Who was Sabartés? by Carol Sutton   [Jaume Sabartés i Gual} or correct as: [Jaime Sabatés] (note: without the letter 'r')   NEW NAME INFORMATION DIRECT FROM A RELATIVE, the great nephew of Jaime Sabatés, Fabien Sabatés:August 22, 2005   QUOTE: "July 7, 2005 Sir, I went to your site and found the very intersting article about my great-uncle Jaime Sabartès. Somethings you might not know : his name was a knikname, his real name was jaime sabatès without the "r". His you leave me a phone number where to contact you I will explain you why... Amicalement Fabien Sabatès" ____ Fabien Sabatès Editeur 77484 Provins cedex France ____ and QUOTE: "July 15, 2005 Hello, You said in your article that you don't have Sabartés's bithday date, this is because Sabartès was not is real name. His name was Jaime Sabatès, without the R. He was my late mother's uncle. She did say to me years ago she had his birthday officials papers and could proove his name. Jaime took this nickname to be different from his brother, my grand-father, who was an artist. He designed some spanish stamps and the banknotes. It is famous in our familie that one day some people came home to ask him to make false money ! Off course he refused. He also made some gigantic portay of Franco to be hanged on some Madrid building from an identity photo. I knew my grand-mother but the poor woman had all a children (excepted two, my mother and one uncle) killed by the franquists during the spanish war. When I was 20 (I am 54) I looked exactly like Jaime in the Picassos's portait... Amicalement Fabien Sabatès" end quote.   I thank Fabien Sabatés for this new and insightful information on Jaime Sabatés true name. Carol Sutton, august 22, 2005   ( Jaime Sabartés birth date- 1880 to1890's apx., born in Barcelona, Spain and death date- February 13, 1968)   Sabartés was no marmoreal* man bespectacled in heavy glasses. Jaime Sabartés, (Jaime is also spelled alternatively Jaume in some books.) was a proud man of integrity and devoted a great part of his life to serving one of the giants of art, Pablo Picasso, who was eighteen years old when they first meet in Barcelona, Spain. Both Sabartés and Picasso were regular customers of the famous bar of The 4 Cats in Paris, France. Picasso won a contest and beat out other artists for the design of the menu of Els Quatre Gats in 1900. Below follows a short study of Sabartés and a gathering of information on him. Sabartés - poet , author, husband, twice married, father,journalist; loyal friend, chief secretary, writer, exhibition organizer for Picasso; collector, and museum benefactor.   "The intimate of Picasso longer than any one else." page 8 Wilhelm Boech.A Catalan, and a well known poet in Barcelona, and a very close friend of Picasso since the early days in Barcelona. Said by Gilot ( Life with Picasso by Francoise Gilot and Carlton Lake) to be a distant cousin of Miró. (page 165,166)"Their point of encounter was Sabartés grandfather. The grandfather was completely illiterate but he had made a fortune, Pablo told me, first as a scrap-metal dealer and then later on , in some more respectable business. He could neither read nor write nor even count beyond the most rudimentary level, but no one could ever cheat him. If he was to receive one hundred iron pots and only ninety-nine showed up, he knew it, even without being able to count that high. He took an interest in Sabartés form his very early childhood and decided to educate him, with the idea that when Sabartés knew how to read and write and especially to count, he would take him in to the business and from then on have no worries about being robbed by wily competitors. By the time Sabartés was nine years old he was handling all his grandfather's correspondence. Soon after, though, he had a very serious eye illness which resulted in his becoming nearly blind. That ended his usefulness to his grandfather. &" In 1899 he met Picasso,who also was living in Barcelona, as his father had become professor of painting at the Barcelona School of Fine Arts.--From the beginning he (Sabartés) was a kind of scapegoat for Pablo"."end quote. Sabartés wore very heavy glass spectacles as a result.   Portrait de Jaume Sabartés, Seated - 1899-1900, by Pablo Picasso Charcoal and watercolour on paper 50.5cm : 33cms Picasso Museum, Barcelona, Sabartés Collection http://www.museupicasso.bcn.es/index.htm or in ENGLISH: http://www.museupicasso.bcn.es/eng/index_eng.htm   image credit:[no longer valid URL link] Museo Picasso Virtual http://www.tamu.edu/mocl/picasso/sabartes.html ----------------------     Claustre Rafart i Planas writes in an essay titled "Els Quatre Gats seen through the Metamorphosis of the Blue Period", ( on page 190 of the book, Picasso and els 4 CATS- The Early Years in Turn-of-the-Century Barcelona'. Under the direction of María Teresa Ocana; ) of 'Decadent Poet', another portrait of Jaume Sabartés painted by Picasso in his 1900 studio on the Riera de Sant Joan. This book also illustrates an x-ray of that oil which reveals the bust of a woman wearing the cap like the prisoners at Saint Lazare, a prison Picasso visited that year. Blue Portrait of Jaume Sabartés, Paris 1901, 46 x 38 cms, Picasso Museum , Barcelona. which bears the marks of having once been put in an oval frame, his arching eyebrows echo the eyeglasses ovals, shows a down turned moustache over prominent well drawn and shadowed lips. This portrait has a genuine staunch demeanor.   Picasso painted in 1904 another portrait of Jaume Sabartés called Portrait of Sabartés, Private collection.. This one shows Sabartés with short hair wearing a velvet collared overcoat.   Sabartés married his distant cousin and they had a child. He worked in Guatemala as a journalist for twenty-five years and then returned to live in Spain. Sabartés married a second time to a childhood sweetheart and they lived in Paris with Picasso at the Rue La Boétie.In 1935, the year of his separation from Olga Koklova and of the the birth of his daughter Maya, by Marie-Thérése Walter; Picasso ask Sabartés to become his secretary. "The wife supervised the household and Sabartés began his long service as Pablo's secretary, front man, errand boy, and not least , scapegoat. (edited notes from page 166 and quote from page 167)   Sabartés was in charge of arranging all the details of Picasso's exhibitions, needless to say a huge job in itself and one which now whole committees would do.The first exhibition to be arranged by Sabartés opened on March 3, 1936, at the Paul Rosenberg & Co. in New York City and was the called "oeuvres récentes"(recent works). He also arranged appointments with Picasso and kept at bay those whom Picasso did not want to see. --- "He is one of those young men with fine hands, elegant gestures, a thin face, deep in a brown study of the "blue" period." page 110 from A related book - Picasso related, ' Picasso, in collaboration with Edward Quinn'. Introduction by John Russell , text by Pierre Descarques- translated by Roland Balay. Publisher- Felicie, New York, copyright 1974 ISBN 0-9600692-2-4 Clothbound Library of Congress - 74-77627 -------- During the "blue period" in Paris, Picasso painted a portrait of Jaime Sabartés who had recently arrived on his first journey to France in the autumn of 1899 (or 1900). The Glass of Beer- Portrait of Jamie Sabartés, by Pablo Picasso, 81.5 x 66cm, oil on canvas, 1901, Pushkin Museum, Moscow. from page 124, Wilhelm Boech/Jamie Sabartés book. "Sabartés has told us how the portrait came to be painted. One evening, while waiting for his friends in the Café La Lorraine near the Musée Cluny, Sabartés fell into a reverie, from which he was suddenly aroused by the voices of Picasso and his companions. It is that moment when he surprised his friend in the café that the painter later recorded in a canvas, which Sabartés describes as "the specter of his solitude".   This portrait, The Glass of Beer- Portrait of Jamie Sabartés, Picasso amazingly used the head of Casas Casagemas who had recently committed suicide in the Café L'Hippodrome, over a love affair, imposed on the body of his friend Jaime Sabartés. Marilyn McCully writes about this superimpose head in her essay, Picasso's Portraits of his Barcelona Friend, begins on page 175 of the book, Picasso and els 4 CATS- The Early Years in Turn-of-the-Century Barcelona'. Under the direction of María Teresa Ocana, which was originally written for her essay, 'To Fall like a fly in the trap of Picasso's stare: Portraiture and the early work", to appear in The Museum of Modern Art's exhibition catalogue, Picasso and Portraits, New York, 1996. McCully * writes on page 180: "Casagemas's suicide left a deep impression on Picasso, who later claimed that contemplating the event had triggered the Blue period. He even went so far as to superimpose the dead Casagemas's profile - which he had emphasized in a particularly graphic way in the largest of the three death-heads - onto that of his poet-friend Sabartés in the painting Le Bock ( or The Poet Sabartés, as it is also known, see fig. 31), which was done in Paris in 1910. (footnote 10- by John Richardson. 'A Life of Picasso', New York, 1991, 216) Sabartés (who liked to see himself as "the progenitor of Blue period 'blueness' ") has left a description of how this painting came about. He was sitting alone and bored at the Café La Lorraine, when Picasso appeared with their friends. "Unwittingly, I was serving as the model for a picture, a portrait about which I retain two distinct memories: the memory of my unpremeditated pose, in the café... when thinking I was alone, I fell like a fly into the trap of Picasso's stare. And the other is the impression I received a few days later in (his studio)... when Picasso put it up on the easel, I was astonished to see myself (and) the specter of my solitude."- as Picasso saw it. ( footnote 11.- from ' Picasso: An Intimate Portrait'. by Jamie Sabartés) end quote. *A related Marilyn McCully book - Picasso related, 'A Picasso Anthology- Documents, Criticism, Reminiscences' by Marilyn McCully, a new paperback, 288 pages, 55 halftones, includes Catalan and Spanish Criticism, also English and Russian criticism. $16.95 US Published by Princeton University Press, New Jersey, USA copyright 1997 ISBN - 0-691-00348-3 can be ordered at princeton.edu http://pup.princeton.edu or by email order to orders@cpfs.pupress.princeton.edu   From page 113, Wilhelm Boech/Jamie Sabartés book: "More lasting than his associations with these painters was his friendship with the writer Jaime Sabartés who, decades later, published a valuable book containing a vivid account of those early days. He tells us for instance about the tremendous passion for work which distinguished Picasso even then. He covered the walls of his and his friend's rooms with paintings,and produced drawings in such quantities that he could use them as fuel for his stove. Only a small fraction is preserved; among these, Promenade, a chalk drawing dating from 1897 (page 357), clearly reflects French influences: the subject matter is elegant and fashionable; the vigorous black-and-white, flat treatment combined with an illusion of depth suggest Manet, and the loose composition is reminiscent of Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec." From page 314, Wilhelm Boech/Jamie Sabartés book: Other lost works include a thought provoking mural painted by Picasso to decorate Sabartés room.-- "Sabartés mentions a number of graceful pencil drawings done in 1902 and long since lost of La bella Chelito, a dancer and singer who greatly impressed the twenty-year old painter in Barcelona. He also mentions female nudes roughly drawn with the brush dipped in blue on the walls of the Zut, a dilapidated café in Paris which Picasso and his friend frequented in 1904; and more important , a mural in Sabartés room in Barcelona, representing a half-naked Negro hanging form a tree, with a pair of lovers on the ground beneath him."   Portrait of Jamie Sabartés , by Pablo Picasso, 49.5cm :38 cm, or 19 1/2" x 15" oil on canvas, 1904, (Cat. 247)       In 1939, the same year as the death of Picasso's mother; Picasso paints another portrait of Sabartés , this time inspired by his love of Spanish themes as : Portrait of Jamie Sabartés as a Spanish Grandee,(dressed in the habit of a Dominican of the time of Philip II), by Pablo Picasso , oil on canvas, 45.7cm :38cm, or 18 1/2" x 15" 22-10-1939, (October 22, 1939) Zervos IX, 366 Picasso Museum, Barcelona. Signed Picasso. Dated Royan/22-10-39 on the lower right-hand corner Sabartés Collection MPB 70.241                   From the Museo Picasso web site thie quote on Portrait of Jamie Sabartés as a Spanish Grandee, http://www.museupicasso.bcn.es/eng/collection/index_collec.htm QUOTE: : Picasso used to dress up his friends in the most unlikely ways. He also made a caricature of his friend Jaume Sabartés. He subjected the figure to distortions that completely fracture the centre line of his head, giving him a totally ambiguous appearance. By using soft, fluid and contrasting lines to outline the face, he maintained the peculiar personality of the man, in spite of the dislocation of his facial features. His staring eyes are concealed behind thick glasses, which instead of resting on his nose are resting on one of his cheeks, which emphasises the sharp line of his slightly turned-up nose, and plainly depicts his left profile. In this painting, subtle flesh colours and the pompon on the hat, ambiguity is again obvious in the uneasy, almost distressing realism, despite the marked facial distortions. Portrait of Jaume Sabartés as a Spanish Grandee image credit: Club-Internet France- Picasso http://www.club-internet.fr/picasso/tableaux/ friends/379,html -------------------   Sabartés had a complete understanding of Picasso working habits and methods, no doubt honed from years of careful observation of Picasso making art. From page 344, Wilhelm Boech/Jamie Sabartés book: "What saves me is that every day I do worse". (Picasso) Sabartés adds that the public always accepts Picasso's next-to-last pictures when it is allowed to see his most recent creations." Sabartés wrote books about Picasso, which are used as superb reference tools. ' Picasso: An Intimate Portrait' included observations that only Sabartés could make and understandings only Sabartés had learned over his long relationship and close friendship with Picasso. Picasso trusted Sabartés who was his life long friend.   Below is a listing of some of these books: A related book - Picasso related, ' Picasso: portraits & souvenirs',by Jamie Sabartés Published :Louis Carré-Mazimilien Vox éditeurs, Paris, France, 1946.   A related book - Picasso related, ' Picasso: An Intimate Portrait'. by Jamie Sabartés Published in New York, USA , and London, England, copyright 1948 is now out of print but can be ordered at amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0404202233/002-4166183-8422220   A related book - Picasso related, ' Picasso: retratos y recuerdos, . by Jamie Sabartés Published in Madrid, Spain, Afrondisio Aguado, copyright 1953   A related book - Picasso related, ' Picasso: document icongraphiques, . by Jamie Sabartés Published in Geneva, Switzerland, Pierre Cailler, copyright 1954       Sabartés was short in height, enough to keep his head from heading the letters hung up by clothes-pins on a clothes-line in Picasso Antibes studio.Francoise Gilot describes the morning ritual of getting Picasso out of bed and how Sabartés played his role in this litany. Life with Picasso by Francoise Gilot and Carlton Lake Quote page 145:"The so-called more important letters, which he didn't answer either but kept before him as a permanent reminder and reproach, were pinned up, also with clothespins, onto wires that stretched fro the electric-light wire to the stovepipe. The stove, a little wood-burning Mirus, stood in the center of the room. Even when the central heating was working , Pablo always made a wood fire because at that period he used to enjoy making drawings of the flames. The stovepipe was so long and took up so much space, it was the most important decorative element in the room. With its letters waving in the draft it was a hazard to almost everyone but Pablo, Sabartés and Inés, who were short enough to find their way through the maze without getting caught in the wires".&--"Inés, the chambermaid, went in first, carrying Pablo's breakfast tray----café au lait and two pieces of salt-free dried toast---followed by Sabartés with the papers and mail. I brought up the rear. Pablo would always start to grumble, first about the way his breakfast was laid out on the tray."   Gilot reports many more aspects of Sabartés personality on pages 166-182, including saying "Sabartés devotion for Pablo that a Trappist has for his God. ", that he dressed in black, "at least metaphorically", and "affecting sadness", she uses these adjectives and comments to describe Sabartés---- fussy, cautious, discreet, watchdog, full of pride, self-aggregation, "mournful, almost tragic expression", gloom, that he loved mystery and had a "cloak-and-dagger imagination and mentally shadowed everyone who came near him", that he loved secrets, was a man of few words which he would occasionally be found "sadly dropping a word". Sabartés classify every object and packed seventy wooden cases when Picasso was evicted out of his Rue La Boétie apartment in 1951. Gilot writes that Sabartés was paid with the skimpiest monetary wages as Picasso paid his workers very poorly in cash. Therefore Sabartés and his wife could only afford to live in a tiny walk up apartment in the working quarter of the 15th arrondissement in Paris.But what Picasso failed to pay in cash he made up for in spades* (* I use the expression "in spades" rather than say the expression "treated royally"; as it reminds me of cubist works that used playing cards as motifs, the spade as a shape (also clubs, hearts, diamonds), and playing cards as physical objects in collages.) by giving to Sabartés his most valuable currency, that of his own artwork. History was made in 1963 when Sabartés generously passed on to the city of Barcelona all his entire collection of the art work that Picasso had given him; all 400 of them, thereby forming the core of the new Picasso Museum in Barcelona, Spain* on Montcada Street housed within the Palacio Aguilar. During the same year,1963, that Sabartés donates his art works by Picasso to the city of Barcelona; he also donates to the Museo de Málaga his library of books on Picasso. Ultimately through donations by Sabartés, Picasso himself, and other bequests, the Barcelona Picasso Museum houses the world's largest collection of Picasso's. Differently formed is The Picasso Museum in Paris, which was formed after Picasso death as a result of tax gifts known as the legal principle of the dation en paiement , (which allows settlement by transfer of a single valuable work of art or a percentage of art), to the government of France by Picasso's heirs.   [*Note:Sabartes role as a benefactor is now listed on the Museu Picasso website: http://www.museupicasso.bcn.es/eng/museum/index_museu.htm   "THE MUSEUM Introduction   The Picasso Museum in Barcelona is indispensable for understanding the formative years of Pablo Ruiz Picasso. The genius of the young artist is revealed through the more than 3,500 works that make up the permanent collection. However, the Picasso Museum also reveals his relationship with Barcelona: an intimate, solid relationship that was shaped in his adolescence and youth, and continued until his death.   Thanks to the wishes of Picasso and his friend Jaume Sabartés, Barcelona now has the youthful work of one of the twentieth century's most significant artists."]   I have been unable to find an exact birth date for Sabartés, but it would have been around the 1880's-or 1890's as he was close to the age of Picasso who was born in 1881. Death date for Sabartés is February 13, 1968, at which time Picasso donates some 900 of his finest early works and Las Menias series to the Barcelona Picasso Museum in Sabartés memory. Carol L. Sutton,© copyright June, July 1998August 22, 2005 footnote: *marmoreal (mahr-MOHR-ee-uhl) also marmorean (-ee-uhn) adjective   Resembling marble, as in smoothness, whiteness, or hardness.   [From Latin marmoreus, from marmor, marble.]   From: Wordsmith, wsmith@wordsmith.org   "...desperate to devise anything, any sadness or happiness, only to escape the clasped coffinworm truth of eternal art or marmoreal" From "Sadness and Happiness") Robert Pinsky, 39th U.S. Poet Laureate, is deeply in love with words -- be they technical terms of a trade, foreign borrowings, dusty antiques, or proper nouns. The interplay of sounds and images derived from his rich English vocabulary -- as well as foreign terms, slang, and invented words, is one of the charms of the poems in Pinsky's "The Figured Wheel", from which I picked these words. -Celia A. Hooper (hooperc@nih.gov)   (This week's Guest Wordsmith, Celia, is an editor and writer at the National Institutes of Health. You can find more information about Pinsky on the Web at http://fyodor.cwa.nwu.edu/pinsky.html . -Anu) ........................................................................... A great many people mistake opinions for thoughts. -Herbert V. Prochnow   A related site. Send your comments about words to anu@wordsmith.org. To subscribe or unsubscribe A.Word.A.Day, send a message to wsmith@wordsmith.org with "Subject:" line as "subscribe <Your Name>" or "unsubscribe". Archives, FAQ, gift subscription form, and more at: http://www.wordsmith.org/awad/ A related book - Picasso related, ' Picasso and els 4 CATS- The Early Years in Turn-of-the-Century Barcelona'. Under the direction of María Teresa Ocana 222 color plates and 12 black and whitle illustrations Publisher-A Bulfinch Press Book, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, New York, Toronto, London, copyright 1996 ISBN 0-8212-2339-9 Clothbound Printed in Spain, Copyright by Museu Picasso of Barcelona   A related book - Gilot related, 'Life with Picasso'. by Francoise Gilot and Carlton Lake Published by: McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, Toronto, London, 1964 Library of Congress Card Number: 64-23276 A related article -'In Barcelona, Picasso is the home-town boy- A former palace, now a world-class museum- And the city's impressive Picasso Museum houses the world's largest collection of his work'. by Ron Butler Special toThe Globe and Mail (Canadian newspaper), from Barcelona, Spain , in Travel section, Saturday, February 21, 1998   A related site. Picasso Museum, Barcelona, Sabartés Collection http://www.museupicasso.bcn.es/index.htm or in ENGLISH: http://www.museupicasso.bcn.es/eng/index_eng.htm   http://www.museupicasso.bcn.es/eng/collection/index_collec.htm QUOTE: "PICASSO ENGRAVER The Picasso Museum in Barcelona possesses a relevant collection of engravings and lithographs by the artist, consisting of some 1,500 prints. Some are from a donation by Jaume Sabartés [click here for a brief biography], one of the people responsible for the existence of our museum. Picasso himself donated an important part of the collection when he paid tribute to Sabartés at the time of the latter's death, and promised to donate a print of every engraving he made from then to the end of his life. The rest of the engravings are donations from other benefactors and work that the museum has acquired over the years. "END QUOTE:   QUOTE: "Biography   Jaume Sabartés i Gual Barcelona , 1881 - París, 1968   Sculptor and writer. He was a student at La Llotja and an apprentice of Manuel Fuxà. Under the pseudonym Jacobus Sabartés, he wrote prose and poems, and collaborated in the magazine Joventut. In 1901, he exhibited modelled heads of children at the Sala Parés gallery. A regular at Els Quatre Gats, he formed part of Picasso's circle in Barcelona and in Paris. He had met Picasso in 1899, and was an enthusiastic promoter of his work. In 1935, he moved to Paris and became his private secretary. He published a biography and other writings on the artist's life and work. He was also an effective link between Picasso and Catalonia; in particular, he donated his collection of the artist's work to the Barcelona City Council in order to create the Barcelona Picasso Museum. "

 

 

 

 

 

 

PICASSO AND HIS BIRDS

Picasso	INTRODUCTION Picasso and his birds! JUST BIRD TALK - In my studies on Picasso I somewhere came across a quote by Picasso that said something like, " a pigeon would be a better peace symbol than a dove, because a pigeon is more passive bird and doesn't attack like a dove sometimes can." After spending half a day and going through over 15 Picasso books I give this task of identifying this quote on to my readers; that is just when and where and to whom did Picasso say this pigeon/dove quote.  Hints: Could be: What follows is a little exploration of this issue. 4 page study of which this is the lead page.
CONTINUES ...section on Francoise Gilot/Picasso & his birds http://www.carolsutton.net/5_quiz/Picasso_Gilot_his_birds.html

 

 

------------------------------NAVAGATION BAR--------------

Picasso and his birds! 4 pages	section on Francoise Gilot/Picasso & his birds http://www.carolsutton.net/5_quiz/Picasso_Gilot_his_birds.html
	The listing of Picasso books and web related sites http://www.carolsutton.net/5_quiz/Picasso_links_birds.html
	section on-Boeck/Sabartés book on Picasso with annoteted notes on bird related text. http://www.carolsutton.net/5_quiz/Picasso_Sabartes_birds.html
+ essay	http://www.carolsutton.net/5_quiz/who_was_sabartes.html

 

Please don't miss these extra pages!!

includes a chart TIMELINE --of characters from text with their human and bird relationships. 1881- to 1953

and an Illustrated Biography of Jaime Sabartés.

by Carol L. Sutton, June 21 to July 20, 1998

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Made June 25 to July 20, 1998- "Scholarship is not suppose to be fast." a quote by Carol Sutton

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