Hong Kong – Christie’s is pleased to announce Pablo Picasso’s Buste d’homme dans un cadre from the Estate of Sir Sean Connery, as a leading highlight of the 20^th and 21^st Century Art Evening Sale to take place on 26 May at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (estimate on request; in the region of HK$150 million/ US$19 million). Offered fresh to the market and extraordinary among Picasso’s late works for its orderly composition, graceful, decisive lines, and intensity of expression, this seminal canvas is one of the finest and most striking of the artist’s paintings from the last decade of his life.

Buste d’homme dans un cadre is an epic representation of Picasso’s iconic musketeer motif: the pan-European, 17^th Century swashbuckling archetype of masculinity, deriving its inspiration from celebrated golden age master painters such as Rembrandt and Velázquez, and literary giants Shakespeare and Dumas. In this painting, the sitter bears the gaze of Picasso’s own intense black eyes, sporting a goatee worthy of the Cardinal Richelieu, a literary nemesis in Dumas’ famed novel The Three Musketeers which Picasso re-read in 1966, sparking his inspiration for the series. In Picasso’s version of Cardinal Richelieu in the present work, the subject displays an affable flair, through an intensely colourful palette depicting his distinctive hair and facial features; the strong gaze and wide collar of his costume recall the directness and intensity of Rembrandt’s self-portraits.

In this work, the style of paint application is indebted much more to Vincent van Gogh: dense swirling strokes of paint emanate throughout, curling within his ruff, around his head and even up over the top of the painted frame—whereupon Picasso modernises the clever trompe l’oeil compositional device—referencing the ornate gilt of Baroque ornamentation in a playful bright yellow, energetically articulated with rapid, gestural strokes and scrawls of black, white, and sable, reminiscent of Van Gogh’s unruly sunflowers and strong winds on wheat fields.

NOTES TO EDITORS

Preview (by appointment only):

Hong Kong | 20 – 21 April | 9/F, H Queen’s, 80 Queen's Road Central

New York | late April to mid-May | 20 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10020

Hong Kong | 21 – 26 May | Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, No. 1 Harbour Road, Hong Kong

Auction:

Hong Kong | 26 May | Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, No. 1 Harbour Road, Hong Kong