A t.mes less double portrait of Picasso and arguably his greatest muse, Jacqueline Roque, Homme et femme nue is an iconic example of the artist’s late masterworks. Painted on 21 February 1967, the large canvas immortalizes the artist and his wife (see fig. 1) as the alter-egos of musketeer and woman, aligning them with the greatest painters and models in the whole of art history.
The late 1960s found Picasso awash in the great works of literary and artistic masters. While recovering from an operation in 1966, the artist immersed himself in the triumphant writings of Balzac, Shakespeare, Dickens and Dumas—undoubtedly influencing the series of Musketeers which would follow in the subsequent years. One of the great subjects of the artist's late oeuvre, the musketeer was one among a cast of avatars which projected different aspects of his own psyche. These portraits of the various archetypes that populated Picasso's personal mythology were part of a final synthesis which merged the artist's personal history with the masters of the Western artistic tradition. In doing so, Picasso developed a direct and spontaneous style that glorified the act of artistic creation. In choosing the iconography shared by Old Master painters such as Rembrandt, Velázquez, El Greco and Hals, Picasso was, at the end of his career, consciously aligning himself with the greatest artists of the Western canon.
A richly textured and striking portrayal of lovers, Homme et femme nue encapsulates the greatest achievements of Picasso’s late career. In the present work, the artist’s lively brushwork and spontaneous expressivity are on full display. Heightened by his limited palette, Picasso’s pioneering use of materials create a brilliant effect of gloss variation throughout the canvas, his fluid application of Ripolin contrasting with thicker areas of impasto.
While a palpable sexual energy underlies much of the artist’s late oeuvre, the present work exudes a subtler sensuality and romanticism. The male figure in Homme et femme nue—denoted as a musketeer by his beard and ruff—holds his beloved in one arm as he extends a ring with the other. The woman in turn extends her arm to meet his, her long hair cascading like a wedding veil behind her. Painted five years after Picasso and Jacqueline’s marriage, Homme et femme nue portrays a couple still ardently devoted to each other. The composition as well as the posturing of the male figure in Homme et femme nue also echo the work of Rembrandt, one of Picasso’s most idolized artists (and one who often portrayed himself in cost.mes as well). In its day, the Dutch master’s Self-portrait with Saskia (see fig. 2) served as an informal wedding portrait of the artist and his newlywed, Saskia van Uylenburgh.
“You’re not a painter until you’ve painted gray.”
By the late 1960s, Picasso had consciously reduced his palette in a number of related musketeer compositions and double portraits. The artist’s choice to render his final muse in bold monochromatic tones in Homme et femme nue can be seen as an act of love, even veneration. Picasso’s greatest masterpieces from the latter half of his career, including Guernica, The Charnel House and the series of Las Meninas (see fig. 3), were dramatized by the bold contrast of black against white and softened in places by grey, the beauty of their forms exalted to an historical echelon by excluding extraneous color. Recontextualized in his later series of nudes, lovers and musketeer-painters, such works also carry the weight of the grisaille tradition which placed primacy on the play of light and form over color.
As art historian David Sylvester stated: “The need to isolate often governs Picasso's use of colour. At different t.mes s he isolates blue, pink, black-and-white, and so on…It's often said that Velazquez and Goya made a colour of black; Picasso's black and-white pictures isolate this strain in the Spanish tradition. The…absence of variety in the colour helps to isolate qualities of form. Thus black-and-white tends to be used in ambitious and complex compositions like L'Atelier de la Modiste, Guernica, The Charnel House, and the first Meniñas. It has been said that the absence of colour from Guernica and The Charnel House has to do with their tragic content, but this doesn't square with its absence from the other pictures. What all four pictures have in common is that they are larger canvases with more figures in them than most Picassos” (quoted in Exh. Cat., New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Picasso: Black and White, 2013, p. 23).
An Ode to Monochrome: A Selection of Picasso’s Late Masterpieces in Museum collects ions
The 2013 Picasso Black and White exhibition at the Guggenheim was devoted to black and white masterworks like the present and highlighted Picasso’s obsessive interest in line and form and the complexities of his pictorial vocabulary. An oft overlooked subset of the modern master’s oeuvre, such extraordinary works of limited color showcase Picasso’s artistic brilliance and bravura handling in sharp relief. Exhibited around the world over the last fifty years, Picasso’s Homme et femme nue stands among his late oeuvre as an exceptionally robust and romantic rendition of his iconic motifs. It comes to auction for the first t.mes
in more than 30 years.