Stuffed Shirts (Les Plastrons)

Pablo Picasso (Spanish (worked in France), 1881–1973)

1900

Medium/TechniqueOil on panel

Dimensions13.6 x 22.5 cm (5 3/8 x 8 7/8 in.)

Credit LineGift of Mrs. Charles Sumner Bird (Julia Appleton Bird)

Accession number1970.475

On View

Not on view

ClassificationsPaintings

Collections

Europe

Description

Inspired by the café-concerts and music halls he visited during his second trip to Paris, here the young Picasso captured, in the vein of Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec, the spectacle of modern entertainment.

InscriptionsUpper left: PR Picasio [sic]

Provenance1901, possibly Eugène Blot (b. 1857), Paris [see note 1]. By 1931, Josef Stransky (b. 1872 - d. 1936), New York; 1936, after Stransky's death, consigned to Wildenstein and Co., London [see note 2]. By 1969, Julia Appleton (Mrs. Charles Sumner) Bird (b. 1894 - d. 1983), East Walpole, MA; 1970, gift of Mrs. Charles Sumner Bird to the MFA. (Accession Date: September 16, 1970)

NOTES:
[1] This may be the painting lent by Eugène Blot to the Galerie Ambroise Vollard, June 25-July 14, 1901, no. 54 ("Chanteuse"). Ralph Flint, "The Private Collection of Joseph Stransky," Art News 29, no. 33 (May 16, 1931), p. 88, gives the provenance of the painting as Blot, Paris. [2] Exhibited at " 'Collection of a Collector': Modern French Paintings from Ingres to Matisse (The Private Collection of the late Josef Stransky," Wildenstein, London, July 1936, cat. no. 28.