Koppchen and bowl with landscapes and turquoise fond, Meissen, 1735-40. Photo courtesy Van Ham
Porcelain, colored and gold decorated. In oval-passigen reserves landscapes with decorative figures. The cartridge on the mirror of the lower shell with attached spring leaves. Height 5 cm / Ø 12.5 cm. swords, gold number 12, each character Dreher star. Condition A / B. Estimate:1,000 - 1,500 €
Van Ham. Europäisches Kunstgewerbe. 17/05/2014 - http://www.van-ham.com/
Cup and saucer with yellow and fond Watteau scenes. Meissen, 1750-60. Photo courtesy Van Ham
Porcelain, colored and gold decorated. Height 7 cm / Ø 13.5 cm. swords, purple number 45, Saucer 64th with embossing number Condition B / C. Estimate: 600-800 €
Van Ham. Europäisches Kunstgewerbe. 17/05/2014 - http://www.van-ham.com/
Small pot with yellow and fond Watteau reserven, Meissen, 1750-60. Photo courtesy Van Ham
Porcelain, colored and gold decorated. Height 15.5 cm. swords, gold painter's mark with three points on inside cover E Onglaze in purple. Condition C. Estimate: 700-900 €
Van Ham. Europäisches Kunstgewerbe. 17/05/2014 - http://www.van-ham.com/
Gold, platinum and diamond clip, 'Spire', Suzanne Belperron, 1943. Photo Sotheby's
Of scroll design, collet-set with circular-cut diamonds, the top decorated with a line of cushion-shaped diamonds, highlighted with single-cut stones, French assay and maker's marks for Groëné& Darde. Estimation 15,000 — 22,000 CHF
FROM THE COLLECTION OF MME PICHA-EISENSTEIN
Accompanied by a certificate from Olivier Baroin.
Sotheby's. Magnificent Jewels and Noble Jewels, Genève | 13 mai 2014, 10:00 AM - http://www.sothebys.com/
Pair of gold, platinum and diamond ear clips, 'Spire', Suzanne Belperron, 1943. Photo Sotheby's
Each of scroll design, set with circular- and single-cut diamonds, post and clip fittings, French assay and maker's marks for Groëné& Darde. Estimation 7,500 — 10,000 CHF
FROM THE COLLECTION OF MME PICHA-EISENSTEIN
Accompanied by a certificate from Olivier Baroin.
Sotheby's. Magnificent Jewels and Noble Jewels, Genève | 13 mai 2014, 10:00 AM - http://www.sothebys.com/
Lady's gold and diamond cocktail watch, Suzanne Belperron, 1943. Photo Sotheby's
Set at the centre with a tonneau shaped dial applied with Arabic numerals, within a gold cuff highlighted with circular- and single-cut diamonds, inner circumference approximately 200mm, French assay and maker's marks for Groëné& Darde. Estimation 10,000 — 15,000 CHF
FROM THE COLLECTION OF MME PICHA-EISENSTEIN
Accompanied by a certificate from Olivier Baroin.
Sotheby's. Magnificent Jewels and Noble Jewels, Genève | 13 mai 2014, 10:00 AM - http://www.sothebys.com/
A green and pink tourmaline double-gourd-shaped snuff bottle, 19th century. Photo Christie's Image Ltd 2014.
The bottle is carved in the form of a double-gourd with nine bats amongst ruyi heads and scrolling clouds. There is a stylised shou character on the lower bulbous section to one side. The stone is of a pale two-tone with cloudy inclusions; with stopper. 2 ½ in. (6.3 cm.) high. Estimate£4,000 – £6,000 ($6,724 - $10,086)
Christie's. FINE CHINESE CERAMICS AND WORKS OF ART, 13 May 2014, London, King Street - http://www.christies.com/
A green and pink tourmaline figure of Guanyin, 19th-20th century. Photo Christie's Image Ltd 2014.
The bodhisattva is carved seated on a lotus base with her hands held together to the front. She is clothed in long flowing robes, with a headdress draped over her shoulders, and a calm expression on her face. The stone ranges from a vibrant pink tone to dark brownish-black, and rich green tones. 3 ¼ in. (8.2 cm.) high. Estimate£6,000 – £8,000 ($10,086 - $13,448)
Christie's. FINE CHINESE CERAMICS AND WORKS OF ART, 13 May 2014, London, King Street - http://www.christies.com/
A large and rare famille rose baluster 'Pronk' jar, circa 1738. Photo courtesy Bonhams
With two large cartouches depicting European men in Chinese robes, one smoking an opium pipe, the other holding a yellow-glazed saucer dish, amongst geese and roses within scrolls, all on a rich blue background embellished with large chrysanthemum and peony flowers, a pattern of cranes and lotus around the shoulder, a band of decorative lappets around the foot. 55.5cm (22 3/4in) high. Estimate£8,000 - 10,000 (€9,700 - 12,000)
Provenance: a European private collection
The present lot is an exceptionally rare example of the striking design sometimes known as 'The Potentate'. Few other vases of this design are known, but the figure with a pipe surrounded by European-style diaper and strapwork rather than flowers is in the collection of the British Museum, Museum ref. Franks.588, and another is illustrated by D.S.Howard, The Choice of the Private Trader, London, 1994, pp.240-241, no.285.
This unusual 'Potentate' figure is based on a design by the Dutch painter Cornelius Pronk (1691-1759) who was commissioned by the Dutch East India Company to produce designs for production at Jingdezhen between 1734 and 1738. Two original studio drawings of Pronk's designs survive in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, including the widely-used design entitled 'The Doctors' Visit', dated to 1738 by C.J.A.Jörg in Porcelain and the Dutch China Trade, The Hague, 1982, p.191. A vase of 'The Doctor's Visit' is illustrated by D.Howard and J.Ayers, China for the West: Chinese Porcelain and other Decorative Arts for Export illustrated from the Mottahedeh Collection, London, 1978, p.294, where the authors specifically note the resemblance in draughtsmanship between 'The Doctors' Visit' and 'The Potentate'.
Bonhams. FINE CHINESE ART. London, New Bond Street, 15 May 2014 - http://www.bonhams.com/
A famille rose globular teapot and cover, Qianlong. Photo courtesy Bonhams.
The body finely enamelled with a mildly erotic scene, a husband and wife on one side watching an amorous chicken and cockerel from a courtyard veranda, a small boy on the opposite side entering the courtyard holding a gold ruyi, the domed cover en suite. 17cm (6 3/4in) wide (2). Estimate£3,000 - 5,000 (€3,600 - 6,100)
Provenance: a European private collection
Bonhams. FINE CHINESE ART. London, New Bond Street, 15 May 2014 - http://www.bonhams.com/
A green and pink tourmaline 'Qilin and Bat' pendant, 19th century. Photo Christie's Image Ltd 2014.
The pink section of the pendant is carved in the form of a recumbent bearded beast with a ruyi upon its back, standing on top of a bat carved from the green area of the stone. 1 ? in. (2.8 cm.) high. Estimate£8,000 – £12,000 ($13,448 - $20,172)
Christie's. FINE CHINESE CERAMICS AND WORKS OF ART, 13 May 2014, London, King Street - http://www.christies.com/
A green and pink tourmaline 'Three-legged toad' carving, 19th century. Photo Christie's Image Ltd 2014.
The stone is carved in the form of a three-legged toad holding a string with two coins in its mouth. The stone is of pale green and pink tones with some cloudy inclusions. 1 ¼ in. (3.2 cm.) wide. Estimate£5,000 – £8,000 ($8,405 - $13,448)
Christie's. FINE CHINESE CERAMICS AND WORKS OF ART, 13 May 2014, London, King Street - http://www.christies.com/
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Mangeuse de pastèque et homme écrivant. Photo Christie's Image Ltd 2014.
signed 'Picasso' (lower left); dated '13.5.65.' (on the reverse), oil on canvas, 51 1/8 x 63 5/8 in. (129.8 x 161.7 cm.). Painted on 13 May 1965. Estimate $7,000,000 – $10,000,000
Provenance: Galerie Louise Leiris (Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler), Paris.
Kootz Gallery, New York (acquired from the above, 1965).
PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF EDGAR M. BRONFMAN
Literature: C. Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Paris, 1972, vol. 25, no. 127 (illustrated, p. 73).
P. Daix, Dictionnaire Picasso, Paris, 1995, pp. 450 and 553.
The Picasso Project, ed., Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture: The Sixties II, 1964-1967, San Francisco, 2002, p. 200, no. 65-134 (illustrated).
Exhibited: New York, Kootz Gallery, October 1965.
Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Pablo Picasso: A Retrospective Exhibition, February-March 1967, p. 97, no. 86 (illustrated, p. 84).
Notes: 13 May 1965, the day Picasso painted Mangeuse de pastèque et homme écrivant, was only a few weeks shy of the mid-point of an already bountifully productive decade. Two years previously he had commenced his series of atelier paintings, which usually featured the artist and his model, both together, or less frequently she nude and alone, and occasionally only the artist by himself. On the face of it, one might suspect that this working arrangement, as intensely intimate as it would seem, may not promise much in the way of variety. But in fact the artist and model series within a few years spawned numerous corollary groups, most frequently in the manner of los mosqueteros, a term which, as John Richardson has pointed out, includes not only Picasso's celebrated Alexandre Dumas-style cavalier mousquetaires, but also a wider assortment of their camp followers--servants, musicians, girlfriends, prostitutes, procurers and other hangers-on.
One such offshoot of the artist and model series are les mangeuses de pastèque, the watermelon eaters, painted during three days in April and May 1965. This is a small group, comprising only five paintings: Zervos, vol. 25, nos. 113, 120, 127, 128--which Daix recorded (op. cit.)--plus another, no. 129, which he did not. "C'est un thème plein de gaieté en couleurs vives et claires," as he aptly described these pictures. He moreover pointed out that they stemmed from a previous group of Hommes et femmes nus, men and nude women, begun on 22 February 1965. The thread, as traced below, runs even further back in time.
One might imagine Picasso having caught sight of young lovers in or around Mougins enjoying a melon on the grass as a charming moment that possibly inspired these paintings. But one must also consider--not as a coincidence but more likely as an actual antecedent that Picasso had in mind--a painting by a fellow Spaniard, one of the great masters during the later years of El Siglo de Oro: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo. His painting Dos muchachos comiendo melon y uvas, circa 1645-1648, depicts two street waifs who have absconded with a basket of grapes and a yellow melon; the artist shows them enjoying their feast of opportunity (fig. 1).
The two Murillo boys have a rooster as company in Picasso's Coq et mangeurs de pastèque, the second of two paintings Picasso had done on 19 April when he debuted his subject of the watermelon eaters. But in the first painting that day (Zervos, vol. 25, no. 113; fig. 2) gand the remaining three done on 13 and 15 April, the figures are male and female, demonstrating, as Daix observed, they are in fact the pictorial progeny of the earlier Hommes et femmes nus (e.g., Zervos, vol. 25, no. 107; Sold, Christie's, New York, 9 November 1999, lot 548), which are themselves a development from Picasso's main line of artist and model paintings, to which he had devoted most of his efforts since 1963 (Zervos, vol. 23, no. 205; fig. 3). Only in the present watermelon eater painting is the young man clothed, and he appears to show little interest in either the young woman or a cool slice of watermelon on a warm spring day. Therein lies a tale--vide infra.
The idea for the artist and model paintings emerged at the conclusion of a ten-year period during which Picasso had taken sustained inspiration from the iconography and achievements of earlier masters whom he admired, chief among them Delacroix (in Picasso's Femmes d'Algers series, 1954-1955), Velázquez (Las Meninas, 1957), Manet (Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, 1959-1961), and lastly Poussin (L'enlèvement des sabines, late 1962-early 1963). He declared that he had nearly spent himself on his versions of Poussin's masterpiece, painting calamitous scenes out of classical antiquity filled with women in distress, rapacious warriors and rampaging horses. Turning away from these serial allusions to the past, Picasso sought to reinvigorate his painting by taking on a new theme, one which was as basic and immediate to the work of a painter as he could conceive. The subject of his research would henceforth be the direct and real relationship between the artist and his model.
The entry of Jacqueline Roque into Picasso's life, as his new lover and model, coincided with Matisse's passing in 1954. "When Matisse died," Picasso declared, "he left his odalisques to me as a legacy" (quoted in M.-L. Bernadac, Late Picasso, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1988, p. 55). Picasso worked through the most salient formal aspects of the Orientalist genre in the aforementioned Delacroix variations, and in the Jacqueline au costume turc paintings of late 1955. But he quickly dispensed with the Matissean habit of casting his model as a costumed role-player when he painted a series of portraits of Jacqueline during late 1962 and early 1963 (Zervos, vol. 23, nos. 72-94 and 110-117), probing her appearance and personality in a spontaneous and intimate manner. These pictures describe the excitement of rediscovery--and the sheer delectation--that Picasso took in gazing upon and depicting in paint a live, flesh-and-blood model, who was the very woman he loved and whom he had recently made his wife.
The next step was to insert the artist into the picture, in the form of some surrogate for himself, which Picasso then accomplished to inaugurate the fully-fledged peintre et son modèle series on 2 March 1963, in four paintings (Zervos, vol. 23, nos. 154-157) which established the paradigm for the entire series to come. The artist and model paintings are the key works in the development of Picasso's late style: they are an allegory of art-making, and moreover reveal the artist's insightful research into all manner of human relationships. For Matisse the very essence of painting had been the reciprocity between the artist and his model, and this became the foundation of his art. Picasso, in his final decade, after all that had gone before, decided it had come down to the very same thing. The synergy of artist and model, he concluded, lay at the very heart of his creativity, and this mutual interaction became the vital pulse of his daily life, both as an artist and a man.
Coming at this juncture, Picasso's passionate affair with the model proclaimed his reaffirmation of a total commitment to the external world of reality and the presence of the "subject" in his painting, at a time when many artists were talking about and actively doing away with both. Picasso's intent, however, went well beyond the theoretical--the artist and model subjects were not just paintings about painting, or an inside commentary on his craft. Marie-Laure Bernadac has asserted that "The more Picasso painted this theme, the more he pushed the artist-model relationship towards its ultimate conclusion: the artist embraces his model, canceling out the barrier of the canvas and transforming the artist-model relationship into a man-woman relationship. Painting is an act of love, according to Gert Schiff, and John Richardson speaks of 'sex as a metaphor for art, and art as a metaphor for sex'" (exh. cat., op. cit., 1988, p. 77).
The paintings that focus on the nude sitter alone are Picasso's paean to the powerful presence of Jacqueline in his life and the strength of his feelings for her. Jacqueline is always the model, in as many guises as Picasso could invent for her, but most often nude; she is the ultimate and universal woman who is the sole object of the artist's obsessive attention and efforts. Jacqueline never posed. There was no need for her to do so; Picasso merely required the stimulation of her proximity. He subjected her presence, however quotidian and domestic it might be, to the lively play of his imagination and the abundance of his fantasies. He seized the moment, and the paintings sprang forth, day after day, filling his studio during this spectacular Indian summer of his career.
Backtracking beyond the Hommes et femmes nus paintings, the idea of the Watermelon Eaters may be seen as a postscript related to Picasso's series of riffs on Manet's Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, which occupied him for two years, from the first drawings he made in August 1959 to the final painting, among 27 in all, he completed on 19 August 1961 (Zervos, vol. 20, no. 119). Picasso had tackled Manet's subject not only on account of its status as the groundbreaking icon that premiered the modernist sensibility in painting, but also for such opportunities as this estimable precedent offered in encouraging him to move the nude out of Delacroix's Femmes d'Algers harem and into the landscape, taking on a theme--the harmonious idyll of humankind in nature--that had been a cornerstone of Western art since the Renaissance. Cézanne had carried forth this tradition in his monumental late bathers, Renoir in his late nudes, and Matisse gave it further modernist spin in his Joie de vivre, 1906 and the famous murals Danse I and II, and La Musique, 1910. The poses of the two women in Manet's painting proliferate on Picasso's canvases into "every conceivable posture," as Bernadac has written. "Working on Le Déjeuner brings Picasso to the point of inventing a new morphology" (ibid., p. 70).
The antecedent for the pose of the young man writing in the present painting may be seen in sixteen Déjeuner drawings, in which he is reading a book, dated 9 and 10 July 1961 (Zervos, vol. 20, nos. 72-85) and a half-dozen more in which the book has disappeared as he simply looks up to gaze upon the two female nudes nearby, dated 11 July 1961 (nos. 92-97). He is there reading his book in the oil painting dated 10 July 1961 (Zervos, vol. 20, no. 88; fig. 4). The female watermelon eater is related to the seated nudes in Picasso's Déjeuner paintings and drawings, but her pose is actually closer to that which Victorine Meurent, Manet's model, assumed for the seated figure in the original painting (fig. 5), in Picasso's version flipped from right to left.
Now for the question: why does the young man in the present painting insist on keeping his clothes on, and attend to his writing, while the gorgeous, ripely figured young woman seated nearby is offering to share with him her slice of melon--a symbolic offering which could well stand for all the fruits of this earth--and very likely her lovely body as well? It appears that he has something more important on his mind: he wants to be a writer, an artist. His activity is a reminder that between 1935 and 1959 Picasso wrote page after page of freely associative poetry. The young man's dilemma is nothing new, it is as old as art itself; if the choice comes down to this, if at any moment he must choose between her and his book--that is, between life and art--some would then say that art, as his true calling, is the thing to which he must give his undivided attention and apply all his efforts.
Picasso is perhaps recalling an emotional quandary and rite of passage from his own youthful efforts at becoming an artist. That he has made this young fellow a surrogate for himself is clear from the striped pattern on his shirt, similar to the fisherman's vest the artist was fond of wearing in the studio and around his home in Mougins. This is, however, an odd lesson coming from Picasso, a man who managed the complexities of his love life and the needs of his art most adroitly, at times with astonishing cleverness--indeed, his life and art fed off of each other like a force of nature. There is a tongue-in-cheek quality to the situation Picasso has depicted here, as if he would like to say, "this art versus life thing is lot of talk, maybe it's something for you old-fashioned romantics, but not for me--I can do both, and more or less at the same time!"
Murillo's melon-eater turns up again in Picasso's works of the later 1960s. He is present as a seated boy holding a wedge of melon to his mouth in a series of drawings dated 20 and 22 January, 3 and 4 February, and in paintings dated 30 October (Zervos. vol. 27, no. 150; fig. 6) and 12 November (no. 151), and lastly a wash drawing of 14 November, all in 1967. "Bucolic imagery was to loom large in Picasso's work between 1966 and 1968," Gert Schiff has written. "There are more paintings, and especially drawings, of couples disporting themselves in the country; but in the latter, ideal nudity replaces all remnants of contemporary nudity... Picasso celebrates the life of a primeval Arcadia. There are hoary elders drinking wine or conversing with well-built youths, mothers tenderly receiving the caresses of their cupid sons; fishermen; children riding donkeys and goats or playing with tame hawks and buzzards; boys lolling on the beach, playing pipes and eating melons... Here the old artist revives one last time that dream which Paul Gauguin had impressed so forcibly upon his generation: the flight from civilization" (Picasso: The Last Years, 1963-1973, exh. cat., The Grey Art Gallery, New York University, 1983, pp. 26 and 28).
Pablo and Jacqueline Picasso in the front yard of Notre-Dame-de-Vie, their home in Mougins, August 1966. Photograph by Roberto Otero; Museo Picasso, Málaga. BARCODE: 28863243
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Dos muchachos comiendo melon y uvas, circa 1645-1648. Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek, Münich. BARCODE: 28863182
(fig. 1) Pablo Picasso, Mangeurs de pastèque, Mougins, 19 April 1965 (I). Private collection. BARCODE: 28863199
(fig. 2) Pablo Picasso, Le peintre et son modèle dans l'atelier, Mougins, 9 April 1963. Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. BARCODE: 28863205
(fig. 3) Pablo Picasso, Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, d'après Manet, Mougins, 10 July 1961. Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. BARCODE: 28863212
(fig. 4) Edouard Manet, Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, 1863. Musée d'Orsay, Paris. BARCODE: 28863229
(fig. 5) Pablo Picasso, Homme et femme nus à la pastèque, Mougins, 30 November 1967. Museum Ludwig, Cologne. BARCODE: 28863236
Christie's. IMPRESSIONIST AND MODERN ART EVENING SALE INCLUDING PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF EDGAR M. BRONFMAN. 6 May 2014. New York, Rockefeller Plaza - http://www.christies.com/
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Tête d'homme. Photo Christie's Image Ltd 2014.
dated and inscribed 'Vendredi 21.1.72.' (on the reverse), oil on canvas, 28¾ x 23¾ in. (73 x 60.2 cm.). Painted on 21 January 1972. Estimate $3,000,000 – $4,000,000
Provenance: Estate of the artist.
Private collection, Switzerland; sale, Christie's, London, 21 June 2005, lot 42.
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner.
PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE NEW YORK COLLECTOR
Literature: C. Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Paris, 1978, vol. 33, no. 281 (illustrated, pl. 97; dated 20 January 1972).
Picasso: The Avignon Paintings, exh. cat., The Pace Gallery, New York, 1981, p. 6 (illustrated in situ in the 1973 Palais des Papes exhibition).
The Picasso Project, ed., Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture: The Final Years, 1970-1973, San Francisco, 2004, p. 270, no. 72-016 (illustrated; dated 20 January 1972).
Exhibited: Avignon, Palais des Papes, Picasso, 1970-1972, May-September 1973, pp. 232 and 235, no. 158 (illustrated in color, p. 189; dated 20 January 1972).
Nassau County Museum of Art, Long Island Collections, January-March 2009.
Notes: On 23 May 1973, a large exhibition was opened at the Palais des Papes in Avignon comprising works from the past three years by Pablo Picasso, each one selected by the artist himself. Tête d'homme was one of the works in this show which was to become a posthumous survey of Picasso's recent works, as he died on 8 April that year, after the exhibition had been organized but before it had opened. Rafael Alberti commented at the time of the exhibition: "The huge nave of the Great Chapel of Clement VI, in the Palais des Papes in Avignon, is always impressive; one might think it was made only so that Picasso could invade it, and make the big walls almost disappear with his works" ("Picasso, The Unending Lighting", 1974, reproduced in, Picasso: Mosqueteros, exh. cat., Gagosian Gallery, New York, 2009, p. 310). The show, in a way, revealed the artist taking his final bow. It was only too appropriate, then, that many of the pictures in the exhibition featured the heads of men who were often analogues for the artist himself. This was the case with the harlequins, matadors, musketeers and artists who populated a number of the pictures, including Tête d'homme (figs. 2 and 3). In the present work, which Picasso painted on 21 January 1972, the hat appears to recall some of the floppy headwear worn by Picasso's dandyish musketeers; at the same time, it echoes the figures inspired by Vincent van Gogh who populated some of Picasso's pictures, especially following his move to the South of France where the Dutch artist himself had lived (fig. 1).
Picasso would have been gratified at some of the controversy that the 1973 exhibition in Avignon caused. His recent paintings such as Tête d'homme were often filled with a palette that was almost provocative in its deliberate refusal to pander to public tastes. Instead, Picasso revealed the extent to which he was continuing to push the boundaries of art, taking painting to pieces in order to reconstruct it in new and unexpected ways. His emphasis on the processes involved in creating Tête d'homme is underscored by the brushstrokes seen in the hat that are bold and gestural, while the hair and beard appear almost scribbled and are incised, recalling the art of children rather than that of an old and legendary avant garde artist. Of course, it is in this, his manipulation of the viewer's expectations and understanding of the notion of 'fine art' that Picasso displays himself ever the revolutionary. Even the background has been painted in such a way that the viewer is intensely aware of the brushstrokes themselves. Looking at creating Tête d'homme, Picasso's own movements and actions are recorded in an almost archaeological manner as we trace each stroke and line.
Picasso's exploration of painting came from deep in the core of his own existence: by the time he created Tête d'homme, he was a living legend, identified with figurative painting by generations. While figuration and facture, at each end of the artistic spectrum, may have been disregarded by artists who had espoused either abstraction or Pop, Picasso was continuing to probe its relevance, and was doing so in a manner that also explored his own life and legacy. So, in creating Tête d'homme, his own dark eyes seem to penetrate the viewer--here outlined in a bright blue. In addition, his entire head is shaped in a manner that recalls a painter's palette, highlighting his own identification with his artistic vocation.
Looking at creating Tête d'homme, the man is wearing a hat and a wild and bushy beard. The hat, which may recall the musketeers, is at odds with the unruly facial hair. This implies that it may be the sort of straw hat that Picasso showed in some of his fictitious projections of Van Gogh, in which he would sometimes show him embracing outdoors, sometimes looking out from the canvas. Certainly, the arresting stare of the figure in Tête d'homme recalls Van Gogh's celebrated and penetrating self-portraits, several of which featured similar straw hats. For Picasso, during this period, Van Gogh had become a spectral companion; he would project images of self-portraits onto the walls of his studio and cherished a photocopy of the clipping announcing in a local newspaper that Van Gogh had cut off his own ear. Many of Picasso's contemporaries had died by the time Tête d'homme was painted, and he was looking increasingly to the artists of the past in order to find companions and inspiration.
John Richardson has pointed out, in terms relevant to Tête d'homme, that the example of Van Gogh became all the more vital to Picasso in his later years as, instead of seeking to tap into the vision of the artiste maudit as he had during his Blue Period, he sought a more expressionistic means of painting: "What he wanted was to enlist Van Gogh's dark spirits on his side, to make his art as instinctive and 'convulsive' as possible... I suspect that Picasso also wanted to galvanise his paint surface--not always the most thrilling aspect of the epoch before Jacqueline's--with some of the Dutchman's Dionysian fervour. It worked. The surface of the late paintings has a freedom, a plasticity, that was never there before; they are more spontaneous, more expressive and more instinctive, than virtually all his previous work" (Picasso, quoted in J. Richardson, "L'Epoque Jacqueline," pp. 17-48, in Late Picasso: Paintings, Sculpture, Srawings, Prints, 1953-1972, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1988, pp. 32-34).
Tête d'homme was painted some months before the haunting death's-head-like self-portrait that Picasso created and showed to Pierre Daix, which resulted in a number of skull-like images. Here, the sense of play, of costume and of entertainment, is punctured by the gaunt eyes and slender face. The gaze of the man in Tête d'homme is both endearing and imploring, as though he were conscious of his own vulnerability. This results in Tête d'homme appearing as a poignant image of the artist's projected sense of self during that period; it is a telling reflection of its success in Picasso's own eyes that he selected it for what was to become his posthumous show in Avignon the following year.
Palais des Papes exhibition in Avignon, 1973. The present lot is pictured to the left of the doorway. BARCODE: 28862970
(fig. 1) Vincent van Gogh, Self-Portrait with Straw Hat, 1887. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. BARCODE: 33585352_Comp
(fig. 2) Pablo Picasso, Tête d'homme au chapeau de paille, 1971. Musée d'Unterlinden, Colmar. BARCODE: 33585369_comp
(fig. 3) Pablo Picasso, Buste d'homme au chapeau, 1972. Musée Picasso, Antibes. BARCODE: 33585376_comp
Christie's. IMPRESSIONIST AND MODERN ART EVENING SALE INCLUDING PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF EDGAR M. BRONFMAN. 6 May 2014. New York, Rockefeller Plaza - http://www.christies.com/
A pink tourmaline 'Three rams' carving, 19th-20th century. Photo Christie's Image Ltd 2014.
The carving depicts three recumbent rams beneath a circular orb emerging from scrolling clouds, inscribed with the character ri meaning sun. The stone is of an attractive bright pink tone. 1 ? in. (4.2 cm.) long. Estimate£6,000 – £8,000 ($10,086 - $13,448)
Christie's. FINE CHINESE CERAMICS AND WORKS OF ART, 13 May 2014, London, King Street - http://www.christies.com/
A pink tourmaline 'Double-gourd' pendant, 18th-19th century. Photo Christie's Image Ltd 2014.
The pendant is carved in the form of two double-gourds growing from a vine with three monkeys clambering on it, and a bat to the reverse. The stone is of a vibrant pink tone. 2 ¼ in. (5.6 cm.) high. Estimate£5,000 – £8,000 ($8,405 - $13,448)
Christie's. FINE CHINESE CERAMICS AND WORKS OF ART, 13 May 2014, London, King Street - http://www.christies.com/
Sapphire and diamond ring. Photo Sotheby's.
The cushion-shaped sapphire weighing 8.18 carats, claw-set between step-cut diamonds, size 53, French import mark. Estimation 50,000 — 68,000 CHF
Sotheby's. Magnificent Jewels and Noble Jewels, Genève | 13 mai 2014 - http://www.sothebys.com/
A blue and white 'Three friends of winter' dish, Daoguang six-character seal mark in underglaze-blue and of the period (1821-1850). Photo Christie's Image Ltd 2014.
The dish is potted with shallow rounded sides, supported on a short foot. The interior is painted in different shades of cobalt blue to depict the 'Three Friends of Winter', sui han san you, comprising bamboo, prunus and pine. The exterior is decorated with a mother watching her two boys at play in a garden scene. 7 in. (17.7 cm.) diam. Estimate£6,000 – £8,000 ($10,128 - $13,504)
Christie's. FINE CHINESE CERAMICS AND WORKS OF ART, 13 May 2014, London, King Street -http://www.christies.com/
A blue and white Eight Immortals' bowl, Daoguang six-character seal mark in underglaze-blue and of the period (1821-1850). Photo Christie's Image Ltd 2014.
The bowl is potted with deep sides raised on a short foot, with the exterior painted with the Eight Daoist Immortals shown with their respective attributes. The centre of the interior is decorated with the Three Star Gods under a tall pine tree. 5 ? in. (15 cm.) diam. Estimate£6,000 – £8,000 ($10,128 - $13,504)
Notes: Compare this bowl to a similar one in the Simon Kwan collection, included in the exhibition Imperial Porcelain of Late Qing from the Kwan Collection, illustrated in the Catalogue, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1983, pl. 17. This was later included in the exhibition Imperial Porcelain of Late Ch'ing from the Kwan Collection, illustrated in the Catalogue, National Museum of History, Taiwan, 1985, pl. 17.
Christie's. FINE CHINESE CERAMICS AND WORKS OF ART, 13 May 2014, London, King Street - http://www.christies.com/
A blue and white quatrefoil tray, Daoguang six-character seal mark in underglaze-blue and of the period (1821-1850). Photo Christie's Image Ltd 2014.
The interior of the tray is delicately painted with a tasselled kite hanging from the branches of a flowering peony branch, encircled by a band of stylised lotus sprays with leafy tendrils. The exterior is similarly decorated with lotus sprays. 6 ? in. (16.2 cm.) wide. Estimate£10,000 – £15,000 ($16,880 - $25,320)
Provenance: Christie's Hong Kong, 31 May 2010, lot 2002.
Christie's. FINE CHINESE CERAMICS AND WORKS OF ART, 13 May 2014, London, King Street - http://www.christies.com/
