A painting of a landscape with a village on a hill.
Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College
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Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College

The painting is done in muted earth colors. A woman in a long white dress stands in the foreground looking down to the right into a shallow valley. A woman in a long red dress holding the hand of a child approaches from above on the left. In the center a line of figures move to cross an arched bridge. A collection of white buildings with red roofs rise-up the hill. A blue mountain is behind and to the left of the houses. Across the top left are white clouds which become darker to the right.

Gallery Text

Picasso mastered several traditional and contemporary manners of painting before he and Georges Braque arrived at the breakthrough innovation of cubism in 1907–8. More than merely an experimental phase, his early practice established an instinct for pluralism that would characterize the artist’s practice throughout his life.

In this work, which embodies a rebellion of sorts against his early academic training, Picasso took inspiration from the coarse graphic art of popular periodicals, a probable source for the sinuous art deco–inspired lines that circumscribe fields of flat color in the dreamlike landscape. Amorphously rendered, a woman in the foreground contemplates the ravine below while another woman and her charge descend the path from a hilltop village. In the early years of his career the artist shuttled between Paris, Barcelona, Madrid, and small Spanish towns; recent scholarship suggests that this painting was included in Picasso’s first Paris exhibition in 1901.

Identification and Creation

Object Number
1954.38
People
Pablo Ruiz Picasso, Spanish (Malaga, Spain 1881 - 1973 Mougins, France)
Title
Spanish Village
Other Titles
Alternate Title: View of Horta de Ebro / View of Barcelona
Classification
Paintings
Work Type
painting
Date
1901
Culture
Spanish
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/228852

Location

Location
Level 1, Room 1300, Modern and Contemporary Art, Early Modernism
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Physical Descriptions

Medium
Oil on panel
Dimensions
35.56 x 22.54 cm (14 x 8 7/8 in.)
framed: 54 x 41.5 x 6 cm (21 1/4 x 16 5/16 x 2 3/8 in.)
Inscriptions and Marks
  • Signed: l.r.: -Picasso-
  • inscription: Inscriptions on back of panel in pencil (not the artist's hand): Malaga / Madrid / [Maria]? / coq.imi

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
[Galerie M. Rousso, Paris (? - February 24, 1951)] sold; to [M. Knoedler and Co (1951-1952)] sold; to Mr. & Mrs. Richard Rodgers, New York NY, (March 5, 1952-1954), gift; to Fogg Art Museum, 1954.

Note: Galerie M. Rousso was previously known as Galerie Zborowski

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Rodgers
Copyright
© Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Accession Year
1954
Object Number
1954.38
Division
Modern and Contemporary Art
Contact
am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Publication History

  • Edgar Peters Bowron, European Paintings Before 1900 in the Fogg Art Museum: A Summary Catalogue including Paintings in the Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 1990), p. 124; reproduced no. 830
  • The Maurice Wertheim Collection and Selected Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Paintings and Drawings in the Fogg Art Museum, exh. cat., Harry N. Abrams, Inc. (New York, NY, 1990), reproduced in color no. 33, p. 97
  • Barnaby Wright, ed., Becoming Picasso: Paris 1901, exh. cat., The Courtauld Gallery and Paul Holberton Publishing (London, 2013), p. 180
  • Picasso Méditerranée, Musée national Picasso-Paris and In Fine éditions d’art (Paris, 2020), p. 24, ill. (color)
  • Laurence Madeline, Picasso Landscapes: Out of Bounds, exh. cat., American Federation of Arts and DelMonico Books Prestel (New York, 2023), p. 102, fig. 3, ill. (color)

Exhibition History

  • Picasso, Galerie A. Vollard, 06/25/1901 - 07/14/1901
  • Master Paintings from the Fogg Collection, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 04/13/1977 - 08/31/1977
  • The Maurice Wertheim Collection and Selected Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Paintings and Drawings in the Fogg Art Museum, Isetan Department Store, Tokyo, 03/01/1990 - 04/10/1990; Yamaguchi Prefectural Museum of Art, 04/14/1990 - 05/13/1990
  • 32Q: 1300 Early Modernism, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 11/16/2014 - 01/01/2050

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Verification Level

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