L'Enterrement de Casagemas
(La veillée funèbre — Le mort)

About the work

One of the founding images of Picasso's Blue Period, this large canvas depicts the burial of the artist's close friend Carlos Casagemas, whose death by suicide in Paris in February 1901 marked Picasso profoundly and is widely credited by scholars as the emotional catalyst for the sombre, monochromatic Blue Period that followed. The composition — mourners gathered around a shrouded bier beneath an arched blue interior — anticipates the elegiac register of related works such as La Vie (Cleveland Museum of Art) and Evocation (The Burial of Casagemas) (Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris).

The painting carries an exceptional, fully documented exhibition and publication history spanning more than nine decades, from its first public showing at Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, in 1932, through the Edward G. Robinson and Stavros Niarchos collections, to the Tate Gallery's landmark 1960 Picasso retrospective.

Provenance

• Ambroise Vollard, Paris
• Pierre Loeb, Paris
• Pierre Matisse, Paris
• Edward G. Robinson, Beverly Hills
• Stavros S. Niarchos, Paris
• Edward G. Robinson, Beverly Hills
• Private collection

Exhibitions

• "Picasso," Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 1932, no. 6 (Collection Pierre Loeb)
• "Picasso," Kunsthaus, Zurich, 1932, no. 5 (Collection Pierre Loeb)
• "Picasso, Blue & Rose Periods," Seligmann Gallery, New York, 1936, no. 2 (Collection Pierre Matisse)
• "The Robinson Collection," Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1941 (Collection Edward G. Robinson)
• "Forty Paintings from the Edward G. Robinson Collection," Museum of Modern Art, New York & National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1953, no. 20
• "The Gladys Lloyd Robinson and Edward G. Robinson Collection," LACMA & California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, 1956–57, no. 37
• "The Niarchos Collection," Knoedler Gallery, New York & National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1957–58, no. 38
• "Picasso," Tate Gallery, London, 1960, no. 8
• "Bonne Fête Monsieur Picasso," UCLA, Los Angeles, 1961, no. 2

Selected literature

• C. Zervos, "Pablo Picasso: Œuvres inédites anciennes," Cahiers d'Art, Paris, 1928, vol. III, p. 227
• A. Cirici Pellicer, Picasso antes de Picasso, Barcelona, 1946, pl. 63
• J. Merli, Picasso, el Artista y la Obra de nuestro tiempo, Buenos Aires, 1948, no. 22
• C. Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Œuvres de 1895 à 1906, Paris, 1957, vol. I, no. 52, p. 24
• R. Penrose, Picasso: His Life and Work, London, 1962, p. 79
• P. Daix, G. Boudaille & J. Rosselet, Picasso 1900–1906 — Catalogue Raisonné, Neuchâtel, 1966 & 1988, no. VI.2, p. 193
• T. Hilton, Picasso, London, 1975, pp. 32 & 34, pl. 18
• J. Palau i Fabre, Picasso vivant 1881–1907, Paris, 1981, no. 682, p. 272
• J. Glaesemer & M. McCully, Der junge Picasso: Frühwerk und Blaue Periode, Kunstmuseum Bern, 1984, p. 59
• J. Richardson, La vie de Picasso, vol. I, Paris, 1992, p. 212