''The Actor'' (French: ''L'acteur'') is an oil on canvas painting by Spanish painter

Pablo Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...

, created from 1904 to 1905. The painting dates from the artist's

Rose Period Picasso's Rose Period represents an important epoch in the life and work of the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso which had a great impact on the developments of modern art. It began in 1904 at a time when Picasso settled in Montmartre at the Bateau-La ...

. It is housed in the collection of the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

in New York City.

Background

Prior to 1904, Picasso's work had been dominated by his melancholy Blue Period, which was defined by predominantly blue paintings of human suffering. ''The Actor'' illustrates a shift in Picasso's artistic approach, which was influenced by his meeting of his new partner,

Fernande Olivier Fernande Olivier (born Amélie Lang; 6 June 1881 – 29 January 1966) was a French artist and model known primarily for having been the model and first muse of painter Pablo Picasso, and for her written accounts of her relationship with him. Pic ...

in 1904. Olivier's presence and influence on the tone, subject matter and palette of Picasso's artwork is notable in the sheet of studies that he created for ''The Actor'' around the time of New Year's Eve in 1904, which features two profiles of Olivier.

Description

Picasso painted ''The Actor'' during the winter of 1904 to 1905 when he was 23 years old. The painting is a work of the artist's

when he changed his painting style from the downbeat tones of his Blue Period to warmer and more romantic hues. It portrays an acrobat in a dramatic pose with an abstract design in the background. The canvas measures by . Picasso painted ''The Actor'' on the reverse side of a landscape painting by another artist because he could not afford new canvases at the time.

Significance and legacy

''The Actor'' was produced at a transitional point in Picasso's artwork, when he became inspired by the lives of harlequins and saltimbanques. The Metropolitan Museum of Art summarises the importance of this painting in relation to his subsequent works about travelling circus performers.

Simple yet haunting, ''The Actor'' is the work with which Picasso ended his obsession with the wretched in favor of the theatrical world of acrobats and saltimbanques. Although the attenuated figure and extraordinary play of hands recall the
El Greco Domḗnikos Theotokópoulos ( el, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος ; 1 October 1541 7 April 1614), most widely known as El Greco ("The Greek"), was a Greek painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El G ...
-inspired mannerism of the Blue Period, ''The Actor'' can be seen as the prologue to the series of works that culminates in the enormous canvas ''
Family of Saltimbanques ''Family of Saltimbanques'' (French: ') is a 1905 oil on canvas painting by Pablo Picasso. The work depicts six saltimbanques, a kind of itinerant circus performer, in a desolate landscape. It is considered the masterpiece of Picasso's Rose Peri ...
.''

Ownership, legal case, and value

First owned by Picasso's friend

Frank Burty Haviland Frank Burty Haviland (16 October 1886 – November 1971) was a French Cubist painter, a friend and early client of Picasso and Braque, and an early collector of African art. Biography Frank Burty Haviland (or simply Frank Burty or Frank Haviland ...

, it was sold in 1912 to Alice and Paul Friedrich Leffmann, originally of

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western States of Germany, state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 m ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. Its first public display was at the Sonderbund exhibition in May 1912 in Cologne. In 1933, with

Adolf Hitler's rise to power Adolf Hitler's rise to power began in the newly established Weimar Republic in September 1919 when Hitler joined the '' Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' (DAP; German Workers' Party). He rose to a place of prominence in the early years of the party. Be ...

the conditions for Jews in Germany worsened. The Leffmanns, a

German Jewish The history of the Jews in Germany goes back at least to the year 321, and continued through the Early Middle Ages (5th to 10th centuries CE) and High Middle Ages (''circa'' 1000–1299 CE) when Jewish immigrants founded the Ashkenazi Jewish ...

couple, suffered the Aryanization of their home and businesses by the Nazis. The couple fled Germany in 1937 to Italy, and in 1938 to

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

and then to

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

. The Leffmanns sold the painting in June 1938, for $13,200, to art dealers Paul Rosenberg and Hugo Perls, to fund their escape from

the Nazis The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...

. *''Zuckerman v. Metropolitan Museum of Art''
307 F. Supp. 3d 304
(S.D.N.Y. 2018), ''aff'd''
928 F. 3d 186
(2d Cir. 2019).
Judge rules against heir who wanted Met to return a Picasso
Associated Press (February 7, 2018).
US Appeals Court Dismisses Ownership Claim over Picasso
''Art Forum'' (June 27, 2019). The painting eventually was purchased in 1941 by heiress

Thelma Chrysler Foy Walter Percy Chrysler (April 2, 1875 – August 18, 1940) was an American industrial pioneer in the automotive industry, American automotive industry executive and the founder and namesake of American Chrysler Corporation. Early life Chrysler wa ...

, the daughter of Walter Chrysler of the

Chrysler Stellantis North America (officially FCA US and formerly Chrysler ()) is one of the " Big Three" automobile manufacturers in the United States, headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan. It is the American subsidiary of the multinational automoti ...

automobile company, from the Knoedler gallery in New York, for $22,500. She donated it to the

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, in 1952, where it has since been displayed. In 2016, the heir of the Leffmanns sued the Metropolitan Museum of Art in U.S. federal court, seeking the return of the painting on the ground that the Leffmans had sold it under duress. In 2018, Judge

Loretta A. Preska Loretta A. Preska (born January 7, 1949) is an American federal judge who is currently a senior U.S. District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Born in Albany, Preska received law degrees from Fo ...

of the

U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (in case citations, S.D.N.Y.) is a federal trial court whose geographic jurisdiction encompasses eight counties of New York State. Two of these are in New York City: New Y ...

ruled in favor of the Met, ruling that the plaintiff could not show, under New York law, that the painting was sold under duress. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the dismissal on the ground that the claim was raised too late (72 years after the work was sold and 58 years after it was donated to the art museum). In 2010, experts estimated that the painting, which is one of the largest from Picasso's Rose Period, is worth more than US$100 million.

Damage

''The Actor'' was damaged on January 25, 2010, when a woman attending an art class at The Metropolitan Museum of Art stumbled and fell into the painting, creating a rip of about in height in the lower right corner. The museum stated that the rip did not affect the artwork's central subject. They also indicated that they intend to have the painting repaired in a few weeks by performing "unobtrusive" work. This was in preparation for an April 27 retrospective of roughly 250 of the artist's works.

External links

The Actor
' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Actor Portraits by Pablo Picasso Portraits of men 1904 paintings 20th-century portraits Paintings in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Paintings of Montmartre Circus paintings 1905 paintings