Sixty Works by Modern Masters - Flipbook - Page 95
Edouard Manet, Le Déjeuner sûr l'herbe, oil on canvas, 1862-63
Pablo Picasso
"Bad artists copy. Good artists steal."
Pablo Picasso
Spanish, 1881 - 1973
Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe, 1959
Coloured wax crayons, brush and black ink on panel
14 x 18 inches / 35.5 x 45.7 cm
Dedicated and dated across the upper edge: 11.8.59 Pour mon ami Norman Granz, Picasso, 19.10.69
Picasso was deeply moved by
Edouard Manet’s original version
of the Déjeuner sur l’Herbe at the
Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris in
1932. He wrote that ‘when I see [the
painting] I tell myself there is pain
ahead.’ The ‘pain’ he foresaw was
to manifest itself in a vast series of
interpretations of Manet’s subject,
executed between 1959 and 1962,
in which Picasso set out to unravel
and understand the techniques,
composition and symbolism
employed by his predecessor. It is
also possible that the artist repeated
Manet’s subject to highlight his
sympathies with the 1960s youth
culture of sexual liberation in the
West.
The present work is a vivid and
highly-resolved example from the
series. Its wax crayon medium,
enlivened by bold dashes of ink,
has allowed a freedom of execution
that evokes Manet’s painterly
brushstrokes.
94
Provenance
Norman Granz, Geneva, October 19, 1969 (a gift from the artist)
Private collection, New York
Literature
Douglas Cooper, Pablo Picasso, Les Déjeuners, Paris, 1962, pl. 10, illustrated
(photographed prior to the dedication)
Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, oeuvres de 1959 à 1961, vol. XIX, Paris,
1968, no. 39, illustrated p. 9
Alan Wofsy, The Picasso Project, Picasso’s Paintings, Watercolours, Drawings
and Sculpture. The Fifties II, 1956-1959, San Francisco, 2000, no. 59-269,
illustrated p. 354
Enrique Mallen (ed.), Online Picasso Project, Sam Houston State University,
1955-60, no. 59-357, (accessed 2011)