Buveuse assoupie

Buveuse assoupie; (Sleepy drinker)
	Pablo Picasso , 1902
	Oil on canvas
	80 × 60.5 cm
	Art Museum Bern Link to the picture; (please note copyrights )

Buveuse assoupie (Sleeping Drinker) is a painting by Pablo Picasso from 1902 and is attributed to his so-called Blue Period . The 80 × 60.5 cm picture is executed in oil on canvas and depicts a careworn woman wrapped in a blue cloth. She sits slumped and with her eyes closed at a round table on which an empty absinthe glass stands. The provenance of this work is considered to be exemplary for dealing with modern art in the political context of the 20th century. It has been on display at the Kunstmuseum Bern since 1979 .

title

Buveuse assoupie with the German translation Geslefene Trinkerin is the title under which the painting is exhibited in Bern . However, in the course of its existence it has changed its name several times. So it was said in 1914 with the French gallery owner Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler Femme devant une table de café and in the same year in a Munich exhibition Frau am Tisch . In the Hamburger Kunsthalle it was called The Absinthe Drinker from 1918 and Buveuse d'absinthe at an auction in Lucerne in June 1939 . It was renamed to avoid confusion with other paintings by Picasso. For example, under the title La buveuse d'absinthe (Absinthe Drinker), a painting from 1901, oil on canvas, measuring 73 × 54 centimeters, is on display in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg . Another Buveuse d'absinthe is located in the Kunstmuseum Basel , it also dates from 1901, measures 81 × 60 centimeters and the technique is oil on canvas. The picture Drinker leaning on her elbow in 1901, oil on cardboard, 65.5 × 50.8 cm in the Melville Hall collection in New York is sometimes called The Absinthe Drinker .

Emergence

Picasso painted the Buveuse in Barcelona in 1902, after visiting the Saint Lazare women's prison several times and drawing numerous studies there. It is part of a work phase that is seen as a time of orientation and during which the artist dealt with the depiction of beggars, street girls, drinkers, the elderly and the sick. These pictures characterize the cryptic mood of the so-called Blue Period and yet stand in line with the development of avant-garde art since the mid-19th century, when artists turned away from academic ideals . In particular, the lonely absinthe drinkers depicted several times by Picasso have their predecessors in works by Édouard Manet , Edgar Degas and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec , among others , the motif is considered to be directly linked to the French art scene of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Édouard Manet: The Absinthe Drinker , 1859
Edgar Degas: The Absinthe , 1876
Henri Toulouse-Lautrec: Monsieur Boileau , 1893

Provenance

In 1906, the writer Gertrude Stein bought the painting from the artist, it remained in her possession until 1913 and hung in the Paris apartment she shared with her brother . When the household was dissolved, Stein sold it to the gallery owner Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, who in turn sent it to the Caspari Gallery in Munich in the summer of 1914 for an exhibition . The Hamburg industrialist Oskar Troplowitz bought the factory there, and until his death in 1918 the Buveuse hung in his study in a villa on the Alster . His wife Gertrud Troplowitz initially loaned the picture to the Hamburger Kunsthalle in early 1919 , and when she died in 1920 it was bequeathed to the museum.

In 1937 the National Socialist Art Commission confiscated the painting as part of the “ Degenerate Art ” campaign. Initially it was stored in a depot in Niederschönhausen Castle , in 1939 it was given to the Galerie Fischer in Lucerne to be resold to bring foreign currency and it was announced at high prices for an auction on June 30, 1939. However, Valerie Alport , the heiress of the Troplowitz couple, filed a legal objection and then took legal action against the sale of the painting, stating that it had been explicitly given to the Kunsthalle and thus to the Hamburg public and that the German Reich did not have the right to sell this gift. The Buveuse was called, but could not be sold at the desired minimum price of 42,000 Swiss francs . In May 1940, the Lucerne City District Court rejected Alport's claim, and in early 1942 the ophthalmologist and president of the Glarus Art Association, Othmar Huber, bought the painting. In 1979 it was given to the Kunstmuseum Bern as a foundation .

literature

Thomas Buomberger: Looted art - art theft. Switzerland and the trade in stolen cultural goods during the Second World War, Zurich 1998, ISBN 3-280-02807-8 , pp. 60 ff.

Marcus Casutt: The fate of a picture: Picasso's Buveuse from the Othmar Huber Collection, Glarus ; in: The art of collecting. Swiss art collections since 1848 , published by the Swiss Institute for Art Research , Zurich 1998, ISBN 3-908184-87-8 , pp. 99–106

Edith Oppens: The Mandrill. Hamburg's twenties , Seehafen-Verlag Erik Blumenfeld, Hamburg 1969

Web links

Kunstmuseum Bern: Pablo Picasso - Buveuse assoupie, 1902 , picture description and provenance history on YouTube

Individual evidence

↑ St. Petersburg Guide: Pablo Picasso - The Absinthe Drinker
^ Collection in Obersteg in the Kunstmuseum Basel
^ Pablo Picasso on google books, p. 11
^ Ingo F. Walther: Pablo Picasso 1881-1973, Volume I Works 1890-1936 , Benedikt Taschen Verlag, Cologne 1995, ISBN 3-8228-8813-3 , pp. 83 ff.
^ Thomas Buomberger: Looted art - art theft. Switzerland and the trade in stolen cultural goods during the Second World War, Zurich 1998, ISBN 3-280-02807-8 , pp. 60 ff.

[1] St. Petersburg Guide: Pablo Picasso - The Absinthe Drinker

[2] Collection in Obersteg in the Kunstmuseum Basel

[3] Pablo Picasso on google books, p. 11

[4] Ingo F. Walther: Pablo Picasso 1881-1973, Volume I Works 1890-1936 , Benedikt Taschen Verlag, Cologne 1995, ISBN 3-8228-8813-3 , pp. 83 ff.

[5] Thomas Buomberger: Looted art - art theft. Switzerland and the trade in stolen cultural goods during the Second World War, Zurich 1998, ISBN 3-280-02807-8 , pp. 60 ff.