Picasso loved animals - perhaps even more so than humans - and he held goats in particularly high regard. He had multiple pet goats, including one that he won in a local village lottery on the Côte d'Azur, and another that he was lovingly gifted by his wife Jaqueline Roque in the 1950s. The latter was promptly named Esmerelda and she lived together with Picasso and Roque inside their home, sleeping just outside Picasso’s bedroom door. When discussing the close relationship with his four-legged friend, Picasso joked: “but you know, she’s afraid of the dark and if she wakes up and she doesn’t know where I am, she gets frightened, so I keep her close by.”
David Douglas Duncan, Picasso, Jaqueline and children on the steps of Villa La Californie, with Lump the dog and Cabra the goat, 1958. From Lot 11, Pablo Picasso: Paper and Clay, 6 June 2024 Tête de chèvre en profil of 1952 is an enchanting ceramic work showcasing the head of a goat surrounded by blue and yellow flowers, as if in a garden. Against a black background, the intricate detail of the facial structure depicted in profile through geometric shapes, painterly spots and swathes of white glaze presents a tender portrait of one of Picasso’s favourite mammalian mates.
Goats in various forms proliferated Picasso’s work across his oeuvre; in sculpture, ceramic, print and paint, varying from mimetic representation to playful abstractions in his later years. An unwavering source of inspiration, Picasso combined his passion for antiquity with the goat motif, and it often emerges as a faun in his artwork inspired by ancient mythology. Thus, through both the traditional medium of clay – harking back to the ancient Greeks who were pioneers of pottery – Picasso probed classical sources in order to explore the tension between hunter and hunted, man and beast, friend or foe. Unlike his brutish Minotaur – often thought to represent the artist’s and by extension, mankind’s emotional polarities – Picasso’s goats and fauns appear in cheerful, colourful variations. Finding an unusual affinity with the goat’s unruly behaviour, Tête de chèvre en profil is a light-hearted representation of one of Picasso’s closest and most private relationships: that with his favourite animal, the goat.
Literature
Alain Ramié 151
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.
14
Tête de chèvre en profil (Goat's Head in Profile) (A.R. 151)
1952
White earthenware round dish painted in colours with partial brushed glaze.
42.5 cm (16 3/4 in.) diameter
From the edition of 100, with the Madoura Plein Feu and Empreinte Originale de Picasso pottery stamps on the reverse.
Estimate
£10,000 - 15,000 ‡♠
Sold for £25,400
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Pablo Picasso: Paper and Clay
London Auction 6 June 2024
27
This lot is no longer available.
