Collection Comparisons: Picasso’s Harlequins

In the Collection Comparisons series, we pair one work from Gauguin to Picasso: Masterworks from Switzerland with a similar work from the Phillips’s own permanent collection.

Collection Comparison_Picasso_Harlequin-Jester

(left) Pablo Picasso, Harlequin with Black Mask, 1918. Oil on wood, 45 5/8 x 35 in. The Rudolf Staechelin Collection © 2015 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York (right) Pablo Picasso, The Jester, 1905. Bronze, overall: 16 1/8 x 14 x 8 1/4 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, Acquired 1938; © 2015 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Aritsts Rights Society (ARS), New York

Painted in Pablo Picasso’s Montrouge, France studio, Harlequin with Black Mask at left above, shows the artist’s embrace of classicism and the motif of the harlequin, which first appeared in his Sketchbook No. 59 in 1916. Also in 1916, French writer Jean Cocteau dressed as a harlequin to invite Picasso to participate in Parade, his project for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Although a harlequin never appeared in Parade, Picasso painted one at the center of the huge curtain designed for the ballet, which may have inspired this painting.

Karl Im Obersteg and Duncan Phillips were also fascinated by this theme in Picasso’s work. In October 1923, Im Obersteg acquired Picasso’s Seated Harlequin (no longer in the collection) from Paul Rosenberg in Paris. Some 15 years later, Phillips purchased the sculpture The Jester (not currently on view at the Phillips) from Buchholz Gallery for $685.

Collection Comparisons: Cézanne’s Still Lifes

In the Collection Comparisons series, we pair one work from Gauguin to Picasso: Masterworks from Switzerland with a similar work from the Phillips’s own permanent collection.

Collection Comparison_Cezanne

(left) Paul Cézanne, Glass and Apples, 1879–1882. Oil on canvas, 12 3/8 x 15 3/4 in. The Rudolf Staechelin Collection © Kunstmuseum Basel, Martin P. Bühler (right) Paul Cézanne, Ginger Pot with Pomegranate and Pears, 1893. Oil on canvas, 18 1/4 x 21 7/8 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, Gift of Gifford Phillips in memory of his father, James Laughlin Phillips, 1939

Paul Cézanne painted almost 200 still lifes over the course of four decades. By the late 1870s, he focused on household items, such as clusters of fruit, cloth, and a vessel. In 1879, Cézanne produced a series of 11 still lifes, each arranged on a chest set before bluish floral wallpaper. Rudolf Staechelin purchased Glass and Apples, at left above, in 1918.

Painted over a decade later, The Phillips Collection’s Ginger Pot with Pomegranate and Pears by Cézanne (above right, and on view in a gallery adjacent to the special exhibition) shares formal motifs with the Staechelin example, including a display of fruit set on furniture before similar wallpaper. Both paintings were formerly owned by Impressionist artists: the Phillips still life was in Claude Monet’s collection, while Staechelin’s canvas was featured in Ambroise Vollard’s first solo show of Cézanne’s work in 1895 and shortly thereafter purchased by Edgar Degas for 400 francs.

Close inspection of the two works side by side also reveals a key difference. While Cézanne keeps the focus in the foreground in Glass and Apples, the artist adds depth and complexity to Ginger Pot with Pomegranate and Pears by including a second table in the upper left portion of the painting as well as an artfully arranged piece of patterned cloth that hangs along the top edge of the composition.