A stunning painting of Notre Dame de Paris by Pablo Picasso highlights Bonhams Impressionist & Modern Art auction on 7th February 2012 at 101 New Bond Street, London.
Picasso has taken a subject he knows well, via his walks to, and the view from, his studio, but he chooses to challenge the truth in order to explore artistic aims other than realism. He toys with the artistic conventions of perspective and scale to leave the viewer separated from reality and immersed instead into Picasso’s own pictorial truth. Dated 1954, it is one of his later landscapes, but it shows the influence of his earlier experiments with Cubism. By October 1954, when it was completed, the artist was falling in love with a woman who would later become his wife – Jacqueline Roque. At the time of painting Notre Dame de Paris, they were in the springtime of their passion, and Picasso’s happiness at the time of working on this painting is evident. The vibrancy and impasto on the surface of the paint suggests Picasso’s joy and positivity. It is a painting depicting one day – marked ‘25.10.54’ in the lower right of the painting – and as such, is a moment captured. It is as if it is a summer’s day rather than a day in late October, and Picasso’s new found love of Jacqueline and rediscovered love of Paris communicates beyond the picture plane. It is estimated to sell for £700,000-1,000,000.
