India on paper

Dr Gottlieb F. Reber, Lausanne (acquired by 1930)
Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris (acquired by 1959)
Private Collection, New York (sold: Sotheby's, New York, 17th November 1998, lot 373)
Purchased at the above sale by the late owner

Jacques Prévert, 'Hommage - Hommage', in Documents 3, Paris, 1930, illustrated p. 147
Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, œuvres de 1926 à 1932, Paris, 1955, vol. 7, no. 16, illustrated pl. 8
Jaime Sabartés & Wilhelm Boeck, Pablo Picasso, Paris, 1955, no. 245, illustrated p. 33
Maurice Jardot, Pablo Picasso, Drawings, New York, 1959, illustrated p. 74
Helen Kay, Picasso's World of Children, New York, 1965, illustrated p. 110
Herbert T. Schwarz, Picasso and Marie-Thérèse Walter, 1925-27, Québec, 1988, illustrated p. 127
Picassos Welt der Kinder (exhibition catalogue), Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf & Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, 1995-96, illustrated p. 232
The Picasso Project, Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture. Toward Surrealism, 1925-1929, San Francisco, 1996, no. 26-016, illustrated p. 47

Executed on cream wove paper, not laid down, hinged to the mount in the top two corners, floating in the mount. The sheet is perforated along the left edge. Apart from three very small repaired tears at the lower edge and a very small spot of paper loss towards the top of the right edge, this work is in good condition. Colours: Overall fairly accurate in the printed catalogue illustration.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

After a period of concentration on the figure, described as Picasso’s embrace of neoclassicism, his stylistic investigations moved to a new interpretation of the principles of synthetic Cubism in the mid-1920s. During this time, Picasso distanced himself from the dealer Paul Rosenberg who had supported his post-war career and began to show interest in the growing Surrealist movement and the ideas of André Breton. One direction in which Surrealism led Picasso was the transformation of the figure into a collection of shapes and signs, and in Le cheval de bois he transforms the placid space of neoclassicism into a visual dance of planes and facets. The entire composition is determined by the overlapping of curving shapes and rhythmic lines that define the figures and objects in space.

 

The characters in Le cheval de bois appear to represent Picasso’s family, with a distorted and highly abstract portrayal of his wife Olga, seated in an armchair with her hands folded on her lap on the left, and their son Paulo riding a wooden horse on the right. Based on a photograph Picasso took of his shadow, the dark silhouetted profile, which appears in a number of paintings of the late 1920s, is generally understood to be a self-portrait. In the present composition, its overlapping with Paulo’s face suggests the artist’s identifying with his son. As is the case in Picasso’s numerous post-Cubist portraits, the face of the sitter is executed in a complex and ambiguous way, its lines suggesting the artist’s own profile.

An early owner of the present work was Dr. Gottlieb Friedrich Reber (1880-1959), a major collector of Cubist pictures during the 1920s and 1930s and a longstanding patron of Fernand Léger's work. Reber had made his fortune as an industrialist during the early 20th century, and came into prominence as an art collector with his acquisitions of important works by Cézanne. After World War I, Reber shifted his attention towards Cubism, and amassed a large collection of paintings by Picasso, Braque, Gris and Léger which hung in his home, the Chateau du Béthusy in Lausanne. Because of his mounting꧙ financial troubles during the Depression and afterwards, Reber was compelled to sell off his collection after the war, and many of his Cubist pictures were eventually dispersed to museums throughout the world including the Museum of Modern Art in New York.