NEW YORK, NY.- This November,
Christie’s New York will offer Pablo Picasso’s Femme accroupie en costume turc (Jacqueline), 1955 (estimate: $20 million - $30 million), a masterpiece that has remained in a private and important collection of a single family for three generations, since 1957 – just two years after its creation. The work was originally purchased by a collector who developed personal relationships with leading contemporary artists starting in the 1950s. The collection includes works by Picasso, Joan Miro, Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, Georges Braque and Max Ernst, among others, which were acquired either directly from the artists or through the preeminent gallerists of the time such as Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler and Galerie Maeght, and subsequently kept in the same family for three generations.
Picasso’s powerful portrait depicts Jacqueline Roque, the final great love and muse of the artist’s life. It is among the most radical depictions from an important series of eleven seated portraits of Jacqueline that developed out of Picasso’s landmark series, Les femmes d’Alger (based on the eponymous Delacroix masterpiece), considered his single greatest achievement after World War II. Here Picasso honed in on the frontal, seated figure that emerged in the culminating Femme d’Alger works. Clearly in awe of his striking new muse, he has transformed her into a majestically seated odalisque, rendered in an elaborate combination of lines, patterns, and jewel-like color. In a nod to his friend and rival Henri Matisse, who had passed away just one year prior in 1954, Picasso approaches the canvas with a distinctly Matissean style, employing costume and decoration as a way of evoking the seductive fantasy of Orientalism, and using pattern as a way to experiment with pictorial construction.
Vanessa Fusco, Senior Specialist and Co-Head of 20th Century Art Evening Sale comments, The Stella Collection was assembled by a passionate and knowledgeable collector, whose relationship with the artists and their primary dealers of the time meant that he was able to acquire exceptional examples of their work. Leading the collection is Picasso’s Femme accroupie en costume turc (Jacqueline), a strikingly modern treatment of the seated figure developed out of the artist’s seminal series Les femmes d’Alger, in dialogue with Delacroix. The painting was lent by the family to the artist’s seminal 1957 exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in New York on the occasion of Picasso’s 75th birthday, and it is an honor to bring it back to into the public realm so many decades later.
Femme accroupie en costume turc (Jacqueline) was painted in Picasso’s new home, the spacious nineteenth-century villa known as La Californie, which overlooked Cannes. At this time, Picasso’s fame was such that he had could not move through Paris without drawing crowds. Picasso first met Jacqueline in 1952. At the time, he was still living with Françoise Gilot; Jacqueline was working as a sales assistant at a ceramics studio at which he would frequently work. By 1954, Picasso’s relationship with Françoise had ended and the two were a couple. They would remain together until the artist’s death at age 91.
Additional Collection Highlights:
On offer from the same collection is Joan Miro’s Le serpent glisse vers l’azur parsemé des flèches, 1954 (estimate: $1,000,000-1,500,000) in the Impressionist & Modern Art Day Sale and Marc Chagall’s Autoportrait, 1940 (estimate: $500,000-700,000), a highlight of the Impressionist and Modern Works on Paper Sale. Both works are borne from a direct relationship with the artists. In particular, the collector’s close friendship with Chagall sparked his involvement in arranging for the artist’s contribution to Lincoln Center in New York and to the Vatican in Rome, and he played a highly active role in establishing the Chagall museum in Nice, France.
