Pablo Picasso 1881 - 1973 LA LECTURE

Pablo Picasso
1881 - 1973
LA LECTURE
signed Picasso (upper right); inscribed 11 decembre M.CM.XXXII. on the reverse
oil on panel 65.5 by 51cm. 25 3/4 by 20 1/8 in. Painted in January 1932.
ESTIMATE 12,000,000 - 18,000,000 GBP
Lot Sold. Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium: 25,241,250 GBP

PROVENANCE
(possibly) Paul Rosenberg &Co., Paris
Valentine Dudensing Gallery, New York (acquired by 1940)
Keith Warner, Fort Lauderdale &New York
Paul Rosenberg &Co., New York (acquired from the estate of the above in 1963)
Mr &Mrs David Lloyd Kreeger, Washington, D.C. (acquired from the above in January
1964)
Mr &Mrs James W. Alsdorf, Chicago (acquired by 1980)
Sale: Habsburg, Feldman, New York, 8th May 1989, lot 57
Private Collection
Acquired by the present owner in 1996

EXHIBITION
Paris, Galerie Georges Petit &Zurich, Kunsthaus, Exposition Picasso, 1932, no. 197 (in
Paris); no. 202a (in Zurich) (as dating from 1931 and titled La Lecture interrompue)
New York, Valentine Dudensing Gallery, Three Spaniards: Gris, Miró, Picasso, 1940
Los Angeles, County Museum of History, Science and Art (on loan 1945-46)
Washington, D.C., Corcoran Gallery &Baltimore, Museum of Art, Selections from the
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. David Lloyd Kreeger, 1965, no. 21, illustrated in the
catalogue New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Pablo Picasso: A Retrospective, 1980,
illustrated in the catalogue (titled The Dream (Reading) and as dating from January
1932)

LITERATURE
P. Gréguen, 'Picasso: Primitif Cérébral', in Cahiers d'Art, Paris, 1932, illustrated p. 114
J.L., 'Exhibitions of the Week: Three Spanish Painters, Gris, Miró, Picasso', in Art
News, New York, 6th April 1940, illustrated p. 27
Paul Eluard, Pablo Picasso, Geneva &Paris, 1944, illustrated pl. 168 (titled Femme
endormie and as dating from 1932)
Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, œuvres de 1926 à 1932, Paris, 1955, vol. 7, no. 363,
illustrated pl. 158 (with incorrect medium and measurements, and as dating from
January 1932)
Henri Dorra, The Collection of Mr. and Mrs. David Lloyd Kreeger, Washington, D.C.,
1970, illustrated p. 77
Jean Leymarie, Picasso: Métamorphoses et unité, Geneva, 1971, illustrated p. 78 (as
dating from January 1932)
Margy P. Sharpe, The Collection of Mr. &Mrs. David Lloyd Kreeger, Richmond, 1976,
illustrated in colour p. 206 (titled La Lecture interrompue and as dating from 1932)
The Picasso Project, Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture.
Surrealism, 1930-1936, San Francisco, 1997, no. 32-002, illustrated p. 86 (with
incorrect medium and as dating from January 1932)
Picasso Harlequin, 1917-1937 (exhibition catalogue), Complesso del Vittoriano, Rome,
2008-09, mentioned p. 204 (with incorrect medium and measurements)
Picasso by Picasso, His First Museum Exhibition 1932 (exhibition catalogue),
Kunsthaus, Zurich, 2010-11, illustrated in a photograph of the 1932 Galerie Georges
Petit exhibition p. 98; illustrated in colour p. 243 (as dating from 1932)
CATALOGUE NOTE
Picasso's iconic paintings of his lover Marie-Thérèse Walter reign supreme as the
emblems of love, sex and desire in twentieth-century art. The sensual La Lecture,
which is one of the most recognisable images among this landmark series from the
Fig. 1
Pablo Picasso, Le Rêve, 1932,
oil on canvas, Private Collection,
Las Vegas © Succession
Picasso/DACS, London 2010.
Fig. 2
Marie-Thérèse Walter with her
mother's dog, 1932. Photograph
by Picasso, Collection Maya
Picasso.


Fig. 3
Pablo Picasso, Femme nue,
feuilles et buste, 1932, oil on
canvas. Sold: Christie's, New
York, 4th May 2010
beginning of 1932, essentially introduced the young woman as an extraordinary new
presence in Picasso's life and his art. This exceptional work is one in a series of
defining paintings in the artist's œuvre in which he depicts his lover asleep in an
armchair, the curves of her body transformed into a sumptuous confection with colourful
swirls and sweeping arabesques. Marie-Thérèse's potent mix of physical attractiveness
and sexual naivety had an intoxicating effect on Picasso, and his rapturous desire for
the girl brought about a wealth of images that have been acclaimed as the most erotic
and emotionally uplifting compositions of his long career. Picasso's unleashed passion
is nowhere more apparent than in the depictions of the sleeping beauty, the
embodiment of tranquility and physical acquiescence. Similar to Le Rêve (fig. 1),
painted only days apart, La Lecture is rich with signifiers of sexual availability, fertility
and pleasure and exemplifies Picasso's creative power in full bloom.
Picasso first saw Marie-Thérèse (fig. 2) on the streets of Paris in 1927, when she was
only seventeen years old, while he was entangled in an unhappy marriage to Olga
Khokhlova. 'I was an innocent girl,' Walter remembered years later. 'I knew nothing -
either of life or of Picasso... I had gone to do some shopping at the Galeries Lafayette,
and Picasso saw me leaving the Metro. He simply took me by the arm and said, 'I am
Picasso! You and I are going to do great things together' (quoted in Picasso and the
Weeping Women (exhibition catalogue), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los
Angeles &The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1994, p. 143). The couple's
relationship was kept a well-guarded secret for many years, both on account of
Picasso's marriage to Olga and Marie-Thérèse's age. But the covertness of the affair
only intensified Picasso's obsession with the girl, and many of his pictures, with their
dramatic contrasts of light and dark, allude to their secret interludes held under cover of
darkness.
La Lecture belongs to a group of works painted in January 1932 in anticipation of the
major retrospective that Picasso was planning that coming June. It was during these
preceding months that he first cast his artistic spotlight on the voluptuous blonde. Up
until this point he had only made reference to his extramarital affair with Marie-Thérèse
in code, sometimes embedding her symbolically in a composition or rendering her
unmistakable profile as a feature of the background. But by the end of 1931, Picasso
could no longer repress the creative impulse that his lover inspired, especially as his
marriage grew increasingly unbearable. John Richardson explains that while Olga
organised large holiday parties that December in an attempt to demonstrate family
unity, Picasso was involved in an artistic blood-letting, painting violent or murderous
depictions of his wife. The exercise was a catharsis, Richardson claims, that better
enabled him to focus on a 'languorous, loving painting of a lilac-skinned Marie-Thérèse
asleep' just in time for Christmas: 'On December 30, the day of the Christmas party,
Picasso found time to turn her into a swirl of arabesques: a lunar octopus, which
reminds us that he had associated her with the phases of the moon the previous
summer. By January 2, Marie-Thérèse's moon face is full, her eyes stare us down. The
fuzzy print in the open book that this moon goddess clutches in her anaconda arms
signifies pubic hair. Over the next three weeks, Picasso produced a succession of large
Marie-Thérèses, dozing in a chair with a red leather back, studded with brass nails' (J.
Richardson, A Life of Picasso, Volume III, The Triumphant Years 1917-1932, New
York, 2007, p. 466). Based on Richardson's description, we can deduce that La Lecture
belongs to this group of paintings from January 1932. In the frenzy of holiday activity,
Picasso must have mistakenly inscribed the reverse of this work with the date 11
decembre M.CM.XXXII., which cannot be correct as the painting was already exhibited
from June until October 1932.
'When a man watches a woman asleep,' Picasso confessed, 'he tries to understand'
(quoted in J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso, New York, 1991, vol. I, p. 317). The theme
Fig. 4
Pablo Picasso, Jeune fille à la
mandoline, 1932, oil on panel,
The University of Michigan
Museum of Art, Gift of The Carey
Walker Foundation © Succession
Picasso/DACS, London 2010.



Fig. 5
Henri Matisse, Odalisque au
tambourin, 1926, oil on canvas,
The Museum of Modern Art, New
York © Succession H. Matisse /
DACS 2010 DIGITAL IMAGE ©
2011, The Museum of Modern
Art/Scala, Florence
Fig. 6
Installation view of the Galerie
Georges Petit in June 1932, the
present work is visible in the
upper left. Photograph Collection
Reber
of the sleeping woman recurred in a series of works that explored his mistress in
different poses, either fully recumbent (fig. 3) or seated. The image of sleep and the
way in which Marie-Thérèse appears to lose herself in its oblivion links this work, via its
association with the unconscious, to Picasso's most fertile Surrealist images. Roland
Penrose, who was one of Picasso's Surrealist associates, said the following about
these paintings: 'Most of these figures painted with flowing curves lie sleeping, their
arms folded round their heads... The sleeper's breasts are round and fruitlike and her
hands finish like the blades of summer grass. The profile of the face, usually with
closed eyes, is drawn in one bold curve uniting forehead and nose above thick
sensuous lips' (R. Penrose, Picasso, His Life and Work, London, 1958, p. 243). The
suggestive imagery in La Lecture is not limited to the figure's body. Just as the lily is
depicted as a symbol of her purity and fecundity, the open book in her lap is understood
to be an allusion to her exposed genitalia, as are the hands in La Rêve and the musical
instrument in Jeune femme à la mandoline (fig. 4).
'When I paint a woman in an armchair,' Picasso once recounted, 'the armchair implies
old age or death... or else the armchair is there to protect her.' It is the latter sentiment
that clearly governs these depictions of Marie-Thérèse, but as Judi Freeman explains,
'In the 1930s these chair-bound women directly responded to Matisse's work as well.
Matisse painted many of his models in lavishly decorated interiors [fig. 5], often seating
them on elaborately upholstered chairs or on divans' (J. Freeman in Picasso and the
Weeping Women, op. cit., p. 157). While the differences between Picasso's and
Matisse's treatment of this subject is readily apparent, Picasso was careful to distance
himself from the work of his arch-rival. Picasso exhibited this work, together with Le
Rêve (fig. 1), in a retrospective in Paris and Zurich in the summer and autumn 1932. At
the Paris venue of this exhibition, he chose to hang his seated portraits of Marie-
Thérèse, including the present work, alongside his Cubist and Surrealist compositions
(fig. 6). Picasso's unusual placement of the pictures may have been intended to deflect
immediate comparisons to Matisse's odalisques that had hung in the same gallery the
prior year and to remind the audience of his undisputable originality.