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"All of the paintings are of Jacqueline […] she has within her that wonderful power on which the painter feeds."
— Hélène Parmelin
In 1954, Picasso met his muse and last companion Jacqueline Roque, signalling the start of a renewed and robust engagement with the art of the past that would characterise his much-celebrated final period. Immersing himself in an exhaustive sequence of variations of iconic masterpieces by Delacroix, Velázquez and Manet, Picasso also renewed his focus on certain themes and motifs that had preoccupied the great masters before him, most notably that of the relationship of artist and model. Including an avatar of the artist himself alongside his sleeping muse, Nu couché et musicien presents a remarkably contemporary interpretation of this historic theme.
Nudes, Musicians and Musketeers
Pablo Picasso, The Artist and his Model, 1964Collection of Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York
From the roughly hewn figures that informed Picasso’s earliest experiments with Cubistic modelling through to the voluptuous sensuality of Marie Thérèse’s biomorphic reimagining and beyond, the reclining or sleeping nude proved to be of central importance to Picasso, his radical stylistic shifts announced primarily through his treatment of the female form. Reflecting increasingly on his own mortality and his artistic legacy in these later years, the complex and compelling relationship between artist and model, configured in the present work as the more lyrical musician and nude motif, allowed Picasso to more fully explore themes of ageing, sexuality and the art of creation itself; to ‘re-examine his relationship with the world, as embodied in the model’i.
Édouard Manet, Déjeuner sur l’herbe, 1863Collection of Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Executed in the spring of 1967, after Picasso and Jacqueline had married and taken up residence at Notre Dame de Vie above the small town of Mougins, Nu couché et musicien represents a particularly lively engagement with these ideas, its musical theme emphasising the bucolic sensuality that permeates Picasso’s work from this period. Despite the idyllic overtones however, the work vibrates with an explosive erotic energy, captured in the taut contrast between the rigidly upright self-possession of the musician and the rapid, broken brushstrokes charging the space between the man and the open curves of his sleeping muse.
With cool harmonies of tinted whites, greys, brown-blacks and jade greens, the present work immediately recalls the verdant palette used across Picasso’s masterful Déjeuner sur l’herbe, d’après Manet series, created in response to Manet’s scandalous 1863 canvas. The musical theme also draws on Titan’s Le Concert Champêtre. A clear influence on Manet’s later canvas, in establishing this artistic lineage, Picasso confidently positions himself in direct relation to these European masters.
Pablo Picasso, Déjeuner sur l’herbe, d’après Manet, 1961Collection of Musée Picasso, Paris
Odalisques and Old Masters
Purchasing the impressive Château de Vauvenargues in 1958, Picasso found himself reflecting more pointedly on history, and of his place within it. Nestled in the foothills of the imposing Montagne Sainte-Victoire, the rich medieval history of the château took on a more sharply defined aspect for Picasso, placing him in a direct dialogue with Cézanne and allowing him to think more philosophically about his relationship to the Old Masters, and of his own artistic legacy:"I have a feeling that Delacroix, Giotto, Tintoretto, El Greco, and the rest, as well as all the modern painters, the good and the bad, the abstract and the non-abstract, are all standing behind me watching me at work."
— Pablo Picasso
In its compositional and thematic arrangement, Nu et musicien immediately evokes Ingres and his 1839 masterpiece L’Odalisque à l’esclave, the exaggerated twist of the languorous nude’s torso marvellously reimagined in his 1967 canvas.
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, L’Odalisque à l’esclave, 1839Collection of Fogg Art Museum, Harvard, Massachusetts
The sudden death of Henri Matisse in 1954 also impacted directly on Picasso’s thinking with regards to the reclining nude and Orientalist fantasy. Wary to employ the pictorial device while Matisse was alive, after his death Picasso took it over in tribute, claiming ‘[w]hen Matisse died, he left his odalisques to me as a legacy'ii. The following month Picasso commenced his masterful Women of Algiers series, blending compositional and thematic elements from Delacroix’s 1834 Femmes d’Algiers dans leur appartement with a sense of Matisse’s decorative patterning and bold use of colour, to which certain compositional elements of the present work can be directly related.
Henri Matisse, Nu bleu, Souvenir de Biskra, 1907
Collection of Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland
Nevertheless, despite the incredible richness and scope of these allusions, the subject of Nu couché et musicien remains Picasso himself, the historical allusion merely a ‘vehicle, a point of focus just as Jacqueline provided a point of focus rather than the subject in the many portraits of her done from 1954 until the artist’s last paintings in 1972’iii.
Pablo Picasso, Les Femmes d’Alger (Version “O”), 1955
As Jean-Louis Andral has described, the extraordinary pose of the nude in the present work ‘appears, paradoxically, to allow both the sleeping woman and the guitarist to view the former’s anatomy from both sides’iv ensuring that she – like Jacqueline herself – was always turned towards the artist. More than erotic conquest, or the final flare of virility, the musician and artist motif allowed Picasso to think directly about his artistic legacy, a point that is subtly made but significantly felt when we notice that the impossibly contorted form of sleeping nude has been directly informed by the guitar in the musician’s hands.
Picasso and JaquelinePhotograph by David Douglas Duncan
i Jonathan Feineberg, ‘The Sensual Garden of Picasso’s Late Work’, in exh. cat. Picasso & Jacqueline: The Evolution of Style, Pace Gallery, New York, 31 October 2014 – 10 January 2015, p. 12.
ii Pablo Picasso, quoted in Marie-Laure Bernadac, ‘Picasso 1953 – 1972: Painting as a Model’, in exh. cat., Late Picasso: Paintings, Sculpture, Drawings, Prints 195 – 1972, Tate Gallery, London, 1988, pp. 55 – 56
iii Jonathan Feinberg, ‘The Sensual Garden of Picasso’s Late Work’, in exh. cat. Picasso & Jacqueline: The Evolution of Style, Pace Gallery, New York, 31 October 2014 – 10 January 2015, p. 12
ivJean-Louis Andral, ‘Varaition X: Air Varié’, Picasso in the Nahmad Collection, Paris, 2013, p. 308
Provenance
Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris
Galerie Beyeler, Basel (acquired from the above in May 1968)
Private Collection, Switzerland (acquired from the above in July 1968)
Galerie Beyeler, Basel (acquired from the above in November 1975)
Private Collection, France (acquired from the above in August 1985)
Christie's, London, 9 December 1998, lot 703
Private Collection (acquired at the above sale)
Christie's, New York, 14 May 2019, lot 389
Acquired at the above sale by the present ownerExhibited
Madrid, Fundación Juan March; Barcelona, Museu Picasso, Picasso , 23 September 1977 - January 1978, no. 30 (illustrated)
Basel, Galerie Beyeler, Picasso: A Centennial Selection, April - July 1981, no. 59, p. 119 (illustrated, p. 92, titled as Musicien et femme couchée)
Vienna Town Hall, Pablo Picasso: Bilder, zeichnungen, plastiken, November 1981 - January 1982, no. 72 (illustrated)Literature
Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Oeuvres de 1965 à 1967, vol. XXV, Paris, 1972, no. 314, pl. 137 (illustrated)
Artist Biography
Pablo Picasso
Spanish • 1881 - 1973
One of the most dominant and influential artists of the 20th century, Pablo Picasso was a master of endless reinvention. While significantly contributing to the movements of Surrealism, Neoclassicism and Expressionism, he is best known for pioneering the groundbreaking movement of Cubism alongside fellow artist Georges Braque in the 1910s. In his practice, he drew on African and Iberian visual culture as well as the developments in the fast-changing world around him.
Throughout his long and prolific career, the Spanish-born artist consistently pushed the boundaries of art to new extremes. Picasso's oeuvre is famously characterized by a radical diversity of styles, ranging from his early forays in Cubism to his Classical Period and his later more gestural expressionist work, and a diverse array of media including printmaking, drawing, ceramics and sculpture as well as theater sets and costumes designs.
Property from an Important Collection
Ο◆✱29
Nu couché et musicien
signed 'Picasso' lower left; further numbered and dated '24.3.67. I' on the reverse and dated '24.3.67' on the stretcher
oil and Ripolin on canvas
50 x 61 cm. (19 5/8 x 24 in.)
Painted on 24 March 1967.
Estimate
HK$9,000,000 - 14,000,000
€951,000-1,480,000
$1,150,000-1,790,000
Sold for HK$11,745,000
Charlotte Raybaud
Head of Evening Sale, 20th Century & Contemporary Art
CharlotteRaybaud@phillips.com
20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale in Association with Poly Auction
Hong Kong Auction 8 June 2021
1
Salman Toor
Girl with Driver
Estimate HK$1,200,000 - 2,200,000
Sold for HK$6,905,000
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2
Emily Mae Smith
Broom Life
Estimate HK$400,000 - 600,000
Sold for HK$12,350,000
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3
Loie Hollowell
First Contact
Estimate HK$1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Sold for HK$10,898,000
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4
Tschabalala Self
KLK
Estimate HK$1,500,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for HK$3,150,000
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5
Amoako Boafo
Gaze I
Estimate HK$600,000 - 800,000
Sold for HK$2,772,000
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6
Joel Mesler
Untitled (Tony Chang Goes to Hollywood)
Estimate HK$400,000 - 600,000
Sold for HK$1,638,000
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7
Jadé Fadojutimi
Concealment: An essential generated by the lack of shade
Estimate HK$600,000 - 800,000
Sold for HK$5,670,000
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8
Kudzanai-Violet Hwami
The Egg
Estimate HK$800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for HK$1,764,000
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9
This lot is no longer available.
10
Matthew Wong
Figure in a Night Landscape
Estimate HK$6,000,000 - 8,000,000
Sold for HK$36,550,000
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11
Bernard Frize
Toky
Estimate HK$1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for HK$2,646,000
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12
Lucas Arruda
Untitled from the series Deserto-Modelo
Estimate HK$1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for HK$3,213,000
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13
Gerhard Richter
Abstraktes Bild (940-7)
Estimate HK$75,000,000 - 95,000,000
Sold for HK$95,100,000
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14
Park Seo-Bo
Ecriture No. 15
Estimate HK$4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for HK$8,115,000
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15
Zhou Chunya
Peach Blossom
Estimate HK$3,800,000 - 5,800,000
Sold for HK$7,268,000
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16
Zhang Xiaogang
Family Portrait No. 13
Estimate HK$8,000,000 - 12,000,000
Sold for HK$10,535,000
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17
Yoshitomo Nara
Missing in Action
Estimate On Request
Sold for HK$123,725,000
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18
Yoshitomo Nara
Missing in Action 2
Estimate HK$2,500,000 - 3,500,000
Sold for HK$7,026,000
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19
Yoshitomo Nara
Shallow Puddles Part 2
Estimate HK$4,800,000 - 6,500,000
Sold for HK$9,325,000
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20
Martin Wong
Son of Sam Sleeps
Estimate HK$2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Sold for HK$2,772,000
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21
Theaster Gates
Dirty Red
Estimate HK$4,600,000 - 6,200,000
Sold for HK$5,922,000
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22
Banksy
Laugh Now Panel A
Estimate HK$22,000,000 - 32,000,000
Sold for HK$24,450,000
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23
Andy Warhol
Dollar Sign
Estimate HK$3,500,000 - 5,500,000
Sold for HK$6,542,000
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24
Ed Ruscha
1981 - Future
Estimate HK$4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for HK$4,410,000
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25
Yayoi Kusama
Nets Obsession
Estimate HK$10,000,000 - 15,000,000
Sold for HK$25,660,000
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26
Cecily Brown
The End
Estimate HK$4,500,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for HK$8,599,000
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27
Eddie Martinez
Christmas in July
Estimate HK$3,500,000 - 4,500,000
Sold for HK$5,922,000
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28
George Condo
Sketches of Jean Louis
Estimate HK$10,000,000 - 15,000,000
Sold for HK$13,560,000
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29
Pablo Picasso
Nu couché et musicien
Estimate HK$9,000,000 - 14,000,000
Sold for HK$11,745,000
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30
This lot is no longer available.
31
Chu Teh-Chun
Nuances de l'aube
Estimate HK$2,800,000 - 3,800,000
Sold for HK$5,670,000
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32
Hans Hartung
T1989-U40
Estimate HK$2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Sold for HK$4,284,000
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33
Liu Wei
Purple Air 5
Estimate HK$1,200,000 - 2,200,000
Sold for HK$1,764,000
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34
KAWS
TOGETHER
Estimate HK$7,000,000 - 9,000,000
Sold for HK$10,656,000
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35
Andy Warhol
Lifesavers
Estimate HK$3,000,000 - 4,000,000
Sold for HK$6,174,000
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36
Jordan Wolfson
Untitled
Estimate HK$800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for HK$2,016,000
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37
Kohei Nawa
PixCell-Deer #40
Estimate HK$1,400,000 - 2,800,000
Sold for HK$3,024,000
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