Adam Emory Albright

American, (1862-1957)

Adam Emory Albright was one of the most successful painters working in Chicago at the beginning of the twentieth century. The charm and sentimental nature of his stunning depictions of barefoot country children struck a chord with Midwestern audiences and secured his artistic reputation.

Albright’s charming visions of childhood adventures encapsulates the poetry of the nineteenth-century writers John Whitcombe Riley and John Greenleaf Whittier. Albright’s popularity is largely due to the feeling of nostalgia evoked by these paintings, and the feeling of innocence and idealized childhood pleasure they recall. Using his twin sons and local street children as models, Albright would create works that located poor urban youths in bucolic settings.

Widely collected by the finest institutions in America during his lifetime; including the Art Institute of Chicago, the St. Louis Art Museum, and the Toledo Museum of Art. Such was his popularity in his adopted home of Chicago that he would be five solo exhibitions at the Art Institute, more than any artist in the first half of the 20th century. Today, Albright’s delicately painted visions of carefree children enjoying the delights of nature remain as celebrated today for their timeless elegance and the innocent simplicity of their subject.

These paintings are exquisite examples of Albright’s much lauded works of young children in their pursuit of simple country life. His impressionistic technique of fleeting, quick brushstrokes accentuate the children’s lightness of movement and the gently blurring of lines provides a dreamlike quality. The artist’s ability to convey texture comes to the fore in the work, with Albright’s impressionistic, wet-onwet technique brilliantly conveying the relaxed posture and clothing of the children, the waterlogged browns on the landscape, and the green shoots of new growth that spring up around their feet. With his favourite three colour palette of rose-madder, cobalt blue and chrome yellow he shapes a wonderous, almost pastel like landscape where the gently sloping hills become the backdrop for the wilderness and a meandering brook reflecting a myriad of surrounding colours. The warming sun is palpable as it highlights the two figures and their oneness with nature. Like all children, they are alone in their world of adventure where time has ceased to exist. …For a brief moment, we are allowed to enter their magical world and can reminisce of times past.

A Moment’s Rest

Oil on Canvas

51 x 90 cms / 20¼” x 36”

Provenance

Private Collection, USA.

Gladwell & Patterson, London, acquired from the above in 2021.

Dorothea Sharp

British, (1874-1955)

Inspired by the picturesque coastal landscape of St Ives, Dorothea Sharps’ lively and vibrant beach scenes painted with spontaneous brush strokes of glowing colours brought her to the forefront of British artistic circles. Her charming depiction of children playing on the sand at the water’s edge have in recent years become her most celebrated works, whilst her eloquent still lives are widely collected.

Sharp studied at the Art School in Richmond under Charles Edward Johnson, and at the Regent Street Polytechnic working under Sir David Murray and George Clausen, and later studied in Paris.

During a visit to Paris in 1900, Sharp saw first-hand the work of the Impressionists, which had a profound and lasting effect on her work. Not only was she influenced by the work of the Impressionists, she also came to know and love the work of some of the American painters who were in Paris at the same time. Notably, Frank Benson (1862-1951) and Carl Frieseke (1874-1939).

In the 1920s and 1930s, Sharp travelled widely in Europe, visiting the South of France, Italy, Spain and Portugal. She worked within the tradition of the French Impressionists, and similarities with Monet can be seen in her treatment of light and colour. During her regular summer visits to St. Ives in the 1920s, she began depicting playful scenes of children, often playing on the beach. Sharp’s charming depictions of children are now her most celebrated works. Spontaneous brushstrokes, the use of glowing colours, and the clarity of light define her as a significant figure in twentieth century British painting.

Summer Rockpools

Oil on Canvas

37 x 47 cms / 14½” x 18½”

Provenance

Private Collection, UK.

Gladwell & Patterson, London; acquired from the above in 2021.

Pablo Picasso Spanish (1881–1973)

"It is Jacqueline’s images that dominates Picasso’s work from 1954 until his death, longer than any of the women who preceded her. It is her body that we are able to explore more exhaustively and more intimately than any other body in the history of art."

Jacqueline au Bandeau

Conceived in 1962, Cast in bronze in 1964

Bronze relief sculpture cast from a linocut

34.6 x 26.6 cms /13½” x 10½”

Stamped with the foundry mark ‘E. GodArd Fondr Paris’

Unnumbered edition of 2

Provenance

Estate of the Artist

Marina Picasso, the artist’s granddaughter; acquired from the above.

Gladwell & Patterson, London; acquired from the above in 2022.

Claude Picasso has confirmed the authenticity of this work.

Pablo Picasso’s Jacqueline au Bandeau encapsulates the startling vitality of the artist’s late period, memorialising not only the expressive style which he pioneered; but also his reinvention of the possibilities of printmaking. Picasso commissioned this bronze relief in 1964, of an original linocut entitled Femme au Cheveux Flous, which he created two years prior, as a unique encapsulation of one of his most accomplished print series. Cherished first by Picasso and then his descendants for nearly sixty years, we are proud to present this distinctive work to the public for the first time.

Following his marriage to Jacqueline Roque in 1961, Picasso would embark upon a period of intense experimentation and production, which would characterise his final decade. In these years, the great artist focused his gaze upon subjects he considered to be pure archetypes; foremost amongst these were the face of his muse, Jacqueline.

Picasso always experienced bursts of creative energy when in love, and Jacqueline au Bandeau was conceived in 1962 only shortly after his marriage, one of a group of portraits testifying to his intensity of feeling. More than simple representations, Picasso composed his portraits of Jacqueline from memory, creating some of his most personal and subjective interpretations of the human character.

Yet beyond its striking visuals, Jacqueline au Bandeau stands as a near-unique material record of Picasso’s revolutionary impact on the print medium. In the early 1960s, Picasso would pioneer the reductive method of producing linocuts, greatly expanding the technical possibilities it afforded artists.

Aware of his achievement, Picasso chose to memorialise a small selection his best linocuts in bronze, transforming them into accomplished relief sculptures in their own right. Each line and groove of Jacqueline au Bandeau therefore represents a rare physical imprint of Picasso’s hand as he worked and reworked the printing block. A testament to both stylistic and technical innovation, Picasso’s bronze relief offers the viewer an outstanding opportunity to experience a direct material connection to his genius.

Pablo Picasso

Spanish (1881–1973)

La Serrure

Knitted Wool Tapestry

Designed and Created in 1955

205 x 150 cms / 81” x 59”

Signed ‘Picasso’

Provenance

Commissioned by Marie Cuttoli.

Lucie Weill Gallery.

Private Collection; France.

Gladwell & Patterson, London; acquired in 2022.

Claude Picasso has confirmed the authenticity of this work.

Out of all of Picasso’s unrivalled contributions to twentieth century culture, his successes in elevating decorative media to the status of a fine art is perhaps his most significant legacy. From collage, to ceramics, to printmaking, he continually sought to expand the material language of art; yet the field upon which he had the greatest impact were tapestries and textiles. La Serrure , a knitted wool tapestry designed by the artist and made in 1955, thus stands as an encapsulation of his achievement.

La Serrure was commissioned in 1955 by Marie Cuttoli, a French designer instrumental in the resurgence of twentieth-century tapestry. Cuttoli had, from the 1930s, enlisted a range of artists (including Miró, Man Ray, Leger, Braque and Picasso) to support her project of rescuing the status of textile art. The importance and extent of her contribution is the subject of numerous exhibitions and studies to this day.

The design process involved Picasso creating a cartoon, a to-scale design on cardboard, which was then sent to weavers for manufacture. Throughout the creation of the final tapestry, Picasso periodically checked the unfinished work to ensure its quality was at the highest standard and it was being made according to his plans.

La Serrure is unique amongst Picasso’s woven creations for its use of an original composition. Picasso’s tapestries were often produced as reinterpretations and reproductions of his canvases, most famously in the case of Picasso’s monumental Guernica of 1937, which hung outside the chambers of the Security Council of the UN. There is no painted precedent for La Serrure The textile thus stands as an artwork in its own right.

Translated as ‘The Lock’, La Serrure is a fine example of Picasso’s confidence in translating his style across media. Intended to be used as a carpet, the image of a figure appearing through a keyhole alludes to the domestic setting implied by the artwork in a way rarely attempted by Picasso. The motif of the dove in the upper left corner, outlined in both black and green plays homage to the recurring motif of La Colombe that Picasso incorporates into his work throughout his oeuvre. Standing as a symbol of peace, its presence in the domestic setting is a deeply personal motif for Picasso, who adored animals, and allowed them to run freely around his house and studio. The vibrant colours of red and green with the lineal outlines of the subject in black are juxtaposed against the cream background, revealing Picasso’s confident approach to interior furnishings.

Georges Bauquier

French, (1910-1997)

Nature Morte aux Deux Pommes, No. 5

Oil on Canvas

92 x 73 cms / 36” x 29”

Provenance

Studio of Georges Bauquier, France.

Private Collection, France; acquired from the above.

Gladwell & Patterson, London; acquired in March 2022.

Exhibitions

Cannes, La Malmaison, Georges Bauquier : Natures Mortes à la Fenêtre, December 2002 – February 2003, (reproduced on page 53 of the catalogue.

Vascoeuil, Château de Vascoeuil, Georges Bauquier 1910 – 1997 : Paintings – Gouaches – Drawings, March to June 2005.

Bauquier’s Nature Morte aux Deux Pommes, No. 5 was painted in the middle of the artist’s mature phase. One of a series of still lifes, all of which bear an identical title, the paintings in this series all reiterate similar motifs; two apples positioned on top of a gathered table cloth within a striking interior backdrop. Vibrant wall paper, as in the present work features heavily throughout this series adding to the depth and drama of each composition.

Larger in size than most of the painter’s output, Bauquier clearly saw these pieces as emblematic of his style. Strongly structured and vividly coloured, the artist balances his cubist roots with his personal love of expressive colouration. From the beginning of the 1960s, when Bauquier had begun to truly move out of Léger’s shadow, his work had begun to assume the characteristics we find in Nature Morte aux Deux Pommes, No. 5 ; an interior still life spread across large surfaces of colour.

Nature Morte aux Deux Pommes, No. 5 is most interesting for its return to a central motif for the painter: foliage. Many of the artist’s earliest works concern themselves with plants and trees reaching outwards and spreading their leaves, an analogy to his growing artistic independence, yet as the artist more confidently adopted his own style of still lives these vignettes began to disappear. Nature Morte aux Deux Pommes, No. 5 therefore represents a far more biographical composition than is commonly seen in his work: synthesising his personal late style with a memory of his early years working with Léger.

Georges Bauquier French, (1910-1997)

Georges Bauquier’s career is defined by his intimate, personal and professional relationship with the great Cubist master, Fernand Léger. For twenty years, the two painters worked closely together; and after Léger’s death, Bauquier would be instrumental in both founding a museum dedicated to the artist and writing his eight volume Catalogue Raisonné.

Crucially, despite effectively remaining in Léger’s shadow until the older painter’s death in 1955, Bauquier was able to create his own synthesis of Cubism, creating a personal style that combined Léger, Braque and Cézanne, for which he is increasingly lauded.

As the French critic Tabaraud notes:

“It cannot appear easy to be, for the twenty years from 1936 to his death, both the friend and closest daily collaborator of Fernand Léger and still pursue autonomous pictorial research, yet through constant study in the secrecy of the studio, Bauquier was still able to find a personal identity.”

Born in 1910 in Nîmes, Bauquier would decide to become an artist in his early twenties, enrolling the School of Fine Arts in Paris in 1934, where received a first-rate classical education in draughtsmanship. However, after becoming increasingly dissatisfied at the constraints of academic painting, Bauquier would join the School of Contemporary Art in 1936, where he immediately began to work closely under, Fernand Léger, who was the School’s director.

During the Second World War, where the young artist joined the Communist Party and French Resistance, which culminated in a period of imprisonment by Nazi occupiers. Upon release, he reunited with Léger. During the following decade, the two artists would work together daily; so close was Bauquier’s relationship with Léger, that after the latter’s death in 1955, he married Léger’s widow, Nadia. Alongside his wife, Bauquier immediately set about creating a museum to celebrate Léger’s life, which they opened in 1960 and would subsequently furnish with 348 works by Léger.

Bauquier’s personal style would develop quickly, and while he often declined to publicise his output, his exhibitions in the early 1950s were prefaced by Léger and saw great success in Paris. His works are usually predicated on a balance between great colouristic freedom and maintaining rigid compositional principles which he had learned from his teacher. Bauquier’s best known pieces are his still lifes, which occupy bold, often Cubist-inspired interiors, and frequently feature the artist’s favoured motif, a single piece of vegetation.