Still Life

1918

Pablo Picasso

Artist, Spanish, 1881 - 1973

Abstracted objects, including a guitar, vase, papers, and playing cards, are gathered on a tabletop in this horizontal still life painting. The objects are made up of areas of mostly flat color and many are outlined in black, creating the impression that the some shapes are two-dimensional and assembled almost like a collage. The brown table has an oval top and a curving pedestal foot. At the center of the jumble on the tabletop, a guitar lies on its side with the neck facing us and reaching to our right. Beneath the black fretboard and neck, the curving form of the guitar is painted tomato red. The upper half is represented by a squared-off brown form. The guitar seems to rest atop or in front of an array of stacked shapes, like splayed pieces of paper, in white, lavender purple, and pale blue. A curving form painted in turquoise to our left seems to be a vase holding a spray of three flowers. The vase is shown against a white square painted with horizontal black lines, like sheet music. A dark gray form at the middle of the table, beneath the guitar, could be the silhouette of a bird facing our left. Just to the right of the bird, a pair of playing cards lie on a blue area. Painted in turquoise against gray, one card has six dots and the other one club. A chair with a curved, arching top and a gray upholstered seat is pulled up to the table to our right. The front left leg is light gray with turned knobs near the foot and halfway up the leg; the right leg is painted black, as if in shadow. Panels of pale tan suggest wainscotting behind the table beneath a pale gray wall across the background. The overall impression of the painting is fragmented as even single objects seem to be broken up into planes and areas of color. The artist signed and underlined his name with red paint in the lower left corner: “Picasso.”
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On View

East Building Ground Level, Gallery 103-B

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Chester Dale Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 97.2 x 130.2 cm (38 1/4 x 51 1/4 in.)
    framed: 134 x 167 x 8.2 cm (52 3/4 x 65 3/4 x 3 1/4 in.)

  • Accession

    1963.10.195

  • Copyright

    © 2012 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Gottlieb Friedrich Reber [1880-1959], Lausanne, in 1926.[1] (Paul Rosenberg & Co., Paris); sold 15 May 1930 to Chester Dale [1883-1962], New York;[2] bequest 1963 to NGA.
[1] Reproduced as in the Reber collection in Der Querschnitt, Jahrgang VI, Heft 4 (April 1926). See Christian Geelhaar, Picasso. Wegbereiter und Förderer seines Aufsteigs 1899-1939, Zurich, 1993: 160. The Dale collection inventory, copy in NGA curatorial files, gives the painting's history as "Bought by Mr. Rosenberg from the artist."
[2] The receipt from Rosenberg is in NGA curatorial files.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1931

  • Picasso-Braque-Léger, Museum of French Art, New York, 1931, no. 6.

1943

  • Twentieth Century French Paintings from the Chester Dale Collection, Art Institute of Chicago, 1943-1952 (extended loan), unnumbered catalogue, repro. p. 49

1952

  • Twentieth Century French Paintings from the Chester Dale Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1952, no. 52, repro.

1965

  • The Chester Dale Bequest, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1965, unnumbered checklist.

1978

  • Aspects of Twentieth-Century Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1978-1979, no. 28, repro.

2010

  • From Impressionism to Modernism: The Chester Dale Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, January 2010-January 2012, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

Bibliography

1921

  • Raynal, Maurice. "Picasso et l'Impressionnisme." L'Amour de l'Art 7 (July 1921): repro. 215.

1932

  • Zervos, Christian. Pablo Picasso. 33 vols. Paris, 1932-1978: 3(1949): no. 257, pl. 89.

1943

  • Twentieth Century French Paintings from the Chester Dale Collection. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1943:, 49, repro.

1952

  • Twentieth Century French Paintings from the Chester Dale Collection. National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1952 (2nd ed., 1960; rev. ed., 1965): 52, repro.

1960

  • Twentieth Century French Paintings from the Chester Dale Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1960 (2nd ed.): 54, repro.

1965

  • Twentieth Century French Paintings & Sculpture of the French School in the Chester Dale Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965 (rev. ed.): 73, repro.

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 102.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 90, repro.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 266, repro.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 608, no. 941, color repro.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 308, repro.

2001

  • Kropmanns, Peter, and Uwe Fleckner. "Von Kontinentaler Bedeutung: Gottlieb Freidrich Reber und seine Sammlungen." In Die Moderne und ihre Sammler. Andrea Pophanken and Felix Billeter, eds. Berlin, 2001: 403.

2022

  • Jozefacka, Anna, and Luise Mahler. "Reading Picasso in Munich and Prague in 1922." UMĚNĺ/ART (Journal of the Institute of Art History Czech Academy of Sciences 70 (2022): 163 fig. 8.

Inscriptions

lower left: Picasso

Wikidata ID

Q20192204

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