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A shiny, fern-green ceramic pitcher holds four cream-white and two ruby-red peonies on a brown tabletop, presumably wood, in this vertical, stylized still life painting. This was created with loose, visible brushstrokes so some details are difficult to make out. The four peonies clustered to our right are painted with textured strokes of cream white and pale butter yellow. The two red flowers to our left are similarly painted with long, parallel strokes. The leaves are painted with moss and sage green, with vivid royal blue for the shadows. The pitcher has a wide mouth over only slightly pinched neck, and a handle is situated to our right. Cobalt-blue, widely spaced, vertical stripes are flanked by fawn-brown zigzagging lines. The tabletop is painted as a field of brown, separated from the background with a line of navy blue. The background is made with long strokes in aqua, light blue, and celery green that curve around the flowers in the upper right corner. The artist signed the painting with dark blue paint in the lower right corner, “Piicasso,” adding an extra I.

Pablo Picasso

Peonies, 1901

East Building, Mezzanine — Gallery 217-C

Medium

oil on hardboard mounted on plywood

Dimensions

overall: 57.8 × 39.3 cm (22 3/4 × 15 1/2 in.)

framed: 75.09 × 57.15 × 8.26 cm (29 9/16 × 22 1/2 × 3 1/4 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Mrs. Gilbert W. Chapman

Accession Number

1981.41.1

Artists / Makers

Pablo Picasso (artist) Spanish, 1881 - 1973

Image Use

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Copyright

Inscription

lower right: -Piicasso [sic]

Provenance

Marquis de Biron.[1] Chester H. Johnson, Chicago. Acquired 1930 by Mrs. Charles B. Goodspeed [née Elizabeth, later Mrs. Gilbert W. Chapman, d. 1980], Chicago and New York;[2] bequest 1981 to NGA.

[1] This "marquis de Biron" was possibly Guillaume de Gontaut Biron, marquis de Biron (1859-1939). See Les donateurs du Louvre, Paris, 1989: 220, and Georges Martin, Histoire et généalogie des maisons de Gontaut Biron et D'Hautefort, Lyon, 1995: 60.

[2] Provenance from the exhibition catalogue Picasso in Chicago: Paintings, Drawings, and Prints from Chicago Collections, Art Institute of Chicago, 1968: 112, and Pierre Daix and Georges Boudaille, translated by Phoebe Pool, Picasso: The Blue and Rose Periods, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, 1900-1906, Greenwich, Connecticut, 1966: no. V23, 168.

Associated Names

Biron, Marquis de
Chapman, Gilbert W., Mrs.
Johnson, Chester H.

Exhibition History

1936: Picasso: "Blue" and "Rose" Periods, 1901-1906, Jacques Seligmann & Co., Inc., New York, 1936, no. 11, repro., as Flowers.

1937: The Arts Club of Chicago, 1937.

1968: Picasso in Chicago: Paintings, Drawings, and Prints from Chicago Collections, Art Institute of Chicago, 1968, no. 3, repro.

1986: Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, State Hermitage Museum, Leningrad; State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, 1986, no. 21, repro.

2011: Picasso, Miró, Dali. Giovani e Arrabbiati: La Nascita della Modernità. [Picasso, Miró, Dali. Angry Young Men: the Birth of Modernity], Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, 2011, no. 4.8, repro.

2016: The Secret of Picasso's Genius, Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Nagoya; Abeno Harukas Museum, Osaka, 2016, no. 28, repro.

2021: Picasso: Painting the Blue Period, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; The Phillips Collection, Washington, 2021 - 2022, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

Bibliography

1932: Zervos, Christian. Pablo Picasso. 33 vols. Paris, 1932-1978: 1(1957): no. 60.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 310, repro.