Art expert Agnès Sevestre-Barbe points out a rediscovered Picasso painting “Bust of a Woman with a Flowered Hat” on Wednesday in Paris. The portrait of muse and lifelong partner Dora Maar sold at auction on Friday for 32 million euros (about $37 million).
Emma Da Silva/AP
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Emma Da Silva/AP
PARIS — A vividly colored Picasso portrait of his muse and longtime partner, Dora Maar, that had been hidden from public view for more than eight decades, sold at auction on Friday for 32 million euros (about $37 million), including fees, exceeding expectations but far from being the artist’s most expensive work ever auctioned.
Painted in July 1943, “Bust of a Woman with a Flowered Hat (Dora Maar)” depicts Maar wearing a brightly colored flowered hat. Maar, an artist and photographer, had been Picasso’s companion and muse for about seven years, and the relationship was coming to a painful end. The work was acquired in 1944 and has not been on the market since, remaining in the family collection.
The painting, part of Picasso’s “Woman with a Hat” series, was auctioned at the Drouot auction house in Paris. Auctioneer Christophe Lucien described the final sale, before a buyer present in the room, as “a huge success”, as well as a very emotional moment. He said the price – 32,012,397 euros after adding the buyer’s fees to the hammer price of 27 million – was not only well above estimates but was also the highest paid at auction this year for any work of art in France.
Lucien called the painting “a little piece of the love story,” albeit bittersweet, between Picasso and Maar. She was 29 years old when she met the artist and quickly became his muse and model for “Guernica,” among other works. He later left her for the young Françoise Gilot and she died at 89, having lived an increasingly solitary life.
Theirs was “not a very simple story,” Lucien said, adding that the painting was at the end. “You can see that she was holding back tears because she understood that Picasso was abandoning her.”
At a preview this week, Picasso specialist Agnès Sevestre-Barbé marveled at how vivid the portrait remains.
“We have a painting that is exactly as it was when it left the studio,” he said. “It was not varnished, which means that we have all of its raw materials, all of it. It is a painting where you can feel all the colors, the entire chromatic range.”
“It is a painting that speaks for itself,” he added. “You just have to look at it: it is full of expression and you can see all of Picasso’s genius.”
Previously, Sevestre-Barbé noted, the work had only been seen in a black and white photograph. “We couldn’t imagine from this photo that this painting would be so colorful, so amazing, really.”
Auctioneer Lucien said before the sale that the work was attracting great interest around the world.
“It is talked about in every capital in the world with a strong art market, from the United States to Asia and, of course, in all the major European markets,” he said.
Although it sold above expectations, the work was far from being the most expensive Picasso work sold at auction. In 2023, the artist’s famous “Femme à la montre” (“Woman with a Watch”), which portrays another muse, Marie-Thérèse Walter, sold for $139.4 million, the second most valuable Picasso sold at auction. The most valuable was $179.4 million, paid in 2015 for a version of “Les Femmes d’Alger” (“Women of Algiers”).