ROOM TEXT PANEL: SECTION 3
La Californie
Picasso was intrigued by the fact that his new love, Jacqueline Roque, resembled one of the figures in a much-admired painting by Delacroix in the Louvre Museum. Delacroix's The Women of Algiers, (Les Femmes d'Alger) depicted four women in a harem whom he had encountered during a trip to North Africa in 1834.
In December 1954, Picasso began to paint a series of free variations on Delacroix's
Femmes d'Alger. He began his first version (cat. 19) six weeks after
learning of the death of his lifelong friend and rival Henri Matisse -- and
so, for Picasso, the "oriental" subject of this series of paintings
held strong associations with Matisse as well as with Delacroix. Matisse had
been famous for his images of languid, voluptuous women known as odalisques
-- the Turkish word for women in a harem. 'When Matisse died he left his odalisques
to me as a legacy,' joked Picasso. Many of Picasso's portrayals of Jacqueline
circa 1955-56 represent her in this guise (cat. 9).
The consequences of Picasso's Femmes d'Alger series were far-reaching: 'I thought so much about Les Femmes d'Alger that I bought La Californie,' Picasso explained to his biographer Pierre Daix. La Californie was a Belle-Époque villa situated in the foothills of Cannes in the South of France. Picasso bought it in 1955, and it was here that he painted the Art Gallery of New South Wales' Nude in a Rocking-Chair (cat. 16). The light-filled interiors, the views over the Mediterranean and the exotic garden evoked a feeling of spaciousness and ease which corresponded to Picasso's idea of the Orient.
The art historian and collector Douglas Cooper was perhaps the first to realise that the paintings done at La Californie marked a return to Picasso's peak form. In April 1956, he wrote to the curator Alfred Barr:
' I recently spent the day with Picasso and went through most of what he has
done since last July. I have been greatly impressed ... A whole series
of interiors of La Californie deriving half from Delacroix half from Matisse
- great emphasis on ornament, arabesque, simplification ... In short, as you
are planning to come to Europe, this is a word to tell you that you must see
all this in the studio: it is to my mind much better than anything since 1946.'
Acoustiguide 103
Music 200
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