I think I’ve finally met my match. Last week we were visited by an intellectual, race car driver, entrepreneur, and art collector, who I’m happy to report is just as quirky as I am. Only the object of his obsession is not Picassos in general, but just portraits of Picasso’s dachshund Lump. Now, I love my dog as much as my next child, but this guy’s got me beat. His dachshund is five, and he says that’s the longest relationship he’s had with any woman. He dotes on his girl, and wants to hang her portrait. But it’s gotta be by Picasso!
Problem is, there are no available Picassos of Lump, or at least none that I know of. There are no prints, and only one drawing, but it’s in the collection of the Musée Picasso in Paris. I’ve traced the ceramic of Lump below to the University of Texas at Austin, courtesy of David Douglas Duncan, who presented Picasso with the above dog.
So that’s where you come in. If you have one or know of an authentic Picasso work on paper or ceramic that’s available at a reasonable price, you will be handsomely rewarded. But please don’t send a reproduction of the dachshund which Picasso drew in 1907 in the corner of a page of sketches. A copy of that one-liner is how I first came to know the collector—someone who was trying to pass it off as an original had offered it to him. In case you’d like to know what it looks like, here’s a copy I felt inspired to fashion out of wire:
Funny thing is, its head shakes up and down at the slightest movement, which makes it look like it’s sniffing….