A Life of Picasso

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A Life of Picasso Page 67

by John Richardson


  60. Polunin, 58.

  61. Letter from Diaghilev to Picasso, [June 1919], Archives Picasso.

  62. Ibid.

  63. Reported by Massine in Buckle 1979, 354.

  64. See, for example, Z.III.298–9 and Z.XXIX.414.

  65. My thanks to Richard Shone, who remembers seeing the photograph on the mantelpiece at Lopokova’s home in 1965.

  66. Spalding, 210. Duncan Grant told Richard Shone that Picasso asked technical questions about Omega pottery.

  67. Ibid.

  68. Z.II.431.

  69. The Morrells’ house inspired Aldous Huxley’s Chrome Yellow. Lady Ottoline was also pilloried by D. H. Lawrence in Women in Love, as well as by Osbert Sitwell.

  70. H. T. J. (Harry) Norton was a Cambridge mathematician who had bought a cubist Picasso (Z.II.241) on Bell’s advice in 1912.

  71. Letter from Bell to Mary Hutchinson, May 28, 1919, Ransom Center.

  72. See a letter from Lady Ottoline Morrell, published by James Beechey, “Letter to the Editor, ‘Picasso in London,’ ” Burlington Magazine 149 (January 2007), 42.

  73. Shone, 40.

  74. Letter from Vanessa Bell to Virginia Woolf, February 6, 1913, Marler, 137.

  75. Shone, 155.

  76. Angelica would later marry David Garnett, one of her father Duncan Grant’s lovers.

  77. Picasso quoted by Ben Nicholson, in Jeffrey Meyers, The Enemy: A Biography of Wynd-ham Lewis (London: Routledge/Kegan Paul, 1980), 162.

  78. Desmond MacCarthy, Memories (1953), in Bloomsbury: The Artists, Authors and Designers by Themselves, ed. Gillian Naylor (London: Mitchell Beazley 1993; originally published 1990), 37.

  79. Letter from Bell to Mary Hutchinson, June 2, 1919, Ransom Center.

  80. Holroyd 1968, 486.

  81. Vanessa Bell’s portrait of Mrs. St. John Hutchinson (1915) appears as cat. 35 in Shone, 103.

  82. Lord Rothschild to the author.

  83. See Vol. II, 234 (Z.II.351).

  84. Holroyd 1996, 257.

  85. Letter from Bell to Mary Hutchinson, June 2, 1919, Ransom Center; Holroyd 1996, 344.

  86. Bell, 171.

  87. This farrago Picasso supposedly told the British artist Eileen Agar (A Look at My Life [London: Methuen, 1988], 138) about a dinner given by a grand lady in a black nightgown, who blew out the candles one by one, does not ring true.

  88. Beaumont, 132.

  89. Ibid., 143–4.

  90. Ibid., 144.

  91. Letter from Margot Asquith to Diaghilev, July 12, 1919, in Buckle 1979, 358.

  92. Cooper, 42.

  93. Grigoriev, 148.

  94. Buckle 1979, 357.

  95. See Larralde and Casenave, 67.

  96. Adrian Goodman confirmed to Richard Shone that the woman friend was Molly Hamilton, according to the visitors’ book at Garsing-ton on July 28, 1919.

  97. Holroyd 1968, 5.

  98. Bell, 172. In a letter to his mother, May-nard Keynes says (July 29, 1919), “we sat down twenty-three to supper and did not rise from the table until half past one.” Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes, Vol. I, Hopes Betrayed 1883–1920 (London: Macmillan, 1983), 350.

  99. Holyrod 1968, 69.

  100. Duncan Grant to Vanessa Bell, July 30, 1919, Tate archives, London.

  101. Letter from Bell to Mary Hutchinson, August 4, 1919, Ransom Center.

  102. The modern French art exhibition consisted of minor works by Matisse, Derain, Modigliani, Soutine, Léger, Utrillo, Dufy as well as one or two early Picassos. See Osbert Sitwell, Laughter in the Next Room (London: Macmillan, 1949), 154. Sitwell bought a Modigliani painting for four pounds.

  103. Letter from Bell to Mary Hutchinson, August 4, 1919, Ransom Center.

  104. Ibid.

  105. Ibid.

  106. Letter from Paul Rosenberg to Picasso, July 29, 1919, Archives Picasso.

  107. Z.III.413.

  108. Letter from Paul Rosenberg to Picasso, confirming his lunch with Renoir, August 20, 1919, Archives Picasso.

  109. Cowling 2006, 147.

  110. Gilot 1964, 149.

  CHAPTER 11

  Summer at San Raphaël

  1. Most of the Picassos’ business and domestic accounts from 1918 onward are in Olga’s hand.

  2. See Level correspondence with Picasso, Archives Picasso.

  3. See Vol. II, Chapter 27.

  4. Hugo 1983, 134.

  5. Picasso would not start on Three Musicians for another two years. Hugo’s visual memory had for once failed him.

  6. Hugo 1983, 135.

  7. There were no bullfights in the Fréjus arena between 1914 and 1926. Tickets in the Musée Picasso confirm that Picasso did not attend a bullfight there until 1927. The last corrida he attended (October 25, 1970) took place in the Fréjus arena. It engendered the finest of his late bullfight subjects.

  8. Letter from Errázuriz to Picasso, August 20, 1919, Archives Picasso.

  9. See Gasman, 1135ff, for further discussion of Picasso’s portrayls of Olga in the late 1920s.

  10. Room number 55.

  11. Letter from Level to Picasso, August 28, 1919, Archives Picasso.

  12. Z.III.387 and PFIII.498.

  13. Z.III.385 and Z.III.379.

  14. See Z.III.386, Z. III.389, Z.III.397–9, and Z.III.401– 3.

  15. Postcard from Paul Rosenberg to Picasso, January 21, 1920, Archives Picasso.

  16. Z.III.370–1.

  17. Z.III.372.

  18. Z.III.364.

  19. Letter from Paul Rosenberg to Picasso, July 6, 1920, Archives Picasso. The Armenian dealer Dikran Kelekian bought the “rousseauiste” landscape, and sold it to Quinn in 1922 (see Reid, 548).

  20. Olga wrote Jacqueline Apollinaire (September 15, 1919, Archives Picasso), “We will arrive in Paris on Thursday the 17th.

  21. Letter from Diaghilev to Picasso, August 24, 1919, Archives Picasso.

  22. Walsh, 622 n. 55.

  23. Ibid., 306. Stravinsky had originally claimed that he and Diaghilev had done the research; no less ironically most of the pieces turned out not to be by Pergolesi.

  24. Z.XXIX.427. Ibid.

  25. Editions de la Sirène: publishing house run by Cocteau and Cendrars and backed by Paul Rosenberg. Picasso designed its logo.

  26. Z.VI.1334.

  27. Hugo 1983, 137.

  28. Rubinstein 1980, 149.

  29. Ibid., 150.

  30. On July 19, 1958, Picasso would do twenty-four drawings of Rubinstein (Z.XVIII.270–96).

  31. See Vol. II, 374.

  32. Letter from Georges Bemberg to Picasso, February 13, 1914, Archives Picasso.

  33. Z.III.373; the full-length portrait is reproduced in Picasso Ingres (Paris: Musée Picasso, 2004), 106.

  34. Z.XXIX.315 and Z.III.256.

  35. Letter from Bemberg to Picasso, May 15, 1919, Archives Picasso.

  36. Ibid.

  CHAPTER 12

  Pulcinella

  1. The catalog of the show lists 167 drawings and watercolors by subject: Harlequins and Pierrots (1–23), Horses, Circuses, and Bullfights (24–30), Dancers (31–46), Open Windows at Saint-Raphaël (i.e., Gueridons) (47–71), Figures (72–95), Still lifes (96–121), Nudes (122–9), Landscapes (130–6), Portraits (137–53), Subjects (154–64), and After Ingres and Renoir (165–7).

  2. In Valori Vlastici 1, nos. 11–12 (November–December 1919), Armando Ferri described the show as a retrospective, including drawings from the Blue as well as the Rose and cubist periods. The only items the article identifies are twenty-five gueridon watercolors Picasso did at Saint-Raphaël: “The farthest point attained by the artist,” in the opinion of Ferri, who went on to claim that these works—displayed two to a frame by Rosenberg—demonstrated that Picasso had “overcome cubism without having renounced it.”

  3. See Martin.

  4. J. G. Lemoine, “Picasso Chez Paul Rosenberg 21 rue la Boétie,” L’Intransigeant, October 29, 1919.

  5. Roger Allard, Le Nouvel spectateur 1, no. 21-2
2 (October 25–November 10, 1919).

  6. Letter from Gris to Kahnweiler, November 27, 1921, in Kahnweiler-Gris 1956, 128.

  7. Salvador Dalí would quote this and other sayings of Ingres in the catalog to his first exhibition at the Galeries Dalmau in 1925.

  8. FitzGerald 1995, 96.

  9. Gee, 59.

  10. Letter from Bell to Mary Hutchinson, November 2, 1919, Ransom Center.

  11. Letters from Bell to Mary Hutchinson, November 4, 8, 9, and 11, 1919, Ransom Center.

  12. Letter from Bell to Mary Hutchinson, November 12, 1919, Ransom Center.

  13. Letter from Bell to Mary Hutchinson, November 16, 1919, Ransom Center.

  14. Bell incorrectly claims in his memoir (Bell, 182) that Derain was present and that the drawing dated from 1920. During the lunch, Bell read out his wife’s enthusiastic account of Parade’s premiere in London.

  15. Letter from Bell to Mary Hutchinson, November 22, 1919, Ransom Center.

  16. Ibid.

  17. Z.III.427.

  18. Letter from Bell to Mary Hutchinson, November 22, 1919, Ransom Center.

  19. Bell, 187.

  20. See Vol. 1, 101.

  21. Letter from Bell to Mary Hutchinson, November 30, 1919, Ransom Center.

  22. Ibid.

  23. Ibid.

  24. Letter from Bell to Mary Hutchinson, December 7, 1919, Ransom Center.

  25. Letter from Bell to Mary Hutchinson, December 4, 1919, Ransom Center.

  26. Fauconnet would soon be dead. Raoul Dufy would do Cocteau’s décor instead.

  27. Letter from Bell to Mary Hutchinson, December 3, 1919, Ransom Center.

  28. Ibid.

  29. Letter from Bell to Mary Hutchinson, December 7, 1919, Ransom Center.

  30. Ibid.

  31. See letter from Jacques-Emile Blanche to Cocteau, September 11, 1919, in Jean Cocteau– Jacques-Emile Blanche Correspondance (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1993), 148.

  32. Silver, 148.

  33. For a definition of “crystal” cubism see Chapter 6.

  34. Z.III.363.

  35. Corot’s Mademoiselle de Foudras reportedly belonged to the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune. However, Cowling 2002, 665 n. 40, believes that Picasso made his drawing, which is dated January 8, 1920, after a photograph.

  36. André Derain, “Idées d’un peintre,” Littérature, May 1921.

  37. Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.

  38. Musée Picasso, Paris (MP 64).

  39. Letter from Gris to Kahnweiler, August 25, 1919, Kahnweiler-Gris 1956, 65.

  40. Pierre Rosenberg, Chardin (Paris: Flam-marion, 1999), no. 76B, 220.

  41. Robert Rosenblum, acoustiguide tour C, “Picasso” (New York: MoMA, 1980), in Boggs, 190.

  42. In a letter, July 4, 1919, Archives Picasso, Paul Rosenberg tells Picasso he has bought “un beau Puvis Chavanne. Vous n’aimez pas cet artiste, mais il se vend bien. …” In fact Puvis had exerted a considerable influence on the Blue period.

  43. Mitchell, 98.

  44. Musée Picasso, Paris (MP 1990–6).

  45. Vol. I, 70 (Z.XXI.49).

  46. Vol. I, 377 (Z.XXIX.186). One of these idiosyncratic First Communion paintings would be acquired by Doucet.

  47. Cooper, 46.

  48. Z.XXX.50–1, 54; Z.IV.24.

  49. Massine, 145.

  50. Cooper, 47.

  51. Recounted in Cooper, 46–7.

  52. Mosch, 232.

  53. Cooper, 45–6.

  54. Ibid.

  55. Z.III.193–4, 196.

  56. On receipt of Diaghilev’s telegram, the Polunins contacted Picasso (April 19, 1920, Archives Picasso), to give him the gist of Diaghilev’s telegram and to ask if he needed them to work on his curtain, as their contract ended with the completion of the décor.

  57. Z.IV.28.

  58. Sokolova 1960, 151.

  59. Cooper, 48.

  60. Musée Picasso, Paris.

  61. Walsh, 313.

  62. Stravinsky quoted in Mitchell, 98.

  63. See Christian Martin Schmidt, “The Viennese School and Classicism,” in Boehm, Mosch, and Schmidt, 358.

  64. Ibid.

  65. Ibid.

  66. Ibid.

  67. Buckle 1979, 363.

  CHAPTER 13

  Summer at Juan-les-Pins

  1. Letter from Vanessa Bell to Fry, May 17, 1920, Marler, 244. The pastel mentioned by Vanessa, Family of Napoleon III (illustrated in Baldassari 1997, 157, but dated 1919), was based on a Levitsky photograph of Napoleon III, Empress Eugénie, and the Crown Prince (Archives Picasso), and dates from spring 1920.

  2. Vol. I, 381.

  3. Vol. I, 408, 515 n.25.

  4. Musée du Petit Palais, Paris.

  5. Reid, 501.

  6. Z.VI.1396, 1398, and PFIII.885.

  7. Satie (Z.IV.59), Falla (Z.IV.62), Stravinsky (Z.IV.60), Helft (Z.IV.77), and Berthe Weill (Z.IV.76). To promote her gallery Weill had recently published a bulletin and approached artists she had exhibited for contributions; see Seckel, 187 n. 10.

  8. The frequently misdated portrait drawing of Etienne de Beaumont (reproduced in Cooper, no. 327) can be seen on an easel in a drawing of Picasso’s studio (PF.III.747) dated June 12, 1920. Picasso’s portrait drawing of Edith de Beaumont dates from the following year (Z.IV.274).

  9. Madame Wildenstein (private collection) and Portrait of Lopokova (Z.XXIX.414).

  10. Z.XXX.76–8 and Z.IV.3.

  11. Palau 1999, 209.

  12. Letter from Level to Picasso, June 23, 1920, Archives Picasso (discussing the Kahn-weiler sales), in which he tells the artist, “you can therefore leave in peace, but give me your address as soon as you arrive, in the event that I need to write to you.”

  13. Vallentin, 246.

  14. Z.XXX.60, 65.

  15. Letter from Bell to Mary Hutchinson, October 23, 1920, Ransom Center.

  16. PF.III.794– 5; Z.IV.89, 96; Z.XXX.88, 92.

  17. Kostenevich, 119.

  18. Ibid.

  19. Kean, 269. This drawing has not been traced.

  20. Ibid., 267.

  21. Ibid., 268.

  22. Milhaud took the name Le Bœuf sur le toit from a samba, “O boi no telhado,” that he had heard during the Rio de Janeiro Carnival.

  23. Steegmuller 1970, Appendix IX.

  24. See, for example, Z.IV.203–4 and Z.XXX.85.

  25. PF.III.803–6.

  26. Z.IV.107

  27. Elizabeth Cowling, “Introduction,” On Classic Ground: Picasso, Léger, de Chirico and the New Classicism 1910-1930 (London: Tate Gallery, 1990), 26.

  28. Z.IV.123–4, PF.III.783, and Z.XXX.89, 91.

  29. Z.IV.127, 99, 97, 180, 183.

  30. See p. 28.

  31. In 1920 Matisse had given the Museum in Grenoble his 1917 painting L’Allé d’arbres dans le bois de Clamart. possibly in gratitude for Farcy’s son-in-law Marcel Sembat’s monograph on the artist.

  32. Kenneth Clark, The Nude (London: Penguin, 1960; originally published 1956), 2.

  33. See the exhibition catalog of Picasso Badende, StaatsGalerie Stuttgart (2005), for many of these bather compositions.

  34. Z.IV.169.

  35. Gilot 1964, 119.

  36. Letter from Paul Rosenberg to Picasso, July 27, 1920, Archives Picasso. The contre-plaqué panels apparently ended up as the three-panel screen Picasso executed for Olga’s sitting room.

  37. Gris’s letter to Picasso of October 24, 1919, Archives Picasso, provides the address, 5, rue de la Main d’or, for the supplier of contre-plaqué.

  38. PF.III.790.

  39. PF.III.779, for instance.

  40. For example, Z.IV.211–4.

  41. Palau 1999, 246.

  42. See letter from Paul Rosenberg to Picasso, July 13, 1920, Archives Picasso.

  43. See FitzGerald 1995, 120: the first museum exhibition of Picasso’s work in America was held in the spring of 1923 at the Chicago Arts Club. It had been organized by Prince Wladimir Argotinsky-Dolgoroukoff (diplomat, collecto
r, and sometime dealer), who selected fifty-three drawings, covering the period 1907–22.

  44. Z.IV.184–5, 187, 1394–5, 1402; Z.XXX.104; PF.III.843.

  45. For further discussion regarding the subject of these drawings, see Cowling 2002, 405, and Carandente, 32.

  46. Baer 160.

  47. See Gary Tinterow, Master Drawings by Picasso (Cambridge, Mass.: Fogg Art Museum, 1981), 162, and Cowling 2002, 407.

  48. Letter from Bell to Mary Hutchinson, October 30, 1920, Ransom Center. Lady Colefax was the London hostess lampooned by Aldous Huxley, Osbert Sitwell, and Evelyn Waugh, and described by Virginia Woolf as “glittering as a cheap cherry.”

  49. Letter from Bell to Mary Hutchinson, October 29, 1920, Ransom Center.

  50. Letter from Bell to Mary Hutchinson, November 2, 1920, Ransom Center.

  51. Letter from Fry to Vanessa Bell, March 15, 1921, Sutton, 504.

  52. Letter from Bell to Mary Hutchinson, May 5, 1921, Ransom Center.

  53. Letter from Bell to Mary Hutchinson, October 29, 1920, Ransom Center.

  54. Letter from Satie to Valentine Hugo, December 13, 1920, Volta 2000, 430.

  55. Steegmuller 1970, 261.

  56. Ibid.

  57. Ibid., 261–2.

  58. Hugo 1983, 195.

  59. Steegmuller 1970, 273.

  60. For a typical though much later example, see Richardson 1999, 241.

  CHAPTER 14

  L’Epoque des Duchesses

  1. Z.IV268.

  2. The Paroïsse Saint-Augustin baptismal certificate lists the child as Paul Joseph Riuz [sic] y Picasso. In a letter of the following year (April 8, 1922, Archives Picasso), Level sends a “bonnecaresse à Paul-Joseph.” Picasso’s son was known to family and friends as Paulo or simply Paul.

  3. Stein 1933, 190.

  4. Ibid., 211.

  5. Ibid., 190.

  6. Seckel, 178.

  7. Louis Aragon, Anicet ou le Panorama, roman (Paris: Gallimard, 1949; originally published 1921), 69–70.

  8. Letter from Jacob to Picasso, June 4, 1921, Seckel, 180.

  9. Baer, 62.

  10. Seckel, 180.

  11. Stein 1933, 194.

  12. Palau 1999, 371.

  13. Cabanne 1977, 203.

  14. Gilot 1964, 149.

  15. Gold and Fizdale, 198–9.

  16. See Vol. II, 391.

  17. Steegmuller 1970, 227 note.

 

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