Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso painted L'Araignée de mer from his studio on Rue des Grands-Augustins on Paris' south-bank in March 1940, six months after the outbreak of the Second World War. The painting is one of three still lifes (others: National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid) inspired by the artist's recent memories of the seaside market stalls in Royan on the French Atlantic coast. His former partner, Marie Thérèse Walter, and his current love interest, the surrealist artist and poet Dora Maar, were both stationed nearby during his stay in the town.

L'Araignée de mer is one of the last paintings Picasso completed before Paris was occupied by German forces. The jagged and unsettling forms of the crab, fish and eels certainly represent the darkness and fear that shrouded Europe that this time. From another perspective, the painting reflects Picasso's personal life at the time, torn as he was between the mother of his first daughter and a new lover that both fascinated and excited him. It could be that both are pictured here, weighed up as fish on a scale, awaiting their fate. This painting was recently loaned to two major exhibitions: Picasso Metamorphosi at Palazzo Reale in Milan in 2018-19, and Éluard and Picasso, held at Museu Picasso, Barcelona, in 2019-20.

Painted in 1965, Homme au chapeau demonstrates Pablo Picasso's keen occupation with the subject of the 'artist's studio' in the last decade of his life. Many of his artworks from this time are considered hidden self-portraits, painted under the veil of the 'painter and model' theme and depicting amalgamations of certain types: painter, musketeer and rogue. As in the present painting, Picasso's characters are alternately equipped with a range of headgear, a paintbrush, a cigarette or a long-stemmed, white clay pipe and a striped 'Breton' sailor-top, all visually identifiable as part of the artist's signature look at this time.

By this stage, Picasso's image had come to embody the archetypal 'artist' figure and surely it is no coincidence that the same Breton shirt would soon be adopted by pop artist Andy Warhol, who would in turn become a master of the artist's brand himself.

Homme au chapeau also reflects the seminal influence of French post-impressionist artist Paul Cézanne on Picasso from the onset of his career. Cézanne, who lived until 1906, was a leading figure in Paris's art world at the beginning of the century when Picasso arrived to the city in his early twenties. The present work relates most closely to Cézanne's famous Card Player paintings of the early 1890s, capturing scenes of dingy taverns with pipe-smoking protagonists