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拍品专文
Painted in 1918, Pablo Picasso’s Paquet de tabac, vase à fleurs, journal, verre, bouteille is a dynamic, richly textured still-life composition executed during the final months of the First World War. Picasso was experimenting on a range of artistic fronts at this time, moving between playful images of harlequins that invoked his recent collaborations with the Ballets Russes, portraits that deployed a colourful, confetti-like pointillist technique, and volumetric figurative work that aligned with la rappel à l’ordre (return to order), a cultural movement that embraced classical themes and subjects, motifs and styles which was then gathering momentum among the avant-garde. At the same time, he continued to explore and probe the potential of Cubist expression, assessing and testing the seemingly endless array of compositional possibilities it offered. His still-life paintings became an important site for innovation and stylistic investigation as a result, the genre inextricably intertwined in his mind with his renewed Cubist vision – as art historian Elizabeth Cowling has observed, Picasso, ‘identified Cubism with still life, and still life with Cubism, in the early 1920s’ (Picasso, Style and Meaning, London, 2002, p. 377).
In Paquet de tabac, vase à fleurs, journal, verre, bouteille, Picasso turns his focus to a collection of familiar, quotidian items – a bottle of wine and a glass, a small vase with a bouquet of flowers, a folded newspaper, a pipe and tobacco, arranged atop a trapezoid table in a tight configuration. The table is tilted towards the picture plane, creating a sense of recession while simultaneously emphasising the flatness of the different elements, which appear almost stacked on top of one another. This is most noticeable to the left of the composition, where the smoking-pipe is overlapped by the open packet of tobacco, a rare commodity in Paris at this time due to war-time rationing. The elaborate design of its box is picked out in fluid, flickering strokes of paint, the swirling curlicues and central square emblem reminiscent of the printed packaging Picasso had previously included in his 1914 collage Bouteille de Bass, verre, paquet de tabac, carte de visite (Zervos vol. 2b, no. 456; Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris).
There is a distinct theatricality at play in the present painting. Mixing sand with the wet pigments and embedding it into the painted layer, Picasso creates a richly textured impasto effect in certain areas of the canvas, highlighting the outlines of the table and the pipe, the headlines on the front page of the newspaper, and the fall of light on one side of the wine bottle. Picasso also introduces a decorative frame to the composition, an unusual device that surrounds the objects and the table in a series of flowing, spring-green arabesques that echo the lines of Italianate garlands. While John Richardson has compared this detail to the designs of a chocolate box, its distinctive shape parallels a similar feature in the artist’s drawings and models for the stage sets of Parade from the previous year, where a pair of swooping, scrolling lines meet on the tilted angle of the proscenium at centre stage. Picasso appears to have initially intended to use a more geometric decorative frame within the present canvas – a straight, rectangular outline remains clearly visible on the surface, its thickly painted contour surrounding the still life and directing the eye towards the cluster of objects at the centre. As Jean Sutherland Boggs has noted, ‘[Picasso’s] still lifes were now designed with an audience in mind, whether a friend or connoisseur… or a group of people in a public exhibition’ (Picasso & Things, exh. cat., The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1992, p. 134).
Paquet de tabac, vase à fleurs, journal, verre, bouteille has been held in a series of important private collections throughout its history. In February 1924 it was acquired by the German-born textile manufacturer and businessman Dr. Gottlieb Friedrich (G.F.) Reber and his wife Erna (née Sander), renowned supporters of Cubism who were among the artist’s most important patrons during the inter-war period. It was thanks to Erna, whose family wealth came from the distillery founded by her maternal grandfather, that the pair were able to begin collecting in earnest, driven by their shared passion for art and music. Initially drawn to French Realist, Impressionist, and Post-Impressionist painting, they acquired more than thirty paintings by Paul Cezanne, as well as works by Camille Corot and Gustav Courbet, Edouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh. G.F. and Erna diligently expanded their knowledge of modern art through the years, befriending many dealers and visiting exhibitions across Europe together. Following the First World War, the couple refocused their collecting activities and begin purchasing almost exclusively from living artists, honing in on the works of Cubist painters such as Picasso, Georges Braque, Juan Gris and Fernand Léger.
The Rebers’ patronage of Picasso began around 1922, and within a decade they had acquired more than 160 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by the artist, ranging in date from 1905 to 1927. Photographs of their homes in Lugano and Lausanne show an array of important works hanging together throughout the spaces, from his Portrait de Clovis Sagot (1909, Zervos vol. 2a, no. 129; Hamburger Kunsthalle) and Trois nus féminins (1907-1908, Zervos vol. 2a, no. 53; Musée National Picasso-Paris), to Vase à fleurs, partition, cartes à jouer (1918, Zervos vol. 3, no. 257; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.) and the monumental Trois musiciens (1921, Zervos vol. 4, no. 331; The Museum of Modern Art, New York).
While G.F. had occasionally acted as a marchand-amateur, selling and exchanging works as the couple’s tastes evolved through the years, the global economic crisis of the early 1930s forced him to begin dispersing the collection to offset their losses. Paquet de tabac, vase à fleurs, journal, verre, bouteille remained with the Rebers until at least 1932 before returning to the market, and subsequently entered the collection of the esteemed art historian and scholar of Cubism, Douglas Cooper. Cooper had met Reber in the early 1930s and was well acquainted with his extensive collection, which helped to fuel his own growing appreciation of Cubism. The painting remained with Cooper for the rest of his life, featuring in photos of the collector’s home at the Château de Castille and later, his apartment in Monaco.
In Paquet de tabac, vase à fleurs, journal, verre, bouteille, Picasso turns his focus to a collection of familiar, quotidian items – a bottle of wine and a glass, a small vase with a bouquet of flowers, a folded newspaper, a pipe and tobacco, arranged atop a trapezoid table in a tight configuration. The table is tilted towards the picture plane, creating a sense of recession while simultaneously emphasising the flatness of the different elements, which appear almost stacked on top of one another. This is most noticeable to the left of the composition, where the smoking-pipe is overlapped by the open packet of tobacco, a rare commodity in Paris at this time due to war-time rationing. The elaborate design of its box is picked out in fluid, flickering strokes of paint, the swirling curlicues and central square emblem reminiscent of the printed packaging Picasso had previously included in his 1914 collage Bouteille de Bass, verre, paquet de tabac, carte de visite (Zervos vol. 2b, no. 456; Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris).
There is a distinct theatricality at play in the present painting. Mixing sand with the wet pigments and embedding it into the painted layer, Picasso creates a richly textured impasto effect in certain areas of the canvas, highlighting the outlines of the table and the pipe, the headlines on the front page of the newspaper, and the fall of light on one side of the wine bottle. Picasso also introduces a decorative frame to the composition, an unusual device that surrounds the objects and the table in a series of flowing, spring-green arabesques that echo the lines of Italianate garlands. While John Richardson has compared this detail to the designs of a chocolate box, its distinctive shape parallels a similar feature in the artist’s drawings and models for the stage sets of Parade from the previous year, where a pair of swooping, scrolling lines meet on the tilted angle of the proscenium at centre stage. Picasso appears to have initially intended to use a more geometric decorative frame within the present canvas – a straight, rectangular outline remains clearly visible on the surface, its thickly painted contour surrounding the still life and directing the eye towards the cluster of objects at the centre. As Jean Sutherland Boggs has noted, ‘[Picasso’s] still lifes were now designed with an audience in mind, whether a friend or connoisseur… or a group of people in a public exhibition’ (Picasso & Things, exh. cat., The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1992, p. 134).
Paquet de tabac, vase à fleurs, journal, verre, bouteille has been held in a series of important private collections throughout its history. In February 1924 it was acquired by the German-born textile manufacturer and businessman Dr. Gottlieb Friedrich (G.F.) Reber and his wife Erna (née Sander), renowned supporters of Cubism who were among the artist’s most important patrons during the inter-war period. It was thanks to Erna, whose family wealth came from the distillery founded by her maternal grandfather, that the pair were able to begin collecting in earnest, driven by their shared passion for art and music. Initially drawn to French Realist, Impressionist, and Post-Impressionist painting, they acquired more than thirty paintings by Paul Cezanne, as well as works by Camille Corot and Gustav Courbet, Edouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh. G.F. and Erna diligently expanded their knowledge of modern art through the years, befriending many dealers and visiting exhibitions across Europe together. Following the First World War, the couple refocused their collecting activities and begin purchasing almost exclusively from living artists, honing in on the works of Cubist painters such as Picasso, Georges Braque, Juan Gris and Fernand Léger.
The Rebers’ patronage of Picasso began around 1922, and within a decade they had acquired more than 160 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by the artist, ranging in date from 1905 to 1927. Photographs of their homes in Lugano and Lausanne show an array of important works hanging together throughout the spaces, from his Portrait de Clovis Sagot (1909, Zervos vol. 2a, no. 129; Hamburger Kunsthalle) and Trois nus féminins (1907-1908, Zervos vol. 2a, no. 53; Musée National Picasso-Paris), to Vase à fleurs, partition, cartes à jouer (1918, Zervos vol. 3, no. 257; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.) and the monumental Trois musiciens (1921, Zervos vol. 4, no. 331; The Museum of Modern Art, New York).
While G.F. had occasionally acted as a marchand-amateur, selling and exchanging works as the couple’s tastes evolved through the years, the global economic crisis of the early 1930s forced him to begin dispersing the collection to offset their losses. Paquet de tabac, vase à fleurs, journal, verre, bouteille remained with the Rebers until at least 1932 before returning to the market, and subsequently entered the collection of the esteemed art historian and scholar of Cubism, Douglas Cooper. Cooper had met Reber in the early 1930s and was well acquainted with his extensive collection, which helped to fuel his own growing appreciation of Cubism. The painting remained with Cooper for the rest of his life, featuring in photos of the collector’s home at the Château de Castille and later, his apartment in Monaco.