Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, by Picasso 1932

This painting has been requested for loan for the exhibition Pablo Picasso, to be held at the Kunsthaus Zurich 15 October 2010-30 January 2011.

In 1932 Cecil Beaton made a photographic portrait of Pablo Picasso in his residence at 23, rue la Boétie, Paris (fig. 1). Then in his fifty-first year, appearing urbane and well-to-do, supremely assured and confident--indeed, with his famously riveting gaze, even imperious--Picasso stands formally attired with bowtie and pocket square, holding in requisite manly fashion a lighted cigarette. In a striking contrast to this image of masculine power and certitude, as set up by the photographer but surely following the dictates of his subject, Beaton portrayed the artist with his head enveloped within the voluptuous curves of a young woman who reclines in the lower part of the large canvas hung on the wall behind him. A second visage of her, rendered as a profile bust placed on a sculptor's plinth and turntable, hovers directly above Picasso's head. In the lower left hand corner, partly cut off by the edge of the photograph, leans the artist's Ingresque portrait of his wife Olga seated in an armchair, which he painted in 1917 while he was courting her. For the purpose of the photograph, Picasso appears to have taken his wife's portrait down from the wall, and replaced it with the larger painting of the young nude woman and bust.

This deeply sensual and mysterious imagery hinted at a story that would not be told until several decades later. Today we instantly recognize the female form as belonging to Marie-Thérèse Walter, Picasso's young mistress during the late 1920s and 1930s (fig. 2). The remarkable painting seen in this widely illustrated photograph is Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, which Picasso completed during the course of a single day in March 1932, only a short time before Beaton came to shoot his portrait. Here the canvas is seen still unframed, with the paint perhaps having only recently dried. This brightly shining star in the firmament of Picasso's oeuvre, rarely seen after the 1930s and exhibited only once since it was acquired in 1951, now comes to Christie's saleroom, as have five of its closest companions during the past dozen years--a landmark event by any measure, in which this superb painting is sure to surpass all those which have gone before.

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