The Picassos in the 1901 Vollard Exhibition and Their History

Abstract

This article describes Picasso’s first visit to the French capital in 1900, and the events that led to his first major exhibition at the acclaimed Galerie Ambroise Vollard in Paris in 1901. The first section provides a narrative of his early experiences abroad as a young unknown artist, his influences, and the contacts he established with friends, artists and dealers during this important period of his career; the second section traces the histories of the sixty-five artworks that were exhibited, identifying the collections those items went through after they were exhibited, their current locations, as well as the exhibitions in which they have been featured since Vollard first displayed them in his gallery. The last section elaborates on some of the immediate repercussions of the exhibition. The reported findings are the result of extensive research on hundreds of books and catalogs published on Pablo Picasso from 1901 to the present. The new facts we have uncovered are published here for the first time. Readers of the article will learn that the works included in Picasso’s first exhibition in France have been part of the most prestigious art collections, such as those of Justin K. Thannhauser, Gertrude Stein, Chester Dale, Paul Guillaume, Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., Paul Mellon, Helena Rubinstein, Alfred Flechtheim, Walter C. Arensberg, among others. The works have also been featured in such important overviews of his career as “Picasso, 75th Anniversary” 1957–1958, and “Picasso: An American Tribute”, 1962. Thus, while Vollard claimed that the exhibition at his gallery had no major impact, the facts show that it not only played an important role in Picasso’s acceptance as a groundbreaking newcomer, but also left a significant mark on the rest of his career, as evidenced by the works’ inclusion in the retrospectives held in Paris and Zürich in 1932, and New York in 1980.

1. Leading Up to the Galerie Vollard Exhibition

Picasso first came to Paris in 1900 on the occasion of the Exposition Universelle.1 For a few months starting in April, two hundred temporary pavilions from different countries and architectural styles lined the Seine. The grands cafés hummed with visitors. Night and day, people dressed in fancy clothes strolled along the boulevards. The expo featured the first working escalator (patented in 1859 and manufactured by the Otis Elevator Company for the occasion). For the 39 million visitors to the fair, the most popular thing, however, was the Palais de l’Electricité which was meant to capture the excitement of the century just dawning. In words recalling biblical Creation, a single touch of the finger on a switch miraculously released a “magic fluid … bring[ing] light and life” (Roe 2015, p. 3). Gaumont, Pathé Lumière and Raoul Grimoin-Sarran also projected films, taking the opportunity to show off their most spectacular technical advances. Lumière, in particular, showcased the company’s stunning developments in color visions d’art, photographic stills tinted with “natural’ color”—“roses twelve feet in diameter, delicately shaded, finely modeled, so subtle and elegant!” (Roe 2015, p. 4; also Rose 2007, p. 39).

Part of the exhibit was an “Exposition Décennale”, an art show of painting and sculpture from previous decades, including Jacques-Louis David, Eugène Delacroix, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet, Edouard Manet, and the Impressionists. Also shown were works by modern artists like Toulouse-Lautrec, Cézanne, Signac, Bonnard, Daumier, and Vuillard, among others (Frank 2021, p. 298). Coinciding with the Exposition Universelle was a retrospective exhibition of Rodin sculptures from June 1 to late November in a specially constructed pavilion on the place de l’Alma. One hundred and fifty works were on display, including the small-scale L’homme qui marche, considered to have influenced Matisse’s Le serf (Cousins and Elderfield 1992, p. 86). Rodin was there on most days to show his work to visitors. A catalog was published: Exposition de 1900—L’Oeuvre de Rodin Exposées au Pavillon de l’Alma, with twenty-six illustrations (Frank 2021, p. 298). Picasso might have been aware of it since, on the occasion of the retrospective, Casas published an article about the artist in that month’s issue of the review Quatre Gats (Robinson 2012, p. 112). The sculptor would prove to be an important influence in his work a few years later.

Still in Barcelona, Picasso was eager to see his painting Les derniers moments, which had been selected for the Spanish Pavilion of the Exposition. He started making plans for the trip with his friend Carles Casagemas. At this time, a journey to the French capital gave any artist an aura of sophistication. As Sabartés wrote, “Nothing counted except the fashion from Paris. All our intellectuals had been to France (Unger 2018, p. 64). All his energy went into scheming to get his parents to provide the necessary funds. There was no problem with Doña Maria: she had total faith in her son’s gifts and aspirations. Don José was another matter: he still expected his son to follow in his footsteps, train to be a teacher, and then make a name for himself in Spain. This sort of talk made the son all the more determined to leave. Over the course of the spring and summer, Pablo finally wore down Don José’s staunch resistance to the idea, finagled the much-needed funds from Carles’ parents, and hustled to find additional commercial work to raise more money—all the while reveling in the seemingly infinite entertainment available to an adventurous young man in Barcelona, including the theaters on the Paralelo, the brothels in the Barri Xino, and the newly opened bullring Las Arenas (Richardson 1991, p. 151). After Pallarès came back to Barcelona for a few days to buy paints and brushes, he had agreed to join the young Pablo in Paris at some point (Richardson 1991, p. 156). This might have been the final factor necessary to convince Don José.

Picasso did not forget to pack his latest pastels with him as he set out. “He was not going to arrive in the city where he hoped to find fame”, Richardson has noted, “without saleable samples of his work” (Richardson 1991, p. 153). It was an excellent strategy, as it turned out. Don José and Doña Maria came to the Estación de Francia to pay for the ticket and see the two young men off.2 Picasso recalled years later: “When they went home, all they had left was the loose change in [my father’s] pocket. They had to wait until the end of the month before they could get straight. My mother told me long after” (Richardson 1991, p. 157). A notice appeared in Catalunya Artistica on September 27 informing the public of their departure: “the noteworthy artists Ruiz Picasso and Casagemas, who have been named artistic correspondents for this journal, planned to depart yesterday [for Paris]” (Frank 2021, p. 298).

Hugué, Pichot, Junyent, and Nonell were among the fellow Catalans awaiting them at the recently inaugurated Gare d’Orsay.3 They immediately made for Montparnasse, where a mutual friend, the Barcelona painter and stage designer Oleguer Junyent, had a studio at 8, rue Campagne Première. An inexpensive studio was available in the same building,4 Junyent told them, so they went ahead and paid a deposit on it (Richardson 1991, p. 159). However, Nonell convinced them that it would be stupid to settle in Montparnasse; it was far less congenial than Montmartre, which, as well as being the headquarters of the Catalan colony, was the center of bohemian nightlife. He generously offered them the use of his studio at 49, rue Gabrielle, since he was planning to return to Barcelona in a few days anyway. So, they returned to Montparnasse and persuaded the landlord to refund part of their deposit (Richardson 1991, pp. 159–60; also Cabanne 1979, p. 53; McCully 2011, p. 16; Frank 2021, p. 298).

In early October, while waiting for Nonell to leave, he and Casagemas stayed at the cheaper Hôtel du Nouvel Hippodrome on rue Caulaincourt in Montmartre, a picturesque street lined with brothels on one side and rickety shacks on the other (Cabanne 1979, p. 53; Richardson 1991, pp. 159–60; Daemgen 2005, p. 15; Vallès 2014, p. 174; Roe 2015, p. 5; Unger 2018, p. 75). When he finally got to see the Exposition Universelle he was astounded. The choices had created as much controversy on the French side as in Spain, and the curator of the Musée du Luxembourg, Léonce Benedite, hardly an avant-gardist, would write in La Gazette des Beaux-Arts that “the spirit of the Inquisition came to life again in the jury of academicians” (Cabanne 1979, p. 53). There were 106 paintings by sixty painters, and Picasso’s appeared alongside the work of one of his former teachers, Moreno Carbonero, as well as two of the established artists from the Els Quatre Gats group, Santiago Rusiñol and Ramón Casas. One can only imagine the excitement he must have felt as he walked through the pavilions. Impressive during the day, the place truly came to life at night, when 16,000 incandescent lights and another 300 arc lamps turned both banks of the Seine into a glittering fairyland, confirming Paris’ reputation as the City of Lights (Unger 2018, p. 83). The public approached through the Porte Binet, an exotic red and gold archway on the place de la Concorde. The streets bustled with visitors to the exhibition halls that stretched across the city (Roe 2015, p. 3). After decades of struggle for recognition, the Impressionist verdict was finally confirmed by the prices they commanded at galleries and auction houses. But despite their recent success, the officials tasked with selecting the art to be displayed at the “Décennale” still regarded them as suspect. True, Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe—whose scandalous reception in 1863 was generally credited with launching modern art in France—was grudgingly included, as were a handful of paintings by Renoir, Degas, and Monet, but these were swamped by the thousands of unimpressive academic works. It was only at the Musée du Luxembourg that the more representative sampling of French Impressionism could be seen (Unger 2018, p. 85). There he admired Caillebotte’s collection of Impressionist art. Acquired in June 1894, it had taken the museum two years to put it on display (Roe 2015, p. 7). Picasso also made sure to visit the progressive galleries on rue Laffitte, especially Galerie Durand-Ruel, Galerie Le Barc de Bouteville, Galerie Bernheim Jeune, and Galerie Vollard, where he was able to check works by Bonnard, Vuillard, Gauguin, Redon, and others (Frank 2021, p. 300).

While in Paris, Picasso’s work seems to have undergone an evolution that took it from light to shade, from the early vivid polychrome to the later nocturnal hues (Palau 1980, p. 207), from the vibrant, sun-lit bullfight scenes, with their dashes of different pastel tones intended to give movement and local color to the event, to the dark, almost saturated, areas of pastel used to convey the underside of life that he observed in the French capital (McCully 2011, pp. 21–25). The spectacle of diversity stimulated Picasso, for it validated his experimental approach and commitment to the principle of change. It was second nature to him, Cowling has stated, to observe, evaluate, reject, and select, rather than passively accept the status quo, and this sharpened his sense of the apt and the distinctive. Needing to switch into different modes of expression must have made him acutely aware that there were always alternative ways of saying the same thing, and conversely that one cannot say exactly the same thing in every one of them. He grasped that each style had its own character and associations, and was able to switch rapidly from one to another according to the needs of the moment (Cowling 2002, pp. 59–60). Things were changing. New movements were flourishing. The disconnect between the new technologies and art was nowhere more evident than at the Exposition Universelle, where the excitement of the pavilions displaying the latest technological marvels defeated what was shown at the galleries devoted to painting and sculpture. A crucial task for the avant-garde was to match the sense of endless possibility that technology seemed to offer. Instead of simply reproducing what the eye saw, their compositions should create their own reality on the surface of the canvas, a reality more vivid than and bearing only the most cursory resemblance to anything found in nature (Unger 2018, p. 261). With the rise of photography as a medium, the painters’ previous goal of grasping the flow of time was now left to the camera. The aim of painting was, instead, to find ways of expressing the painter’s own response to life (Roe 2015, p. xiv).

By the end of October, he moved with Casagemas into the studio vacated by Nonell on 49, rue Gabrielle, Montmartre (Unger 2018, p. 74). Before he left Paris, the painter had tendered Picasso an introduction to a Catalan named Pere Mañach, who was always on the look-out for promising new arrivals from Spain.5 At the lower end of the art market where the prices were cheap but the potential profits the greatest, a young unknown like Picasso was a more attractive prospect than an already established artist. One of those who plied this territory was this Mañach. He was the son of a safe-and-lock manufacturer in Barcelona who had gone to Paris to promote the family business abroad but had been seduced by the bohemian lifestyle, remaking himself as a small-time trader in antiques and fine arts. Some thirteen years older than Picasso, he had been living in the city since the 1890s, and, in addition to running a little junk shop in Montmartre, he worked closely with a few dealers, including Berthe Weill, a Jewish American born in Paris, a dealer of rare books and antiques, whose scraped-back hair and distinctive pince-nez give her the look of a schoolteacher (Roe 2015, p. 26). Mañach had both a taste for the artistic life as well as unconventional sexual leanings, which made it difficult to settle into a respectable life back home. His politics were those of “fashionable anarchism”, which characterized the progressive philosophies of so many of his fellow Catalan businessmen (Richardson 1991, p. 171; Unger 2018, p. 93). Mañach had been impressed enough with the bullfight pastels that Picasso had shown him at their first meeting to take Weill to rue Gabrielle on November 11 (Frank 2021, p. 299). Now that they were getting the attention of dealers, Pablo and Carles determined that they had to take their work more seriously, as they wrote to Reventós: “We’ve decided that we’ve been getting up too late and eating at improper hours and that everything was beginning to go wrong … So we have arrived at the conclusion that … we will not go to bed later than midnight, and every day we’ll finish lunch by one. After lunch we’ll dedicate ourselves to our paintings” (McCully 1997, p. 31).

Mañach had dealt at one time or another with Canals, Junyent and Pichot, and had developed contacts not only with Weill, but also with more go-ahead dealers in Paris like Ambroise Vollard. He now directed some of his friends and collectors in search of portraits to Picasso’s studio. Emmanuel Virenque, the Spanish consul in Paris, would buy an oil that evoked memories of Spanish preciosismo, the nineteenth-century preoccupation with glittering surfaces, as well as a pastel depicting a bullring in the background (Richardson 1991, p. 164; McCully 2011, p. 21; McCully 2013, p. 38; Frank 2021, p. 299). Casagemas wrote about Virenque’s visit in his letter to Jacint and Ramón Reventós from 19 November: “The man we were waiting for has just left. He has a junk shop nearby, where I’ve seen paintings, and it’s certain he’s going to buy some from us. Now we are waiting for an answer and the money if he purchases any. This runner is a guy called Mañac [sic] and he takes only 20%” (McCully 2011, p. 20; Vallès 2014, pp. 178, 180; Unger 2018, p. 93). Picasso added: “The man has come about the painting, and now we’re waiting for Mañach, to see what he says.” (Frank 2021, p. 299; McCully 2011, p. 21; McCully 2013, p. 38).

On another visit in late November, Mañach got three “bullfight pastels” on consignment from Pablo for 100 francs. Within days, he had sold the lot to Weill for a hundred francs; she marked them up fifty percent and flipped them to Adolphe Brisson, the editor of Annales Politiques et Littéraires (Richardson 1991, p. 163; McCully 2011, p. 21; McCully 2013, p. 39; Unger 2018, p. 93; Frank 2021, p. 298). Her funds were always very limited, so she would never be able to pay Picasso or her other artists as much as she would have liked. But she prided herself on her fairness. She would open her own gallery at 25, rue Victor-Massé in December 1901—to the horror of Degas, who lived a few steps away and was outraged by the presence of a Jewish dealer in the neighborhood (FitzGerald 1995, p. 26; McCully 2011, p. 20; McCully 2013, p. 39). She had learned the trade working for an antique dealer, and had started by peddling Daumier and Toulouse-Lautrec prints, which she displayed pegged like laundry on clotheslines. It was Mañach who had persuaded her to show modern, especially Spanish, painters. Among other artists she would help discover would be Derain, van Dongen, Metzinger, Modigliani, Marquet, Manguin and Utrillo (Richardson 1991, p. 163).

On the strength of Weill’s success with the pastels, Mañach offered Picasso a contract by the end of November (Cabanne 1979, p. 54; Franck 2001, p. 20; Dagen 2009, p. 483; McCully 2011, p. 20; Frank 2021, p. 300). Such contracts between painter and dealer stipulated that the artist should make over the entirety of his production to the merchant in exchange for an agreed sum, usually to be paid by the month. In principle, the whole output became the merchant’s exclusive property, although a clause often gave the artist the right to retain a dozen pictures or so for himself. In Pablo’s case there was no such clause, and the stated sum was 150 francs a month (O’Brian 1994, p. 88).

By mid-December, Carles was as disappointed with his experience in Paris as Pablo was invigorated by it. Picasso thought that it would be a good idea to spend some time back home where his friend could perhaps get back his spirits (Cabanne 1979, p. 57; Daemgen 2005, p. 16; Caruncho and Fàbregas 2017, p. 37; Unger 2018, p. 96). They departed for Spain late in the month in time to get there for the holidays (Cabanne 1979, p. 57; Wright 2013, p. 18; McCully 2013, p. 39; Roe 2015, p. 27; Unger 2018, p. 97). Pallarès was left behind in the rue Gabrielle studio, but he would find the place too big; besides, he was afraid of the local apaches. Thus he would move to 130 ter, boulevard de Clichy, where Signac also had a studio (Richardson 1991, p. 174; Frank 2021, p. 300). He and Casagemas arrived in Barcelona on December 24, in time to celebrate Christmas with the family (Parkinson 2013, p. 61; Unger 2018, p. 97; Roe 2015, p. 27; Frank 2021, p. 300). By the end of January, Picasso was losing his patience with Casagemas; he could no longer handle his friend’s excesses: not just his drunkenness—a failing he very seldom shared—but also his extreme dependence on him, and his exhausting demands on his precious energy. He seems finally to have realized the ambivalent, parasitic nature of Carles’ feelings for him, coming to the conclusion that he had to abandon his subservient friend and get away at all costs. His main concern was to remain master of himself. His friend’s conduct was incomprehensible to him; a man should never be the slave of his emotions, however great his passion for a woman (Cabanne 1979, p. 58). He invoked his uncle’s influence with a local shipping line and made arrangements to put Casagemas on a boat for Barcelona (Richardson 1991, pp. 174–75). The visit to Málaga had proven to be a great disappointment. He would never return to the city of his birth.

Picasso presumably left on his own for Madrid on January 28.6 Carles boarded the steamship Florencio Rodríguez for Barcelona that same day (Frank 2021, p. 300). Before his departure, there had been a confrontation, which indicates his instability and social awkwardness. Casagemas explained things in a letter to the Reventós brothers. He had had an argument with some locals and with Pablo: “The other day, in the midst of an argument, I declared myself a Catalan separatist and insulted them in such a way that Picasso was aghast and we almost came to blows because I told them they had no idea of how to speak Castilian, that what they spoke was indecent gibberish in the accent of a pregnant whore or a damn faggot” (Vallès 2014, 34, p. 229). He continued: “Picasso took off for Madrid this morning. I plan to be in Barcelona for as little time as possible, and if the ship gets there early, I’ll go directly to the train station. If by chance I arrive in the evening or at night, I’ll go to Els Quatre Gats” (Ocaña 1995, pp. 157–58).

Once in Madrid, Pablo spent a few days in a pensión at 4, calle Caballero de Gracia that a friend from Els Quatre Gats, the Catalan writer Francisco de Asis Soler (ca. 1880–1903), must have recommended (Torras 2002, p. 98; Bouvier 2019, p. 30; Cabanne 1979, p. 58). Soler had formerly directed a Modernista magazine called Luz, and had suggested that they collaborate on a new periodical to be called Arte Joven, just as Utrillo and Casas had done for Pèl and Ploma. The idea was for it to serve as a cultural bridge between the capital and Catalonia. He would serve as editor and Picasso as art director (Frank 2021, p. 300). Soler would cover some of the initial expenses. His family had been making some money from a new invention, an electric abdominal belt—advertised as a great remedy for intestinal problems and impotence—which the young Francisco was now promoting in Madrid. In the aftermath of his departure from Málaga and his abandonment of Casagemas, Soler’s offer seemed ideal. With luck, Arte Joven could earn him some badly needed cash and enhance his reputation as an illustrator. In the meantime, he could also sample the cultural life of the capital, putting behind him the excesses of his hopeless friend. He only hoped that it would leave him enough time to fulfill the terms of Mañach’s contract (Richardson 1991, p. 177). The regular hours at the pensión irked him and presently he moved to a place of his own at 28, calle Zurbano, on the Chamberi district, where he signed a one-year lease.7

Mañach, who had been sending Picasso a monthly stipend, informed the artist in late April that the gallerist Ambroise Vollard was ready to host an exhibition of his work from 25 June to 14 July. It was an extraordinary break for a promising newcomer, and it effectively launched the young artist’s international career (Frank 2021, p. 301). Pablo wanted to start making immediate preparations for the show, so by the end of the month he had departed for Barcelona to continue his work there.8 In the roughly two weeks of his stay (McCully 2011, p. 31), he managed to create a considerable number of works designed to appeal to French buyers. The sixty-odd works he executed in such a short period would be characterized by bright color and broad brushstrokes (Bouvier 2019, p. 32). There was a share of Impressionism in them, especially in the tachiste technique he used, but instead of a divisionist touch, he preferred a flaking of tones, the spots of color subtly diluted in relation to each other. He knew, having proved it to himself, that daring led to arbitrariness unless the mastery was rooted in a solid technique. Color would henceforth be a determinant in the outcome, “no longer just the clothing of shape, but an autonomous plastic element” (Cabanne 1979, p. 61).

Born in Réunion Island, he had come to Paris to study as a notaire, in order to take over his father’s practice, but art ended up appealing to him more than the law. Highly cautious and a born digger-out, despite his apparent colonial nonchalance, he had started by peddling prints by Rops, Steinlen, Lewis-Brown, Willette, and Forain, and bought a Renoir nude that he ended up selling for 450 francs, a real feat at the time. After several years “of working out of his home”, he had set up first at 37, then 39, rue Laffitte, at the time an art-gallery area. It was at the last address that he caused a scandal by exhibiting the Cézanne “daubings” that even the Bernhein Brothers and Durand-Ruel, main dealers in “innovators” on the market, had turned down. They made the general public rage or laugh (Cabanne 1979, p. 65). The profits from the Cézanne exhibition would enable Vollard to move into larger premises at 6, rue Laffitte in May, 1896. If his ultimate goal was to make sales, the dealer’s primary passion was collecting; on his own admission, he was always reluctant to sell his best acquisitions, hence his reputation for hiding things away in cabinets and bringing out works reluctantly one by one, though that, too, was partly a strategic sales technique (Roe 2015, p. 33).

Having come to the conclusion that the only way to succeed was to establish a close personal rapport with the artists he admired, Vollard was soon on the best of terms with most of the Impressionists and Post-impressionists. In addition to Renoir, he had established a good rapport with Degas, Sisley, and Pissarro. But he was above all a supporter of Cézanne. His clever exploitation of the artist’s enormous accumulation of his own work, followed by a similar manipulation of Gauguin’s charismatic legend, enabled Vollard to lure progressive collectors to his gallery (Richardson 1991, pp. 194–95). He always drove a hard bargain, even with artists he admired. “Poor Gauguin!” Matisse once remarked. “How he made his tongue hang out, that Vollard … Gauguin would come to him with canvases and Vollard would send him small quantities of paint, small tubes of paint. Yes, Vollard conducted himself shamelessly with Gauguin.” Cézanne was even more succinct. “Vollard is a slave trader”, he growled. Yet, he was one of the first to organize exhibitions of his works (Cousins and Elderfield 1992, p. 85). Berthe Weill despised him and all he stood for. One of his tactics, she recounted, was to beat her down to “a rock-bottom price” on any painter she represented “and then tell the artist that he should not sell her any more work: she was ruining his prices by asking too little” (Unger 2018, p. 109). This was the dealer Picasso would eventually have to face up to in Paris.

As Picasso finally arrived in Paris on 8 May, he did so with his fellow artist Jaume Andreu Bonsons, a habitué of Els Quatre Gats. Prosperous parents were paying for young Jaume to go abroad and study art.9 Bonsons immediately went off to find lodgings, while Picasso headed to 130 ter, boulevard de Clichy. Mañach had already moved into the apartment on the top floor. It consisted of two rooms: a small one that also served as the entrance hall, and a larger one connected with the first. Pere took the smaller of the two and turned it into his bedroom, while the latter would serve Pablo as both bedroom and studio. The communal sanitary services, as in many houses in Paris, were on the landing outside the apartment itself (Palau 1980, p. 228). The dealer was of course stuck with the rent; whether or not this was the original arrangement, it would eventually make for problems (Richardson 1991, p. 193; McCully 2011, p. 36; McCully 2013, p. 40; Bouvier 2019, p. 33; Frank 2021, p. 301). The flat was within a few paces of the café where Casagemas had shot himself; the studio that Nonell had lent them in 1900 was also just round the corner (Cabanne 1979, p. 64; O’Brian 1994, p. 100; Torras 2002, p. 99; Daemgen 2005, p. 16). The apartment did not look out onto boulevard de Clichy, for it was at the back of the building, which made for an even gloomier ambience. Disorder soon reigned over the place. Everything that found its way up the six flights of stairs stayed where it was dropped and each time it was necessary to clear the table for meals, more ended up on the floor. The walls were lined with an ever-increasing number of canvases propped against them. The only hints of decoration were the bowl of flowers that stood on a small oval table, and the pictures he hung on the walls above his bed: a seascape and a painting copied closely from a poster by Toulouse-Lautrec of the dancer Mary Milton (Penrose 1981, pp. 65–66).

Not long after setting up house, Mañach had taken Pablo to see Vollard and his stock of paintings.10 Picasso was especially eager to prove himself during this second incursion into the Parisian art world. His dealer had arranged an amazing opportunity for him. Vollard was a recognized marchand, a friend of Degas and Pissarro, with an incomparable inventory of paintings by Cézanne and Gauguin. He attracted a progressive clientele from all over Europe and America.11 Although he had brought some fifteen to twenty-five paintings and a quantity of drawings and pastels with him from home, the Spaniard still felt he had nothing like enough for the show (Richardson 1991, p. 193). The gallerist’s memory of their first meeting is uncharitable and in part untrue: “I had a visit from a young Spaniard, dressed in a rather studied fashion and accompanied by a compatriot of his with whom I was slightly acquainted. The latter was called Manache, or something like that, and was a factory owner from Barcelona … The friend ‘Manache’ now introduced me to was none other than the painter Pablo Picasso, who, though only nineteen or twenty years old, had produced about a hundred works which he now brought to me with a view to an exhibition, but that exhibition was not at all successful” (Palau 1980, p. 229).

In considering the run-up to the show, Picasso’s choice of supports and paints provides an understanding of just how and with what means he had to work for this important occasion. He had painted directly on cardboard, which required little, if any, preparation and on which oils dried more quickly than on canvas. For the paints themselves, his supplier was a local color merchant, L. Besnard, whose shop was located at the foot of Montmartre on rue de La Rochefoucauld (McCully 2013, p. 40; McCully 2011, pp. 36, 55). No records remain to indicate whether Mañach helped him acquire materials, but it is likely that, after rent had been deducted, the stipend went to pay for canvases as well as the large lot of (presumably cheaper) cardboard of different sizes.

In order to promote his first major Parisian exhibition, Mañach and Vollard invoked the help of Gustave Coquiot, a writer of risqué feuilletons, chronicler of the social and theatrical worlds and art critic. In exchange for a fee or payment in kind—in this case a portrait—he would put his lively pen at the disposal of dealers in need of a preface or a favorable review in order to drum up support for an unknown artist, arranging to have it reprinted in a reputable newspaper (Richardson 1991, pp. 195–98). The style of most of the paintings he saw ranged from a broadly Impressionist-inspired loose and sketchy technique to a more assertively broken brushwork and high-keyed palette, redolent of Toulouse-Lautrec, Steinlen, van Gogh, Gauguin, and others (Wright 2013, p. 22). There was a certain eclecticism about it all, as if at this stage of his life, Picasso wanted to mirror multiple artists at once (Unger 2018, p. 111). The painter later recalled, “They said when I began in, Paris that I copied Toulouse-Lautrec and Steinlen. Possible, but never was a painting by Toulouse-Lautrec or Steinlen taken for mine. It is better to copy a drawing or painting than to try to be inspired by it, to make something similar. In that case, one risks painting only the faults of his model” (Ashton 1972, p. 51).

2. The Galerie Vollard Exhibition

On 17 June, Coquiot’s article was published in Le Journal announcing the exhibition of works by Picasso and the Basque painter Francisco Iturrino (1864–1924) at Galerie Vollard on 6, rue Laffite. He stressed the quality in the former’s work, describing him as the “new harmonist of bright tonalities, with dazzling tones of red, yellow, green and blue” (Boardingham 1997, p. 143; Baldassari et al. 2002, p. 361; Roe 2015, p. 38; Unger 2018, p. 112; Bouvier 2019, p. 33; Frank 2021, p. 302). He wrote: “This very young Spanish painter is a lively, inquisitive man, an acute observer of street scenes and the human adventure … covering his canvases in haste, angry at not being able to move his brushes faster … Here are his whores … at the café, in the theatre, in bed before and after. For the high-class whores he chooses shades of mother-of-pearl or pink for the flesh … The others are seen lying in wait of their prey … without mawkishness or brutality … Here, too, are the mischievous little girls in pink and gray, with their fluttering skirts … and the boys, like seminarists, their faces are cunning as those of monkeys … Here is a dance at the Moulin Rouge … The work of an artist who paints round the clock” (Boardingham 1997, p. 144; McGregor-Hastie 1988, p. 33). As Boardingham has noted, the critic’s text reveals serious limitations as a critical review. Although at least nine of the Picassos shown had explicitly Spanish subjects, including three bullfights, he made no reference to this, even at a time when Hispagnolist subjects had a particular appeal for French audiences. Nor did he discuss the above-mentioned multiplicity of styles in the works exhibited (Boardingham 1997, p. 144). He first had to assimilate a host of stylistic sources and to master the lessons of his artistic forefathers. Only then could he dominate, manipulate, parody, pastiche, and reinvent these models to produce something new. Even now, however, he “Picassified” the styles of earlier masters. For him, style was a matter of interpretation and reinterpretation. A central aspect of his methodology was to work “in the manner of” other artists, for by doing so, he was able to define his own particular style (Rosenthal 1997, p. 289).

The exhibition, which opened on 24 June, contained some sixty-four works—approximately sixteen on canvas, at least thirty on cardboard, with a further five pastels or other media on paper (in addition to drawings), and as many as ten on small wood panels, many of which had been done in only three weeks.12 Iturrino, by contrast, contributed thirty-five paintings which showed gypsies and Paris scenes, as well as an unspecified number of drawings (Frank 2021, p. 302). Coquiot recalls that the pictures were not displayed “as they usually are today, with plenty of space and in a single line, but on top of one another almost the ceiling and unframed, while some were not even on stretchers but in large folders, at the mercy of any collector or visitor (Palau 1985, p. 257; Richardson 1991, p. 194; Perdrisot-Cassan and Mattiussi 2021, p. 392). Picasso’s skill as an interpreter of street life in Montmartre was not, of course, the main preoccupation of the average buyer. Most art consumers were mainly concerned with polish, finish, narrative subject matter, soothing landscapes tastefully executed in pastel or gray tones, or with the snob value attached to the work of known academicians. Nevertheless, here was a young newcomer of astonishing talent and, by the standards of the time, the show was a success, even if, from Vollard’s perspective, Picasso had achieved nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, fifteen works (more than half of those shown) were marked as sold even before the exhibition opened (Rubin 1980, p. 29; McCully 2013, p. 44; Bouvier 2019, p. 33). The show was even referenced back in Barcelona in La Veu de Catalunya. The Catalan critic Pere Coll had written: “Picasso is very young … and at his age I doubt if there are many who have done what he has. He has very great qualities but also great defects. The portraits of his companion Iturrino and one of another friend, Pere Mañach, and a self-portrait are done with great courage and great confidence, indicating the genius of the painter.”13 Pablo gave Coll a painting as a token of appreciation. If, for Vollard, the exhibition amounted to little more than a succes d’estime, to the artist, these earnings seemed a small fortune (Roe 2015, p. 38).

3. After the Galerie Vollard Exhibition

When the show closed its doors on July 14,14 Picasso was delighted with its outcome. Several buyers had already been named in the catalog. In addition to Sainsère and Virenque, there was Madame Besnard, the wife of the color merchant at 68, rue de La Rochefoucauld; Maurice Fabre of Narbonne, a client of Vollard’s who already owned a number of fine Gauguins; a Monsieur Ackermann, thought to have been a dealer; Eugène Blot, who took pride in his reputation as a dénicheur; a Monsieur Personas, who must have been A. Personnaz, a Bayonne banker who collected Impressionists, and a friend of Sainsère and Blot; and, most interesting of all, “Madame K. Kollwitz, artiste peintre à Berlin”. As for works sold during the show, no records have survived. Whether an early collector like Arthur Hue acquired anything, we do not know. Some of the other, more progressive buyers must have made purchases. Max Jacob also helped: a rich cousin of his bought one of the paintings, clearly through his intervention (Cabanne 1979, p. 68; Richardson 1991, pp. 200–1; Geelhaar 1993, p. 16), The day before the closing, Picasso had written to his friend Joan Vidal Ventosa in Barcelona: “My exhibition in, Paris has had some success. Almost all the papers have treated it favorably, which is something.”15 Mañach had also been pleased with the outcome of the show. His investment had paid off and left him with several items for stock (Daix 1993, p. 27).

Félicien Fagus, nom de plume of the poet Georges Faillet (1872–1933), titled his 15 July review of the Vollard show in La Revue Blanche “L’Invasion espagnole: Picasso”: “a harsh imagination, somber, corrosive, sometimes magnificent, but a … consciously lugubrious magnificence, … All these artists … follow their great ancestors … particularly Goya, the bitter, mournful genius. His influence is seen in Picasso, the brilliant newcomer. He is the painter, utterly and beautifully the painter; he has the power of divining the essence of things … Like all pure painters he adores color for its own sake … he is enamored of all subjects, and every subject is his … Besides the great ancestral masters, many likely influences can be distinguished—Delacroix, Manet (everything points to him, whose painting is a little Spanish). Monet, van Gogh, Pissarro, Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas, Forain, Rops … Each one a passing phase, taking flight as soon as caught … Picasso’s passionate surge forwards has not yet left him the leisure to forge a personal style; his personality is embodied in this hastiness, this youthful impetuous spontaneity … The danger lies in this very impetuosity’, which could easily lead to facile virtuosity and easy success … That would be profoundly regrettable since we are in the presence of such brilliant virility.” (Cabanne 1979, p. 68; Richardson 1991, p. 198; McCully 1997, p. 35; McCully 2011, p. 47; Roe 2015, p. 37; Unger 2018, pp. 111–12; Bouvier 2019, p. 34). Fagus commended several works, including Les Blondes Chevelures, the picture Picasso gave him as a token of his gratitude for this review. This canvas recalled a composition by Gauguin of three girls dancing.

Pablo had emerged from the Vollard exhibition as a promising artist. For a reviewer of Fagus’s level of critical perception, there was enough evidence in his work to demonstrate that his engagement with, and transformation of, the styles of others was more than mere pastiche, and that his ability to wear and switch between different artistic mantles in fact elevated him above the slavish followers of a particular school or artist. This chimed with the Spaniard’s own ideas about his developing artistic identity, which he clearly enjoyed changing and reinventing (Wright 2013, p. 23). He went back to work after the Vollard show boiling with creativity. While Spain had nurtured experimentation, France allowed it to happen. As Pablo told Maurice Raynal, “Had Cézanne worked in my country, he would have been burned at the stake” (Cabanne 1979, p. 69).