La toilette de la mère

Picasso first encountered the wandering acrobats of Paris on the Place des Invalides in 1904. For him, the lives of the so-called saltimbanques, who had performed in the squares of Paris since the 15th century, reflected that of bohemian artists, who also lived vicariously by their art. Despite the harsh reality of their impoverished existence, Picasso portrayed these street performers with an almost otherworldly grace in intimate scenes of family life, portraits and theatrical tableaus.

Due to the artist's youthful poverty and lack of demand for his work, very few impressions from La Suite des Saltimbanques were printed at the time of their creation in 1904-05. The plates were subsequently acquired in 1911 by the art dealer Ambroise Vollard, who had them steel-faced, an electrolytic process whereby the copper plates were coated with a thin layer of steel. This hardened the surface of the plates so that they could be printed in larger numbers. As a consequence, much of the subtlety and nuance of these delicately etched images was lost.

Impressions before steel-facing of La toilette de la mère are very rare. Brigitte Baer cites approximately twelve impressions before steel-facing printed by Delâtre, two of which are in public collections: Musée Picasso, Paris (on Arches, signed in pencil), and Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest (signed in pencil). Marc Rosen suggests that a further two impressions were printed on wove paper by Louis Fort prior to steel-facing for Vollard himself, after his acquisition of the plates in 1911. '[These] pre-steel facing proofs show the plates in virtually the same condition as they were in 1905, and the impressions fortuitously seem very much in the tradition of Delâtre in their use of plate tone, though relying much less on [Delâtre's] selective 'interpretive' highlighting which so much exasperated Picasso' (Picasso, The Intaglio Prints: 1904-1968, Marc Rosen Fine Art, Ltd., New York (exh. cat.), 22 October - 13 November 1999, p. 4).

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