The Pace Gallery, New York
Marlborough-Godard Gallery, Toronto
Galerie de l'Elysee, Paris
Acquired by the present owner in New York circa 1976

Suzanne Brunner, Rene Char & Charles Feld, Recent Picasso Drawings, 1966-1968, New York, 1969, no. 142, illustrated n.p.
Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Oeuvres de 1965 a 1967, France, 1972, no. 291, illustrated pl. 128
The Picasso Project, Picasso's Paintings, Watercolours, Drawings and Sculptures, The Sixties II 1964-1967, San Francisco, 2002, no. 67-101, illustrated p. 295

Executed on cream wove paper. Mounted to a mat at several points along perimeter. Bottom edge is deckled. There is a 1/4 inch of mat stain around perimeter. Minor surface dirt. Right edge at top shows residue of having been cut, but no significant losses. Otherwise, excellent condition.
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Homme Assis et Belier, like many of Picasso's drawings of 1966 and 1967, evokes t🐼he theme of the pastoral. In the present work, the seated man and the playful goat represent a vision of Arcadian harmony, and are indicative of the aging artist's desire to retreat from civilization towards a bucolic rural ideal of💮 classical Greece.

Typically in these late drawings, there is an intermingling of autobiographical and artistic influences. The playful goat recalls less the sacrificial offering slung around the neck, more a pet goat that Picasso actually owned (see fig. 1). In Vallauris in 1950 Picasso and Francoise won a goat in a lottery, which turned out to be bad tempered animal, and "took an instant dislike to Claude...and would charge him from behind and with his horns, like a pint-sized bull, and send him sprawling" (Francoise Gilot, Life with Picasso, New York, 1964, p. 230).

The seated man is attired in the garb of a musketeer, and is one of a legion of seventeenth century soldiers that invaded Picasso's art from December, 1966 onwards.  These figures were a staple of Spanish historical genre painting, but ultimately derive from Picasso's renewed interest in Rembrandt, whose late work gained particular significance following Picasso's illness in 1965; as Jacqueline commented in conversation to Malraux, "They came to Pablo when he'd gone back to studying Rembrandt" (André Malraux, Picasso's Mask, New York, 1976, pp. 4, 86). This mingling of times and cultures, mixing a figure from 17^th century Dutch portraiture with in a pastoral scene inspired by Homeric Greece, reflects the mélange of influences that Picasso poured into his art over the last decade as💃 he reexam🔯ined his influences and considered his own legacy as an artist.   

Fig. 1 The artist with his goat, Esmerelda.