Titled ‘Bust of Woman with Flowered Hat’, this 80×60 centimeter oil painting depicts the photographer and surrealists’ muse who was Picasso’s partner for about ten years.
The piece is “estimated at around eight million euros, a reasonably low estimate that could soar,” explained Christophe Lucien, the auctioneer responsible for the sale, which is scheduled by his auction house for October 24.
Signed by Picasso and dated July 11, 1943, the painting was purchased in August 1944 by a prominent French collector, the grandfather of the current beneficiaries, who wishes to sell it as part of an inheritance, he explained.
“Unknown to the public and never exhibited, except in Picasso’s studio for a few friends, it has never been varnished or restored; it is simply framed with thin frames and in its original state,” emphasized Agnès Sevestre-Barbé, a Picasso specialist present at the unveiling of the work.
It is “quite exceptional and marks a milestone in the history of art and that of Picasso,” noted Lucien.
Inspired “by the naturalistic and cubist styles,” the painting shows Dora Maar taken by sadness, yet with a face imbued with sweetness, unlike other portraits in which the Spanish master depicted her with an expression where violence and emotion seem heightened, he further analyzed.
Maar wears a flowered hat with quite vibrant colors (red, yellow, green, purple) with a darker bust, at a time when Picasso had left her for a younger woman, Françoise Gilot.
“The vibrant colors are surprising; it’s 1943, a difficult year, with quite somber works during this period,” highlighted Olivier Picasso, the painter’s grandson, to the agency France-Presse (AFP) upon seeing a photo of the piece that he had not yet discovered physically.
“A painting, and moreover a portrait of Dora Maar, is rare. To be sold in France is really very rare, as on the market in general,” he added.
Several portraits of Dora Maar have been sold, mainly in the United States, by major Anglo-Saxon auctioneers, he recalls. In 2006, ‘Dora Maar with a Cat’ was sold for 95 million dollars in New York, after “Woman Sitting in a Garden” (1938), also purchased in New York in 1999 for 49 million dollars.
Authenticated by Picasso’s administration, the portrait revealed on Thursday was known to Picasso specialists and enthusiasts only in black and white and through the catalogue raisonné of his works (official inventory), which mentions it, according to Drouot.
Photographs by Brassaï, a friend of Picasso, taken in the painter’s studio (Rue des Grands-Augustins) also attest to the painting’s presence, detailed Lucien.
Dora Maar, whose real name was Henriette Théodora Markovic (1907-1997), is best known as a photographer and became renowned particularly for her numerous portraits of Picasso.
Picasso created several portraits of her as ‘The Weeping Woman’. Maar also inspired a series of paintings with the theme ‘Seated Women’.
Dora Maar also produced a photographic reportage on Picasso’s masterpiece, “Guernica,” which was being created in 1937 in his atelier in Grands-Augustins, now housed in the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid.
