Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

Lot 39
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Estimation :
100000 - 150000 EUR
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Result : 140 800EUR
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Portrait of the Countess Étienne de Beaumont, January 1921 Pencil on paper, signed and dated 1944 at the bottom 34 x 24 cm This work was executed in January 1921. When the artist gave it to the Countess Étienne de Beaumont, he signed and dated it April 1, 1944. Provenance: - Countess Edith de Beaumont, Paris, gift from the artist on April 1, 1944. - Gala de Beaumont, Paris - Private collection, Milan - Galleria Tega, Milan - Private collection, Paris Bibliography: - "Pablo Picasso" by Christian Zervos, volume IV "OEuvres de 1920 à 1922", Paris 1951, reproduced and described under N°274, P.96. - "Picasso, theatre" by Douglas Cooper, Paris 1967, reproduced on page 351 under N°325. - Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings, Sculpture, Neoclassicim I, 1920-1921, The Picasso Project, San Francisco 1995, reproduced and described under N°21-034, P.174. This work is accompanied by a certificate on photo of the Picasso Committee, dated 11 May 1990. This work is accompanied by a certificate on photo from Maya Picasso, dated 23 May 2008. This work is registered in the Pablo Picasso archives. The Countess of Beaumont Edith de Beaumont (1877-1952) was the wife of Count Etienne de Beaumont. They were important patrons of the avant-garde in the early 20th century. During the First World War, with a group of nobles, they founded the "Section d'ambulances aux Armées", of which Jean Cocteau was one of the conveyors on the Flanders front. After the war, the couple sold some of the classical art they had inherited to buy contemporary works by Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris and Georges Braque. Lovers of parties, they decided to rehabilitate the tradition of the big themed ball for Mardi-Gras, among others. These balls are the place of real scenographies, decorations or costumes. Picasso was close to the couple. With his wife Olga, he regularly went to the couple's balls. Picasso and Ingres Throughout his life, Picasso kept Ingres' example in mind. Better still, he followed him, interpreted him, sometimes copied him, to the point where Jean Cocteau described him as the "true Mr. Ingres" and he went through a period known as "Ingresque" (1917-1925). From 1917, Picasso began a return to figuration. At Cocteau's initiative, he works for the Ballets Russes and designs costumes and sets. This activity revived his decorative vein. From then on, he produced figurative works with an elegant drawing, described as "ingresque". The works that reveal an influence of ancient statuary have been qualified as "Pompeian". "If Ingres cultivated an almost exclusive passion for the work of Raphael, Picasso looked at and appropriated the art of many old masters. Of all of them, whether it be Cranach, El Greco, Velazquez, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, Steinlen, Manet, or Corot, to name only the greatest, Ingres is without question the one who most permanently influenced Picasso's work," explains Laurence Madeline, former curator of the Picasso Museum. "It is by making familiar the inventions of others that one learns, in art, to invent oneself", such is the first lesson of Ingres to Picasso, a lesson so well assimilated that the latter will never deny having visited his predecessors, he will even go so far as to confess "What is, in fact, a painter? It is a collector who wants to build up a collection by making himself the paintings he likes in others? So what plagiarism trial could be made to either of them? Apart from the fact that all painters have tried their hand at the manner of, Ingres and Picasso must be credited with enough talent and genius to have gone beyond mere observation and copying. If they both carefully followed in the footsteps of those they admired, it was "not with the aim of reusing them over and over again, but on the contrary with the intention of reinterpreting and enriching them in the manner of an inheritance that others, in their turn, will take on the task of making it bear fruit", argues Laurence Madeline. In this case, Picasso's heritage is rich. Ingres was a prolific draughtsman and a prolific painter, producing both large mythological works such as Jupiter and Thetis, and numerous portraits in graphite. The preparatory studies preserved in the Montauban museum, which Picasso visited several times and at length, were for him a striking discovery of the audacity of Ingres, who generally and above all represents the very incarnation of classicism and academicism. Of the 1,200 or so drawings that have been preserved, Picasso himself said
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