Picasso masterpiece depicting his young mistress could sell for over US$120 million at auction
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A Picasso masterpiece entitled "Femme a la montre" is expected to fetch more than US$120 million when it goes up for auction this fall.
A Picasso masterpiece entitled “Femme à la montre” is expected to fetch more than US$120 million when it goes up for auction this fall.
The 1932 oil painting will take center-stage at a two-day event at Sotheby’s in New York in November, when the collection of Emily Fisher Landau goes on sale.
The piece, which measures 51¼ x 38 inches (130 x 96.5 centimeters), depicts Picasso’s lover and “golden muse” Marie-Thérèse Walter, who featured in many of his portraits.
According to the auction house, the portrait is from one of the most prolific years of the Spanish artist’s career, which was the subject of an entire exhibition organized by the Musée Picasso in Paris and London’s Tate Modern in 2018.
In a statement announcing the sale, Julian Dawes, Sotheby’s head of Impressionist & Modern Art for the Americas, said: “Picasso’s ‘Femme à la Montre’ is a masterpiece by every measure. Painted in 1932—Picasso’s ‘annus mirabilis’—it is full of joyful, passionate abandon yet at the same time it is utterly considered and resolved. Its bold primary colors sing from the five-foot-tall-canvas.”
Picasso first met Walter in Paris in 1927 when she was 17 years old and he was still married to his first wife, Olga Khokhlova, a Russian-Ukrainian ballet dancer. Walter would become the inspiration for some of his most sought-after canvases, drawings and sculptures.
