Picasso’s £50million mistress
A PICASSO masterpiece has become the most expensive painting ever auctioned in the UK after selling for almost £50million.
The expressionist’s 1937 artwork – Femme au beret et a la robe quadrillee – depicts his mistress MarieTherese Walter.
But experts believe the painting also contains overt hints of another woman, Dora Maar, who he had met the year before and was falling in love with.
Picasso said of the work: ‘It must be painful for a girl to see in a painting that she is on the way out.’
It was painted shortly after his Spanish Civil War masterpiece Guernica but had been in a private collection since it left Picasso’s estate.
It finally re-emerged on Wednesday at Sotheby’s in London for a sale of 47 impressionist, modern and surrealist works.
It was bought for £49.8million by Gurr Johns, an art acquisition firm. The description for Femme au beret on Sotheby’s website said: ‘The women of Picasso’s life were the fulcrum of his creative genius, unquestionably essential to his creative and intellectual processes.
‘The work appears to have been used as a means for exploring his feelings for the two women.’
Harry Smith, from Gurr Johns, said: ‘[The painting’s] appeal lies in the subject, the date, the condition, the provenance, and the fact it’s completely fresh to the market.’