the sale this week:
Christie’s withdrew “Le Marin,” a self-portrait painted in 1943, from its auction this Tuesday for restoration, it said in a statement. It declined to comment on the nature or extent of the damage.
Update: Christie’s had released on their website a statement on the matter earlier on Sunday:
Pablo Picasso’s Le Marin (The Sailor)was accidentally damaged Friday during the final stages of preparation for Christie’s May 12-15 exhibition. Two outside conservators have now been consulted and have made recommendations for the successful restoration of the painting. After consultation with the consignor today, the painting has been withdrawn from Christie’s May 15 sale to allow the restoration process to begin.
Christie’s has a very high standard of care for the objects entrusted to us and we have taken immediate measures to remedy the matter in partnership with our client. No further information is available at this time.
The last time this happened with a Picasso owned by Wynn, admittedly a very different painting, Le Rêve, at a very different time, the restored work ended up selling a few years later for more than his original asking price.
Further Update: The New York Times’s Scott Reyburn is reporting that another Picasso work owned by Wynn has also been withdrawn:
Christie’s has not divulged the precise nature of the damage to “Le Marin,” but following the mishap, the auction house said in an email that Picasso’s 1964 painting “Femme au chat assise dans un fauteuil” (“Woman With a Cat Seated in an Armchair”), estimated at $22 million to $28 million, has also been withdrawn from the sale. This second Picasso had also been identified as being offered by Mr. Wynn. Like “Le Marin,” it had been guaranteed to sell courtesy of a third party.
Pablo Picasso Painting, Valued at $70 Million, Is Damaged Before Sale (The New York Times)
Bloomberg previews the Rockefeller sales this week with a teaser article about the online sales action but the most interesting part of the piece is the way it ends with Christie’s Rebecca Wei outlining the tastes of her Chinese clients. It’s rare to see a Senior figure at an auction house say something anything but upbeat about one the top lots coming up for auction. But in the case of Gertrude Stein’s Picasso, there may be no need for caution. There’s been a lot of talk in the trade, some of it coming from the owner of a number of Picassos that the Rose period Picasso could sell for a great deal more than the $100m low estimate.
That interest is likely to come from buyers in the Gulf States or the owner a private museum than from Chinese clients. Christie’s Rebecca Wei explains why:
“The big whale clients want the top-top pieces only by Tier 1 artists,” said Wei, listing Picasso, Matisse, Claude Monet, van Gogh, Gauguin and Paul Cezanne. “They like bright colors. Women need to be beautiful in the paintings.”
Top on their list, she said, is a sensual 1923 Matisse canvas, “Odalisque couchee aux magnolias.” Estimated at $70 million, it will probably set an auction record for the French artist, whose current high is $48.8 million.
Picasso’s 1905 “Young Girl with a Flower Basket,” which depicts a pale, nude teenage girl with a basket of red blossoms, may be a tougher sell, Wei said.
“I had so many top collectors looking at the piece, saying ‘Mmm… I don’t know, she has a haunted look — I like the Matisse much better.’”
Rockefeller Trove Ignites a Frenzy With $26,000 Money Clip (Bloomberg)
