[PICASSO] PULHAM, Peter Rose (1910-1956)

[PICASSO] PULHAM, Peter Rose (1910-1956)

Later silver print
Paris, c. 1938, approx. 24,1 x 24,3 cm
Print made in 1975 by Isolde Baumgart, from the original negative
Small stains and imperfections on the surface of the print
Pencil annotation on the verso

A fine portrait of Picasso, seated in the half-light of his studio on the rue des Grands-Augustins

At least a dozen portraits of Picasso are known from this photographic session, all taken in his studio at 7, rue des Grands-Augustins in Paris. Few photographers had the opportunity to photograph the master in his element during this period. With his hands crossed, a cigarette between his fingers, and a pensive gaze, Picasso appears here to be observing one of his canvases at the other end of the room.

Pulham was one of the rare 20th-century artists to leave photography for painting (Man Ray was another) at the turn of the 1930s. Living intermittently in Paris and London, he moved at this time in a broad circle of artists, including Pablo Picasso and Max Ernst. Like many of the greatest modern painters, however, he continued to interrogate the differences between these two mediums and to seek to prove that painting could, in his own words, “express some supposed reality, to illuminate ordinary objects with that vivid flash of light which suddenly makes everything seem clear and inevitably right, and I really believe now that a painting can be more realistic than a photograph” (Pulham, ‘The Camera and the Artist’, 1952, in D. Mellor, Too Short a Summer: The Photographs of Peter Rose Pulham, exh. cat., York, 1979, p. 19).