Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris

Galerie Jan Krugier, Geneva

S. Erasmo Club d'Arte (Franco Busconi), Milan

Sale: Artcurial, Briest, Decembe🦩r 17, 2001, lot 30

Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, oeuvres de 1965 à 1967, vol. 25, Paris,ꦺ 1972, no. 136, illustrated p♏l. 77 (signature not visible in illustration)

The Picasso Project, Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture, The Sixties II, 1964-1967, San Francisco, 2002🐟, no. 65-142, illustrated p. 204

Picasso completed this work only a few months before 💧he commenced his large series of musketeers – a theme that would occupy him until the end of his life.  The figure in this work, with his wide-brimmed hat, can be considered a progenitor of these works and Picasso's most self-reflective period.  The year that he painted this picture, Picasso underwent surgery for an ulcer and he wanted to prove to himself that his creative ability had not lost its luster.   The symbolism of the images he completed after this period was indicative of his self-awareness after being faced with his own mortality.  Gone from his paintings were the veiled references to the artist as the victorious gladiator or centaur, as these indefatigable characters were not indicative of the artist's failing stamina and lost youth. The vainglorious musketeer was believed to be a more appropriate incarnation, offering a spectrum of interpretations that occupied the artist until his death.

Picasso seldom depicted himself directly, choosing instead to have thematic characters personify him.   In his collaborative monograph with Edward Quinn, Pierre Daix discussed Picasso's Kafkaesque propensity for self-transformation: "Metamorphosis was key not only in Picasso's work but also in his private life.  He had a fantastic range of hats, caps and other headgear from all over the world and liked to use them as a sort of gimmick whenever he met a visitor for the first time who seemed ill at ease. This masquerade always helped to break the ice" (Pierre Daix and Edward Quinn, The Private Picasso, Boston, 1987, p. 176).