Artwork knowledgeable Agnes Sevestre-Barbe factors to a rediscovered Picasso portray “Bust of a Woman in a Flowery Hat,” on Wednesday in Paris. The portrait of longtime muse and companion Dora Maar bought Friday at public sale for 32 million euros (about $37 million).
Emma Da Silva/AP
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Emma Da Silva/AP
PARIS — A vividly hued Picasso portrait of longtime muse and companion Dora Maar that had remained hidden from public view for greater than eight many years bought Friday at public sale for 32 million euros (about $37 million), together with charges — surpassing expectations however removed from the artist’s most costly work ever auctioned.
Painted in July 1943, “Bust of a Woman with a Flowered Hat (Dora Maar)” depicts Maar in a brightly coloured floral hat. Maar, an artist and photographer herself, had been Picasso’s companion and muse for about seven years, and the connection was coming to a painful shut. The work was bought in 1944 and had not been available on the market since, remaining within the household assortment.
The portray, a part of Picasso’s “Woman in a Hat” sequence, was auctioned on the Drouot public sale home in Paris. Auctioneer Christophe Lucien known as the ultimate sale, to a purchaser within the room, “an enormous success,” in addition to a really emotional second. He stated the value — 32,012,397 euros after including purchaser charges to the 27-million hammer worth — was not solely nicely above estimates but in addition the best paid at public sale this 12 months for any art work in France.
Lucien known as the portray “a little piece of the story of love” — albeit a bittersweet one — between Picasso and Maar. She was 29 when she met the artist and shortly turned his muse and the mannequin for “Guernica,” amongst different works. He later left her for the youthful Francoise Gilot and she or he died at 89, having lived an more and more reclusive life.
Theirs “was not a very simple story,” Lucien stated, including that the portray got here on the finish of it. “You see that she was containing tears because she understood that Picasso was leaving her.”
At a preview this week, Picasso specialist Agnès Sevestre-Barbé marveled at how vivid the portrait has remained.
“We have a painting that is exactly as it was when it left the studio,” she stated. “It wasn’t varnished, which means we have all its raw material, all of it. It’s a painting where you can feel all the colors, the entire chromatic range.”
“It’s a painting that speaks for itself,” she added. “You just have to look at it — it’s full of expression, and you can see all of Picasso’s genius.”
Beforehand, Sevestre-Barbé famous, the work had solely been seen in a black-and-white {photograph}. “We couldn’t imagine from this photo that this painting was so colorful, so amazing, really.”
Auctioneer Lucien stated earlier than the sale that the work was of big curiosity throughout the globe.
“It’s being talked about in all the world capitals with a strong art market, from the United States to Asia, and of course through all the major European markets,” he stated.
Although promoting above expectations, the work was removed from the costliest Picasso work bought at public sale. In 2023, the artist’s famed “Femme à la montre” (“Woman with a Watch”) — portraying one other muse, Marie-Thérèse Walter — bought for $139.4 million, the second most beneficial Picasso bought at public sale. Probably the most precious was $179.4 million, paid in 2015 for a model of “Les Femmes d’Alger” (“Women of Algiers”).
