Le Peintre

画家

Year: 1967
Inscription: Signed and dated upper left: “Picasso; 21.2.67”. Dated and numbered on the stretcher: “21.2.67; I”
Medium: Oil on original canvas
Dimensions: 100 × 81 cm
Frame: Seventeenth-century Italian carved and gilded wood frame

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Pablo Picasso《Le Peintre》1967 Oil on original canvas 100 × 81 cm　Framed — Framed

Pablo Picasso《Le Peintre》1967 Oil on original canvas 100 × 81 cm　Verso — Verso

Pablo Picasso《Le Peintre》1967 Oil on original canvas 100 × 81 cm　Installation view — Installation view

Certificate of Authenticity

Certificate of authenticity issued by the Comité Picasso (Picasso Administration), signed by Paloma Ruiz-Picasso and Diana Widmaier-Ruiz-Picasso and dated 19 November 2024 (examined by the committee on 15 November 2024, registration no. 0201).

Provenance

Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris (label)
Galerie Tamenaga (label)
Pierre & Jeanine Consten Collection
SVV Farrando, sale of May 2023

Exhibited

Galerie Tamenaga (label on the verso)
10th Exposition Internationale du Figuratif, Tokyo (Mitsukoshi, Nihonbashi) and Osaka (Daimaru, Shinsaibashi), 1971

Literature

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso Vol. 25 – Œuvres de 1965 et 1967, Éditions « Cahiers d'art », Paris, 1972, no. 281 (illustrated in black and white, pl. 126)
Catalog Exposition Internationale du Figuratif, exhibition catalogue, 1971 (illustrated in color)
Alan Wofsy, The Picasso Project: Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture — The Sixties II, 1964–1967, Enlarged Second Edition, San Francisco, 2023, p. 302, no. 67-075

About This Work

Authenticated and recorded in the literature

A certificate of authenticity signed by Paloma Ruiz-Picasso and Diana Widmaier-Ruiz-Picasso, dated 19 November 2024. The painting is recorded in Zervos's catalogue raisonné, in Wofsy's The Picasso Project, and in the catalogue of the 1971 Exposition Internationale du Figuratif.

Signed and dated

This oil, dated 21 February 1967, is signed “Picasso” at the upper left.

Provenance — Galerie Louise Leiris

The painting was handled by Galerie Louise Leiris in Paris. Led by Louise Leiris, niece of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, the gallery was among the dealers Picasso trusted most, and played a major part in bringing his late paintings before the public.

The musketeer series

Inspired by his reading of Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers in 1966, the musketeer became one of Picasso's most emblematic motifs. Valiant and yet contemplative, these cavaliers allowed him to revisit the spirit of Rembrandt and Velázquez while claiming a place of his own among the old masters of painting.

A Cubist self-portrait — the declaration of a late genius

In The Painter, the musketeer stands as a projection of Picasso himself, painter and swordsman bound into one. The fragmented lines and overlapping viewpoints recall the vocabulary of Cubism, here transformed into the assured, fully ripened expression of a creative power beyond time.

Reference

On the musketeer series and works of the same period, drawn from published records.

Auction results for the musketeer series

Mousquetaire à la pipe II, 1968, oil and Ripolin on canvas, 146 × 96.5 cm — Christie's New York, 11 November 2021, USD 34,710,000
Mousquetaire à la pipe, 1969, oil on canvas, 195 × 130 cm — Sotheby's New York, 6 November 2013, USD 30,965,000
Buste de mousquetaire à la pipe, 1967, oil and Ripolin on canvas, 100 × 80.5 cm — Sotheby's New York, 17 May 2022, USD 8,482,400

Works of the same period in museum collections

Standing Nude and Seated Musketeer, 1967, oil on canvas, 162 × 129.5 cm — The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Young Painter, 1972, oil on canvas, 91 × 72.5 cm — Musée national Picasso, Paris

Highest auction results for paintings

Les Femmes d'Alger (Version “O”), 1955, 114 × 146.5 cm — Christie's New York, 11 May 2015, USD 179,365,000
Femme à la montre, 1932, 130 × 97 cm — Sotheby's New York, 8 November 2023, USD 139,363,500