From childhood, Pablo Picasso revealed extraordinary artistic abilities. His father, José Ruiz y Blasco, a painter and professor of fine arts, discovered his talent early. After the family moved to Barcelona, his father skillfully persuaded the college of the local Academy of Fine Arts to admit the young Picasso to an advanced course when he was only 13 years old.
In 1901, the twenty-year-old Pablo Picasso decided to continue his education in Paris. From the beginning of his stay in France, the young painter could count on the support of the renowned art dealer and collector Ambroise Vollard, who ran a prestigious salon on Rue Laffitte in 1893. Vollard gained fame in the last decade of the 19th century with daring exhibitions of Cézanne, Manet, Gauguin, and Vincent van Gogh. Picasso was also counted among Vollard’s proteges. The painting “Bouquet of Flowers in a Vase,” painted in 1901, was most likely exhibited at Vollard’s gallery in the year of its creation.
Pablo Picasso’s work from 1901-1904 is referred to as the “Blue Period” because this color dominated the painter’s compositions during that time. The still life from Lewin’s collection also reveals a preference for this color in the background. However, the subject matter of the painting deviates from the melancholic scenes that dominated the Blue Period, which mainly depicted figures immersed in sadness, often from lower social classes. Critics attribute the stylistic change in Picasso’s art to the suicide of his friend, Carles Casagemasa, in February 1901.
The still life from Lewin’s collection can now be admired at the Tate Gallery in London, where it has been held since 1933. Previous owners were Louis Libaude from Paris and the London gallery Reid and Lefevre.
Painting Information:
oil on canvas, 651 × 489 mm, in the collection of Tate Modern in London.
Literature: Ronald Alley, Catalog of the Tate Gallery’s Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists, Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, s. 592.
