Picasso Muse Portrait Painting Auctioned For Staggering £49.8m

The second-highest recorded auction price for any work of art ever sold in Europe was achieved tonight when Picasso’s Weeping ‘Golden’ Muse made £49.8 Million / $69.2 Million, at Sotheby’s London

‘With such a strong appetite for Picasso’s work from across the globe, this defining portrait from a pivotal year in the oeuvre of the most globally recognised artist is the perfect piece to headline our first major season of 2018. It is all the more remarkable to be able to offer a painting of this calibre that has never been seen on the market before.’

The Portrait of Marie-Thérèse Walter from 1937 lead the first London sale week of 2018. The painting of heightened psychological intensity, 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. The women of Picasso’s life are the fulcrum of his creative genius, unquestionably essential to his creative and intellectual processes. Indeed, this work appears to have been used as a means for exploring his feelings for Marie-Thérèse and his new lover Dora Maar 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. Hailing from a distinguished private collection, this painting had never been seen on the market before.

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

Picasso
Pablo Picasso’s Femme au beret et a la robe quadrillee goes on view during the press call before an auction dedicated to Impressionist artworks at Sotheby’s on February 22, 2018 in London, England. (Photo by Ian Gavan) Photo: Courtesy Sotheby’s

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 inthe 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, thickimpastoed 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.

1937: GUERNICA & THE POLITICISATION OF PICASSO
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.’

Other notable prices achieved tonight:

Picasso’s Conquering Matador Emerges onto Arena To Sell for £16.5 Million / $22.9 Million

Andre Derain’s Fauvist Masterpiece Set Sail at £10.9 Million / $15.1 Million

A One-of-a-Kind Chandelier by Alberto Giacometti
Lights up the Sale Room with £7.6 Million / $10.6 Million

Sotheby’s

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