She had sat by the window one day in October 1932, offering her green and red dress and the length of her neck to the autumnal bites of the Norman sun.
Marie-Thérèse Walter was 22 when Pablo Picasso immortalized her - once again - in his Château de Boisgeloup.
Today, the imposing painting is entitled
Woman Seated Near a Window
.
Sold in London in 2013 for $ 45 million, the painting will soon join a new auction room, this time in New York: presented at Christie's during an auction organized on May 11,
Picasso's
Seated Woman
is now estimated at $ 55 million.
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The portrait, an oil on canvas 146 x 114 cm, represents the muse and lover of the painter, whom Picasso had met in 1927 in Paris.
17-year-old Marie-Thérèse Walter, blonde and stiff, immediately exerted a powerful fascination on the 45-year-old Spanish artist, then married to the Russian dancer Olga Khokhlova.
This forbidden connection inspired Picasso with a long series of nudes and sensual portraits of his companion, which he produced in a creative frenzy between 1927 and 1935, with a peak of dense and fruitful exaltation reached in 1932. It was in this “
erotic year
”, as the exhibition organized in 2017-2018 by the Picasso Museum and the Tate Modern called it, the creation of the
Woman Seated Near a Window.
A hymn to his muse
More modest than the other paintings of the time, the portrait is also less enigmatic by showing in a direct relation the fascination and the mutual power that the artist and his subject maintain.
Marie-Thérèse Walter thus sits confidently in front of her subjugated lover, an omniscient - almost divine - gaze anchored on him.
“
Picasso captured his voluptuous forms with undulating planes of bright, flat colors - a painted hymn to body worship - while his face is drawn in the manner of an embodiment of classical idealism, in the same formal language than his sculpted representations
, ”Christie's described of the work.
Identity photograph of Marie-Thérèse Walter from the 1930s. PVDE / Bridgeman images
Presented for sale alongside a
Waterloo Bridge by
Monet estimated at $ 35 million, as well as works by Andy Warhol, Giacometti and Robert Delauney, the portrait of Marie-Thérèse Walter painted by Picasso will definitely be well surrounded in New York, during the upcoming sale.
“
As one of the most innovative and influential artists of the twentieth century, it is only fitting that this exceptional painting is leading the first evening sale of art in the new format twentieth
”, said said in a statement the head at Christie's of the art department of the twentieth century, Vanessa Fusco.
Painted in the middle of autumn, the portrait attests to Picasso's most brilliant creative impulses towards his French muse from whom he began to turn away two years later, shortly after the birth of their daughter Maya and his meeting with the surrealist photographer Dora Maar.
Father of four children, married twice and womanizer, Pablo Picasso has never hidden his appetite for women who infused, from start to finish, all of his work.
This character trait has in part been reassessed in recent years, in the light of the #MeToo movement.
“
Marie-Thérèse used the word rape.
Françoise (Gilot) had a cheek pierced by a lit Gallic girl and let's not talk about the sadomaso tragedy with Dora Maar.
Marie-Thérèse and Jacqueline (Roque) committed suicide.
Maya, one of his daughters, and Marina, one of his granddaughters, have said things about their embarrassment experienced as children…
”,
Sophie Chauveau
reminded
Figaro
in 2018
, after the publication of her two-volume biography of Picasso.
To read also: "While studying Picasso, I discovered the monster"
After a very difficult year 2020 for the art market, shaken up by the global Covid-19 pandemic, the cancellation of major international meetings and by several cases, experts in the field are hopeful that these highs will estimates are a sign of restored confidence and a resumption of the normal course of business.
Barring any surprise, the
Seated Woman
should therefore meet all sales expectations.