WITH HIS fiery temperament and colourful private life, Pablo Picasso embodied all the qualities of a hot-blooded Spaniard.
But a new exhibition on the artist will highlight how Picasso developed a taste for all things British during his first trip here.
Picasso spent 10 weeks in London during the summer of 1919, based in a studio in Covent Garden, where he designed scenery and costumes for The Three-cornered Hat, a Ballets Russes production directed by Sergei Diaghilev, which premiered in London that year.
Pictures of Picasso in the exhibition at Tate Britain reveal how during his stay in London, his style transformed from that of a bohemian artist to a dapper British gentleman.
In one photograph, Picasso, then 37, is seated with Diaghilev and Vladimir Polunin, a Russian émigré artist. Picasso is dressed in the quintessentially British outfit of a three-piece suit, watch chain and brogues, his hair neatly greased into a side parting.
Another picture shows the artist with his wife Olga Khokhlova, a dancer with the Ballets Russes, in Leicester Square. Here, Picasso is in a three-piece suit, with a bowler-style hat, pipe and cane.
Chris Stephens, the curator of modern British art and head of displays at Tate Britain, said: “Picasso developed a fascination with Englishness during his visit in 1919. He asked his friend, the art critic and curator Clive Bell to take him on shopping trips to Savile Row and the East End, where he would buy suits, watch chains and bowler hats, which began his lifelong love affair with British style.”
Though Picasso visited Britain only twice, in 1919 and in 1950 to attend a peace conference in Sheffield, he continued to expand his collection of bowler hats and British-made clothes. Picasso’s father, José Ruiz Blasco, an artist and art teacher, was also said to be such an Anglophile that he was nicknamed “El Inglés”. His taste for British furniture and clothes is believed to have influenced Picasso, who in 1915 painted Man in a Bowler Hat Seated in an Armchair with Pipe. Picasso and Modern British Art, which opens next month, will examine Picasso’s reputation here and his impact on British artists.
His paintings will be hung alongside works by artists he inspired, including Francis Bacon, Henry Moore and David Hockney.
The exhibition will feature more than 150 works from public and private collections around the world, including 60 by Picasso. Highlights will include Head of a Man with Moustache, 1912, a key Cubist work, and The Three Dancers, 1925.
The exhibition will also show how Picasso’s reputation changed. In 1945, following the opening of a show of his works at the V&A in London, Evelyn Waugh wrote: “Senr Picasso’s painting cannot be intelligently discussed in the terms used of the civilised masters … He can only be treated as crooners are treated by their devotees.”
However, a retrospective show at the Tate in 1960 attracted more than 460,000 visitors, breaking all previous records.