Picasso’s love affair fetches strong price

LONDON - Agence France-Presse

The painting entitled ‘Woman sitting by a window’ by Pablo Picasso was sold to an anonymous buyer for $45 million at Sotheby’s in London. AFP photo

A portrait of Pablo Picasso’s lover Marie-Therese Walter sold in London on Feb. 6 for $45.0 million, Sotheby’s auction house said.

The colorful and curvaceous “Femme assise pres d’une fenetre” (Woman sitting by a window), painted in 1932, was sold at a crowded salesroom to an anonymous telephone buyer, a Sotheby’s spokesman said.
 
It had been expected to go under the hammer for between 25 million and 35 million.

“We are delighted that this stunning and monumental portrait, which is part of the defining series that introduced his ‘golden muse’ to the public eye, fetched such a strong price,” said Helena Newman, chairwoman of Sotheby’s impressionist and modern art department in Europe. “This particular portrait is a striking and notably modern-looking work from one of the artist’s most celebrated periods.”

Secret relationship

Picasso met his famous muse Marie-Therese Walter in Paris in 1927, when she was 17 and he was 45. Their relationship was kept secret for many years because of her youth and Picasso’s marriage to the Russian ballerina Olga Khokhlova. million.

The affair was revealed in 1932 when portraits of Walter were displayed for the first time alongside other Picasso works in a major retrospective, and Khokhlova realised there was another woman in her husband’s life.