Chapter 5: A Survey of Picasso’s Prints:
1904-1931, Saltimbanque through Ovid's Metamorphoses

Picasso’s first print was a masterpiece, provided that one doesn’t split hair about which print in fact came first. Apart from one inconsequential, rare, and unpublished etching of 1899, Picasso began printmaking in earnest in 1904 with a series of fifteen etchings known as The Saltimbanque Suite. The first of these was Le Repas Frugal (Fig. 1, Georges Bloch Catalogue, number 1), widely considered one of his very best prints, a testament to a genius who could master a new medium so readily and so completely as to emerge at its pinnacle by the time he had completed a single work. The art dealer Ambroise Vollard published it along with the fourteen smaller prints in an unsigned edition of 250 plus an edition of 50 on Japan paper. These are all the prints which correspond to his Blue and Rose Periods, both temporally and stylistically, if not in coloration (they are all printed in black) and are therefore among the only Picasso prints that would strike the fancy of the typical Picasso hater, who only likes the Blue Period.

Figure 1. Le Repas Frugal (Bloch 1)                  Figure 2. Tete de Femme au Profil (Bloch 6)

“ Saltimbanque” means acrobat in French, but the best prints in the series are portraits having nothing to do with the circus. In addition to Le Repas Frugal, the two next most sought-after are busts of Madeleine, one of Picasso’s consorts at the time (Bloch 2 and 6—her profile in Bloch 6, Fig. 2, is more desirable than the frontal view of Bloch 2). In general, the etchings that comprise the Suite are charming in that classically Blue and Rose Period sort of way: not necessarily with its famously elongated line (a number of the figures are frankly rather squat), but with that certain nobility amid poverty and sadness that we’ve seen in the paintings of this period (Figs. 3-5: Bloch 4, 5, and 10).

    
Figure 3. Buste d'Homme (Bloch 4)                                          Figure 4. Les Deux Saltimbanques (Bloch 5)


Figure 6. Le Saltimbanque au Repos (Bloch 10)

Much has been written about the importance of the circus in Picasso’s youth. The circus and the bullfight were the two salient cultural elements of his background. Well beyond mere pastimes, both assumed great symbolic significance in his life. The demi-monde of the circus, with its inherent earthiness and physicality, represented an utter abandonment of the bourgeois career path, never a realistic option for Picasso. To some extent, inspired perhaps equally by acrobat and matador, Picasso saw himself not only as an explorer but also as an entertainer. Always the ringleader, he was also the clown of his coterie of friends. We also know that he delighted in impressing his friends artistically from an early age with his uncanny party trick of drawing a portrait upside-down while sitting opposite its subject so that, as the drawing unfolded, it would appear right-side-up to his inevitably amused subject.

Table Legend:

Rarity: * = 200-300, ** = 110-199, *** = 50-109, **** = 25-49, ***** < 25.

Size (in cm): * < 21, ** = 21-34, *** = 35-40, **** = 41-60, ***** > 60.

Cost: You may be interested in the absolute values, and not just the relative values, of the cost of the prints. Clearly the absolute costs vary in time much more than their relative costs, but it may be somewhat useful for you to know how I approached the relative valuations. The relative costs are based on auction prices as recent as 2004, and generally focused on those prints which were in reportedly very nice condition. Though many 2005 prices were available at the time of this writing, I did not incorporate them in order to provide an accurate snapshot at a point in time. A small amount of newer data would have skewed the scale of all the rest of the data points. For source data, the auction record was much more useful than the record of art dealers’ sales, as I’ve described elsewhere, for two reasons. The auction record is more complete and more accurate, and prices realized at auction vary much less than those charged by gallerists and private dealers. To predict a dealer’s prices from these data is difficult, since dealers mark-ups seem to range from less than 10% to more than a 1000%. But you can use the data to give you a relative idea of the prices that Picasso’s prints fetch at whatever venue. In any event, here’s the legend: * < $10,000 (often much less than $10,000), ** = $10,000 to 20,000, *** = $20,000 to 50,000, **** = $50,000 to 100,000, and ***** > $100,000 (usually not much more than$100,000, though the rarely auction prices have already fetched over a million dollars).

Signature: Y(yes, signifying that most of the impressions were signed, and that the signatures were by Picasso’s own hand), ES (Estate Stamped, with a stamp reproducing one of Picasso’s signatures), Y/N (maybe, meaning a fair proportion were signed), P (signed in the plate or on the stone), and N (no, signifying that most of the impressions were not signed).

Table 1. Les Saltimbanques Suite

Bloch #	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Beauty	*****	****	**	***	***	*****	*		***	***
Significance	*****	***	**	***	***	*****	*	*	**	**
Rarity	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*
Size	****	*	**	*	*	**	**	*	**	*
Visibility at a distance	***	***	**	***	**	***	*	*	*	*
Color
Fading
Cost	*****	**	**	*	*	**	*	*	*	*
Desirability to cost ratio		**		***	**	***
Signature	N	N	N	N	N	N	N	N	N	N

Table 1. Les Saltimbanques Suite, Continued

Those of you who crave Cubism have a few lovely, mostly small prints to choose between (Table 2). The masterpiece print of his Cubist period is considered to be the Still Life with Bottle of Marc (500 x 305 mm.; 19.7 x 12 in.) of July, 1911 (Bloch 24). I think it’s not his masterpiece at all, in any sense other than mere size. For beauty and style, I prefer a number of others, particularly Bloch numbers 19, 28 (Figures 6 and 7), and 30. The first of these is notable for its light, sprightly, flowing, charming, dancing, recognizable, movement and form and its wonderful and hilarious geometric component parts. The other two are remarkable for their complexity and B30 in particular for its atmospheric subtlety. (Note: you may need a larger photo than Bloch affords to even begin to appreciate Bloch 30.)

    
Figure 7. Mademoiselle Léonie (Bloch 19)                               Figure 8. L'Homme au Chien (Bloch 28)

Table 2. Cubism (1909-1917)

Bloch #	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26
Beauty	*	*	****	*	**	**	*	*	**	**
Significance	***	***	****	**	**	**	**	***	***	***
Rarity	**	**	**	**	**	**	**	**	**	**
Size	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	****	*	*
Visibility at a distance	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	**	*	*
Color
Fading
Cost	***	**	***	***	**	**	***	****	**	**
Desirability to cost ratio
Signature	Y	Y	N	N	N	N	Y	Y	N	N

Table 2. Cubism (1909-1917), cont.