On March 23, Christie’s will offer two Picasso paintings at its in the 20th Century Art Evening Sale as its main lot. Femme nue couchée au collier (Marie-Thérèse) was painted on 18 June 1931. The painting is one of the colorful, love-filled paeans that Pablo Picasso painted of Marie-Thérèse Walter in the first half of this seminal year. The estimated price of the painting is £9,000,000-15,000,000.
The other painting, titled Femme assise dans un fauteuil noir (Jacqueline), was painted after 30 years. The painting depicts his wife Jacqueline. This portrait is estimated to fetch £6,000,000-9,000,000.
1932 was widely regarded as one of the greatest years of Picasso’s career. During this time, Marie-Thérèse truly influenced Picasso’s art. He began an extraordinarily bold and euphoric series of erotically charged depictions of his new muse that saw the artist reach a peak of his painterly production. . Femme nue couchée au collier (Marie-Thérèse) presents a particularly intimate view of Marie-Thérèse. The portrait shows the subject as she is unaware of her lover’s gaze and her eyes are closed as such that she is in reverie. she reclines in front of a richly-coloured Baroque-style backdrop in the somnolent state that would become her pictorial signature. This portrait is one of the finest of an important series of intimate, tender depictions of Marie-Thérèse that contrast with the larger scale portraits of her that Picasso was painting concurrently throughout the spring and summer of this seminal year.
In Femme assise dans un fauteuil noir (Jacqueline) (1962), the artist shows his final muse and wife, Jaqueline Picasso. She was Renowned for her raven coloured hair, dark, almond shaped eyes and striking, aquiline profile. She ruled the last two decades of the artist’s works. . Femme assise dans un fauteuil noir (Jacqueline) belongs to a series of compelling seated portraits of Jacqueline that he began in November 1962 and continued for the rest of the year.
The motif of a woman seated in an armchair was one of the artist’s abiding subjects, appearing time and time again throughout the his career. In Femme assise dans un fauteuil noir (Jacqueline), she unquestionably commands the scene, her image invested with a sense of power and authority. With her hands resting boldly upon the throne-like chair, her regally poised head and all-seeing eyes demonstrate the artist’s thrall to his new wife.