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Home , Edgar Degas, Museu Picasso, The Blue Room (Picasso), Woman Ironing

EXHIBITION ROOM 1

Early Years: and the Human Figure

Pablo The Old Fisherman Self-Portrait Studies of picturesque human types played a part Degas was living in when, at age twenty-three, in the education of nineteenth-century artists. he executed this penetrating self-appraisal. Wearing This work also reflects Picasso’s response to a white artist’s smock and a soft hat to shade his the dramatic realist style of the Spanish eyes from the sun, he presented himself as a masters seen some time earlier on his committed painter, the loose brushwork and bold first visit to the Prado. contrasts of color and tone reinforcing this image.

Pablo Picasso Edgar Degas The Old Fisherman Self-Portrait 1895 - Oil on canvas - 83 x 62,5 cm c.1857-1858 - Oil on paper mounted on canvas Museu de Montserrat, . 26 x 19 cm - Sterling and Francine , Gift of Joseph Maria Sala i Ardiz (N.R 200.502) Williamstown, Massachusetts (1955.544) © Succession , © Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, VEGAP, Madrid 2010 Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA Photo by Michael Agee)

Pablo Picasso Self-Portrait Edgar Degas Roman Beggar Woman Picasso was only fourteen or fifteen when he painted Painted in Rome during his years of study in Italy, this formal, bust-length self-portrait, but he already this superb canvas reveals the sophisticated skills showed as much concern with inner mood as outer that Degas had already acquired. Scenes of appearance. Precociously adept at absorbing picturesque or poignant local figures had a wide differing sources, he fused discreet allusions popularity and gave Degas the chance to represent to the great seventeenth-century Spanish a real — rather than an idealized — masters with a contemporary realist individual he had encountered. style indebted to photography.

Pablo Picasso Self-Portrait 1896 - Oil on canvas - 32,9 x 24 cm , Barcelona (MPB 110.076) © Succession Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Madrid 2010 EXHIBITION ROOM 2

Paris: Picasso Discovers Degas

Pablo Picasso Portrait of Sebastià Junyer i Vidal Edgar Degas In a Café (L') As he grew in confidence, Picasso tackled some Considered shocking when exhibited before 1900, of Degas’s most well-known works in a respectful Degas’s of two of his friends posed in a yet openly competitive manner. Echoing the scene café was regarded as an image of bohemian of drinkers in Degas’s In a Café (L’Absinthe), this dissolution. Known to Picasso either firsthand painting is bleaker in tone and more direct in or in reproduction, it prompted a series of large suggesting the dissolute life of one of and small variants in which the younger artist Picasso’s friends and his seemed to compete with his predecessor. female companion.

Pablo Picasso Edgar Degas Portrait of Sebastià Junyer i Vidal In a Café (L’Absinthe) 1903 - Oil on canvas - 126,4 x 94 cm 1875-1876 - Oil on canvas - 92 x 68,5 cm Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Musée d’Orsay, . Bequest of Count Isaac David E. Bright Bequest (M.67.25.18) de Camondo, 1911 (RF 1984) - Réunion des Musées © Succession Pablo Picasso, Nationaux / Art Resource, New York VEGAP, Madrid 2010 (photo Hervé Lewandowski) EXHIBITION ROOM 3 Women and their Private World

Pablo Picasso () Edgar Degas This vivid painting shows the apartment Picasso Degas made many of Parisian laundresses rented after his successful exhibition at Ambroise at work, showing both their drudgery and the bareness Vollard’s gallery in 1901 (some unsold pictures of their surroundings. In this superb example he and a poster by Toulouse-Lautrec are shown on emphasized the muscular effort of the woman’s the walls). Posing his in a zinc tub, Picasso task and noted the bowl of water used for dampening paid homage to Degas’s scenes, including clothes, both features that Picasso “borrowed” for his the lithograph shown nearby. own laundress scenes of 1901–1904.

Pablo Picasso Edgar Degas The Blue Room (The Tub) Woman Ironing 1901 - Oil on canvas - 50,5 x 61,6 cm 1876-1887 - Oil on canvas - 81,3 x 66 cm , Washington, of Art, Washington, D.C. Acquired 1927 (1554) D.C. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon © Succession Pablo Picasso, (1972.74.1) - © courtesy The Board of Trustees, VEGAP, Madrid 2010 , Washington, D.C. (photo Lee Ewing)

Pablo Picasso Woman Plaiting Her Hair Edgar Degas El pentinat In 1906, Picasso generally achieved his most Between about 1920 and 1936 this painting belonged monumental effects in his painting, working on a to Picasso’s friend Henri Matisse. The numerous signs grander scale and representing the body more of revision, bold draftsmanship, urgent brushwork, and forcefully than in his . The restricted fiery color scheme dramatize the ostensibly peaceful palette, inconsistent handling, and visible ritual of haircombing, providing a model for the alterations to this composition suggest the expressive simplifications and emotional tension influence of both the style and the imagery of Picasso’s late figure style. of Degas’s late .

Pablo Picasso Edgar Degas Woman Plaiting Her Hair Combing the Hair (La Coiffure) 1906 - Oil on canvas - 127 x 90,8 cm c. 1896 - Oil on canvas - 114,3 x 146,7 cm The Museum of , New York. The National Gallery, . Acquired 1937 Florence May Schoenborn Bequest, (NGL 4865) - © The National Gallery, London 1996 (826.1996) - © Succession Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Madrid 2010

Pablo Picasso Nu pentinant-se Picasso’s highly charged reinterpretation of the classical motif of Venus wringing her hair may reflect both personal troubles and anguish caused by the Korean War. But the hasty revisions to the composition, emphatically spontaneous technique, and dramatic use of monochrome are reminiscent of Degas’s style in late, unfinished works. EXHIBITION ROOM 4

The Ballet: Homage and Humor

Pablo Picasso The Dwarf Edgar Degas Jove ballarina de catorze anys Though his model was a vaudeville artist rather than First exhibited in Paris in 1881, this sculpture was a ballerina, Picasso has echoed the stance of originally made in wax and dressed in a tutu and a Degas’s Aged Fourteen in this defiantly wig of real hair. Known to Picasso by reputation, garish painting; note especially the position of the right its radicalism prompted him to paint young dancer-like leg and the arm held behind her back. Significantly, figures in Expressionistic and Cubist styles, and the height of the picture — like Picasso’s Standing apparently to consider a comparable nearby — is closely comparable with sculpture of his own. Degas’s sculpture.

Pablo Picasso Edgar Degas Little Dancer Aged Fourteen The Dwarf 1879-1881 - Bronze, with gauze tutu and silk 1901 - Oil on cardboard - 105 x 60 x 0,4 cm ribbon, on wooden base - height 99 cm - Sterling Museu Picasso, Barcelona (MPB 4.274) and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, © Succession Pablo Picasso, Massachusetts (1955.45) - © Sterling and Francine VEGAP, Madrid 2010 Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA (Photo by Michael Agee)

Pablo Picasso Yellow Nude Edgar Degas Dancers in the Classroom Painted as his celebrated canvas Les Demoiselles The ballerinas in this painting are not involved in a d’Avignon was approaching completion, Picasso’s formal class, but stretch themselves at the barre or Yellow Nude combines the sexuality of his brothel rest from their exertions. Degas made many hundreds scene with the angularity of African sculpture. The of studies of such figures, often in the form of drawings, figure’s distinctive pose, with right leg forward and apparently inspiring Picasso to explore the arms behind the back, also seems to recall Degas’s same theme in the 1920s. Little Dancer Aged Fourteen.

Pablo Picasso Edgar Degas Yellow Nude Dancers in the Classroom 1907 - Watercolor, gouache, and India ink on paper c. 1880 - Oil on canvas - 39,4 x 88,4 cm 59,8 x 39,5 cm - Gretchen and John Berggruen, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, San Francisco - © Succession Pablo Picasso, Williamstown, Massachusetts (1955.562 VEGAP, Madrid 2010 © Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA (Photo by Michael Agee) EXHIBITION ROOM 5

Picasso’s Bather-Dancers

Pablo Picasso Running Woman Edgar Degas Grand Arabesque, Second Time The most exuberant of Picasso’s small Degas’s ballerina is less unconventional but more from this period, Running Woman might almost emphatically projected in three dimensions. be a drawing in space. Like many such works, Picasso’s figure was made in plaster and later cast in bronze.

Pablo Picasso Edgar Degas Running Woman Grand Arabesque, Second Time 1931-1932 - Plaster and wood - height 52 cm c. 1880’s - Bronze - height 48,2 cm Private collection - © Succession Pablo Picasso, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, VEGAP, Madrid 2010 Massachusetts (1955.47) - © Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA (Photo by Michael Agee) EXHIBITION ROOM 6

Brothel Scenes: the Artist as Voyeur

Pablo Picasso The Offering Edgar Degas Self-Portrait Made in the wake of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon When or how Picasso acquired this photograph is (1907), Picasso’s masterpiece on the theme of unknown, but it was certainly on display in his studio prostitution, this gouache evokes the power of in Cannes in 1958-1959, when he formed his collection women over men. The composition recalls of monotypes by Degas. Alterations to the photograph, Degas’s monotype (shown in facsimile in which originally included Degas’s housekeeper, were the case) of prostitutes offering bouquets probably made with a view to publication before to their madame on her name day. Picasso obtained it.

Pablo Picasso Edgar Degas The offering1908 - gouache sobre cartón con 1908 Self-Portrait Gouache on cardboard paper with white primer c. 1895 - Original print with modifications. Inscribed 30,6 x 30,6 cm - Museu Picasso, Barcelona on the reverse in Picasso’s hand ‘Portrait P.H. / de E. (MPB 112.761) - © Succession Pablo Picasso, Degas’ - 18,2 x 24,2 cm - Private collection. Courtesy VEGAP, Madrid 2010 Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte

Pablo Picasso Degas among the Prostitutes. Edgar Degas Resting on the Bed First Appearance of Degas Picasso owned a copy of ’s edition This is the first in the suite of thirty-nine etchings of La Maison Tellier and knew this monotype from to depict Degas. Echoes of his monotypes and the reproduction there. In 1958 he purchased one of Picasso’s own brothel painting Les Demoiselles with very similar voyeuristic iconography. These d’Avignon (1907) are accompanied by a witty monotypes inspired the etching shown nearby, allusion to Degas’s notorious sculpture Little in which an anxious Degas has been lured Dancer Aged Fourteen in the hands-behind-the-back onto the grinning prostitutes’s bed. pose struck by both Degas and the prostitute facing him.

Pablo Picasso Edgar Degas Degas among the Prostitutes. Resting on the Bed First Appearance of Degas c. 1876-1877 - Monotype - 12,1 x 15,9 cm 11 march 1971 - Etching on copper printed on paper Private collection, Switzerland (Artist proof I/XV) - 36,5 x 49 cm - Museu Picasso, Barcelona (MPB 112.231) - © Succession Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Madrid 2010