779. PABLO PICASSO (1881-1973). "PADRE E HIJO A LAS ORILLAS DEL MAR" (Barcelona, 1902-1903).

Lot description

Ink and coloured pencil drawing on a commercial card of Junyer-Vidal brothers.
With apocryphal signature, probably by Junyer-Vidal brothers. Given that it was not part of the Junyer-Vidal brothers' circle, this work does not have the later signature that Picasso did add directly decades later on other drawings made on these cards.
On the back, printed letters of Fábrica de Algodones Suari y Juñer from Barcelona, with the stamp of "Hermano Juñer-Vidal", to whom the company belonged; remains of previous stickers. This drawing, hitherto unpublished, is one of fifty works that Picasso made at that time on the same kind of support, the haberdashery cards that his friends, the brothers Joan and Sebastià Juñer (or Junyer)-Vidal, had in Barcelona, and with whom he became inseparable at that time. On its surface, Picasso made all kinds of drawings, some of them are excellent representations of the main interests and subjects of his blue period (1901-1904), such as misery and poverty: in this particular case, it is a drawing that can easily be related to several masterpieces of that period, such as "Madre e hijo junto al mar" (1902, Pola Museum of Art, Hakone), but, above all, "La tragedia" (1903, National Gallery of Art, Washington), where he insists on the idea of parenthood and the seabed. However, despite this undeniable relationship, rather than as a sketch -as one of the previous ideas he had at the time until the final expression in the oil painting in Washington- it can be considered as a recurring idea that establishes this drawing as a composition of autonomous value itself. 
Provenance: Sebastià and Carles Junyer-Vidal, Barcelona; private collection, Barcelona; private collection, Salamanca; private collection, Madrid.
Reference literature: John Richardson, "Picasso. I. Una biografía, 1881-1906", Madrid, Alianza Editorial, 1995 (1991), pp. 263-292; Eduard Vallès, "Picasso i el món literari català, 1897-1904", Barcelona, Enciclopèdia Catalana, 2015, pp. 171-174; "Picasso. Bleue et Rose", Paris, Musée d'Orsay, 2018, pp. 163-195.
13.3 x 9 cm; 43 x 38 cm (frame).