Lot 224 D α

Born into a very well-to-do Bucharest family, young Jules Pascin discovered at an early age not only his great talent for drawing but also his love of women and his passion for the female figure. Vienna and Munich as true cities of art left their mark on the beginning of his career, indeed, as early as 1905 he first published work in “Simplizissimus”, the German satirical magazine. As of this point the man who was really called Julius Pincas started drawing under the nom de plume of Pascin, an anagram of his surname, at the request of his irritated father. Even after his departure for Paris, an important event in his biography, the focus of Pascin's oeuvre remained on drawings and watercolours, which he committed to paper in incredibly large quantities. His involvement both in leading publications and in important exhibitions in Germany and France ensured that his name was soon widely known. Pascin turned his attention to oil painting only relatively late in his career and the few works he produced in the latter medium in the years between 1907 and 1909 were greatly influenced by the avant-garde art of the times. As is well-known, together with Hermine David he dodged World War I in America but returned to Paris as early as 1920. At this time, his relationship with his former lover Lucy Krohg intensified. It was a period when bohemian society flourished in the Montparnasse district, a time described spectacularly and sensitively by Ernest Hemingway in “A Moveable Feast”, his autobiographical memoirs of the period between 1921 and 1926.
The painting under consideration, formerly in Lucy Krohg's possession, shows, in a fine example of Pascin's work, his mature painting style. The classical Cézanne, the Fauves' coloristic abstraction and the formal freedom allowed for by Cubism are all incorporated into Pascin's style and, in his best works, create a fluid, delicate appearance which is partly poetically reflective and partly veristic but always seeks to portray the living human being.