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Lot Essay
The Comité Giacometti has confirmed the authenticity of this work. It will be included in the catalogue raisonné being prepared by the Fondation Alberto and Annette Giacometti.
This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné being prepared by the Association Alberto and Annette Giacometti and Mary Lisa Palmer.
Portrait de Madame D. is one of fewer than a dozen paintings that Giacometti executed between 1925 and the end of the Second World War in 1945. None of these were done in his Paris studio; Giacometti painted them during visits to Switzerland before the war, and, in the case of the present painting, during his wartime stay there in 1941-1945. Since his return to figuration in 1935, Giacometti's primary interest was in making sculptures, and although he drew on paper on a regular basis, working with oil on canvas during this period usually stemmed from a special interest or occasion.
As a Swiss citizen, Giacometti was able to leave German-occupied Paris and return to his native land on a visa in December 1941. He visited the family residences in Stampa and Maloja, and then rented a cheap, barely furnished room in the shabby Hôtel de Rive in Geneva. The art publisher Albert Skira, who met Giacometti almost nightly for aperitifs, said the sculptor's "room served as atelier and bedroom. It contained a bed and plaster" (quoted in R. Hohl, ed., Giacometti: A Biography in Pictures, Ostfildern-Ruit, 1998, p. 103). Giacometti scraped by on small sums of money he collected daily when visiting his mother Annetta, who lived on the route de Chêne, on the eastern outskirts of Geneva.
These difficult conditions notwithstanding, the sculptor was hard at work, and the products of his labor were unexpected and strangely extraordinary--he created miniscule plaster figures and heads, the size of figures seen at a distance, for which he used up large quantities of plaster. He would model a figure, reduce it, and in most cases, finally obliterate it. The sum of his sculptural output during this period was so small, both in actual size and quantity, that--as Skira witnessed--it fit into six matchbooks that Giacometti carried in his pockets when he returned to Paris at the end of the war.
Skira tried to ease Giacometti's impoverished state. He published articles by the artist in his magazine Labyrinthe, in which he included photographs of the artist at work in his room. He also illustrated some of Giacometti's recent drawings, which were copies of Egyptian and Greek figures the artist found in books. He introduced Giacometti to other people in his circle, and in this way the artist met Madame D., who was from an important Geneva family (fig.1). In 1944 her husband, who became the Swiss ambassador to France following the end of the war, commissioned her portrait from Giacometti. The artist painted two canvases--the present picture, and a smaller, sketchier version (10 5/8 x 8 5/8 in.; 27 x 22 cm.), which he gave to Skira (fig. 1).
The technique and handling in Portrait de Madame D. are closely related to that in the important portrait that Giacometti painted of his mother (fig. 2), as well as two still-lifes of a single apple on sideboard, done in 1937 under the influence of Cézanne, whose work Giacometti had recently seen in an exhibition at the Orangerie. The point-of-view in both portraits is directly frontal. Giacometti has employed, however, in Madame D.'s portrait the curious device, not seen in the smaller version, of a lower sill and side borders, which partly frames the image, and places additional distance between the viewer and the image of the sitter. It resembles that parapet that Renaissance artists would paint below the image of the subject in their portraits. This creates an ambiguous context: this canvas may actually depict a painting hung on a wall (with a realistic shadow rendered below its lower edge), in which case this portrait is already a picture once removed, a painting within the painting. Or is Mme D. perhaps seen viewing herself in a mirror? In any case, in its chronology, conception and aspect, this striking Portrait of Madame D. forms the critical link between the 1937 portrait of the artist's mother and the great portraits of the post-war period.
No less remarkable is the attention that Giacometti has given to Madame D.'s flamboyantly configured hat. Yves Bonnefoy has noted that this portrait "focuses with a somewhat somber humour, worthy rather of Balthus, on her extravagant headgear, further complicating it by suggestions of a mummy's headdress or the Greek warriors' helmets he liked to copy [in drawings] in that period" (op. cit., p. 357). Nowhere else in his oeuvre does Giacometti indulge in such an unabashed display of contemporary fashion. This fascination may derive from his involvement with Surrealism during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Picasso often adorned his mistress Dora Maar with fantastic hats in his portraits of her. Brigitte Léal has observed that "In its preciousness and fetishistic vocation, the feminine hat was like a glove, an erotic accessory highly prized by the Surrealists" (in Picasso and Portraiture, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1996, p. 389).
This painting is sold with a special display stand which Diego Giacometti, the artist's brother, designed and cast for it. Alberto and Diego collaborated on decorative works for the designer Jean-Michel Frank during the 1930s. Diego became his brother's most constant sitter for portraits in sculpture and on canvas (see lot 23). Following the death of Alberto in 1966, until his own passing in 1985, Diego forged a growing reputation as the creator of distinctive decorative works that merged the worlds of sculpture and furniture, and expressed his exceptional sensitivity to animals and nature. The group of works that Diego created for the Musée Picasso at L'Hôtel Salé in Paris marks the high point of his achievement in his later years.
(fig. 1) Alberto Giacometti, Portrait de Madame D., formerly in the collection of Albert Skira, sold Sotheby's, London, 25 June 1996, lot 191. BARCODE 20627706
(fig. 2) Photograph of Madame D. wearing the hat seen in the present lot, circa 1944. BARCODE 15817051A
(fig. 3) Alberto Giacometti, La mère de l'artiste, 1937, private collection. BARCODE 20627690
The present painting seen on a stand designed and executed by Diego Giacometti. BARCODE 20627461
This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné being prepared by the Association Alberto and Annette Giacometti and Mary Lisa Palmer.
Portrait de Madame D. is one of fewer than a dozen paintings that Giacometti executed between 1925 and the end of the Second World War in 1945. None of these were done in his Paris studio; Giacometti painted them during visits to Switzerland before the war, and, in the case of the present painting, during his wartime stay there in 1941-1945. Since his return to figuration in 1935, Giacometti's primary interest was in making sculptures, and although he drew on paper on a regular basis, working with oil on canvas during this period usually stemmed from a special interest or occasion.
As a Swiss citizen, Giacometti was able to leave German-occupied Paris and return to his native land on a visa in December 1941. He visited the family residences in Stampa and Maloja, and then rented a cheap, barely furnished room in the shabby Hôtel de Rive in Geneva. The art publisher Albert Skira, who met Giacometti almost nightly for aperitifs, said the sculptor's "room served as atelier and bedroom. It contained a bed and plaster" (quoted in R. Hohl, ed., Giacometti: A Biography in Pictures, Ostfildern-Ruit, 1998, p. 103). Giacometti scraped by on small sums of money he collected daily when visiting his mother Annetta, who lived on the route de Chêne, on the eastern outskirts of Geneva.
These difficult conditions notwithstanding, the sculptor was hard at work, and the products of his labor were unexpected and strangely extraordinary--he created miniscule plaster figures and heads, the size of figures seen at a distance, for which he used up large quantities of plaster. He would model a figure, reduce it, and in most cases, finally obliterate it. The sum of his sculptural output during this period was so small, both in actual size and quantity, that--as Skira witnessed--it fit into six matchbooks that Giacometti carried in his pockets when he returned to Paris at the end of the war.
Skira tried to ease Giacometti's impoverished state. He published articles by the artist in his magazine Labyrinthe, in which he included photographs of the artist at work in his room. He also illustrated some of Giacometti's recent drawings, which were copies of Egyptian and Greek figures the artist found in books. He introduced Giacometti to other people in his circle, and in this way the artist met Madame D., who was from an important Geneva family (fig.1). In 1944 her husband, who became the Swiss ambassador to France following the end of the war, commissioned her portrait from Giacometti. The artist painted two canvases--the present picture, and a smaller, sketchier version (10 5/8 x 8 5/8 in.; 27 x 22 cm.), which he gave to Skira (fig. 1).
The technique and handling in Portrait de Madame D. are closely related to that in the important portrait that Giacometti painted of his mother (fig. 2), as well as two still-lifes of a single apple on sideboard, done in 1937 under the influence of Cézanne, whose work Giacometti had recently seen in an exhibition at the Orangerie. The point-of-view in both portraits is directly frontal. Giacometti has employed, however, in Madame D.'s portrait the curious device, not seen in the smaller version, of a lower sill and side borders, which partly frames the image, and places additional distance between the viewer and the image of the sitter. It resembles that parapet that Renaissance artists would paint below the image of the subject in their portraits. This creates an ambiguous context: this canvas may actually depict a painting hung on a wall (with a realistic shadow rendered below its lower edge), in which case this portrait is already a picture once removed, a painting within the painting. Or is Mme D. perhaps seen viewing herself in a mirror? In any case, in its chronology, conception and aspect, this striking Portrait of Madame D. forms the critical link between the 1937 portrait of the artist's mother and the great portraits of the post-war period.
No less remarkable is the attention that Giacometti has given to Madame D.'s flamboyantly configured hat. Yves Bonnefoy has noted that this portrait "focuses with a somewhat somber humour, worthy rather of Balthus, on her extravagant headgear, further complicating it by suggestions of a mummy's headdress or the Greek warriors' helmets he liked to copy [in drawings] in that period" (op. cit., p. 357). Nowhere else in his oeuvre does Giacometti indulge in such an unabashed display of contemporary fashion. This fascination may derive from his involvement with Surrealism during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Picasso often adorned his mistress Dora Maar with fantastic hats in his portraits of her. Brigitte Léal has observed that "In its preciousness and fetishistic vocation, the feminine hat was like a glove, an erotic accessory highly prized by the Surrealists" (in Picasso and Portraiture, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1996, p. 389).
This painting is sold with a special display stand which Diego Giacometti, the artist's brother, designed and cast for it. Alberto and Diego collaborated on decorative works for the designer Jean-Michel Frank during the 1930s. Diego became his brother's most constant sitter for portraits in sculpture and on canvas (see lot 23). Following the death of Alberto in 1966, until his own passing in 1985, Diego forged a growing reputation as the creator of distinctive decorative works that merged the worlds of sculpture and furniture, and expressed his exceptional sensitivity to animals and nature. The group of works that Diego created for the Musée Picasso at L'Hôtel Salé in Paris marks the high point of his achievement in his later years.
(fig. 1) Alberto Giacometti, Portrait de Madame D., formerly in the collection of Albert Skira, sold Sotheby's, London, 25 June 1996, lot 191. BARCODE 20627706
(fig. 2) Photograph of Madame D. wearing the hat seen in the present lot, circa 1944. BARCODE 15817051A
(fig. 3) Alberto Giacometti, La mère de l'artiste, 1937, private collection. BARCODE 20627690
The present painting seen on a stand designed and executed by Diego Giacometti. BARCODE 20627461