Upon the death of his friend Henri Matisse in November 1954, Pablo Picasso wanted to explore in his artwork a subject that had enchanted Matisse: odalisques. The genre of Orientalism became popular in France after Romantic artist Eugene Delacroix visited Algeria in 1832, and his subsequent paintings reflected an exoticised version of Northern Africa, including depictions of reclining odalisques surrounded by hashish pipes, lavish jewels and costumes, and extravagant settings. In 1854, he painted the influential painting The Women of Algiers in their Apartment, which now hangs at the Louvre.
Pierre-August Renoir declared it the "most beautiful painting in existence". This painting was Picasso's main inspiration for his Les Femmes d'Alger series, and he produced 15 paintings for the series between December 1954 and February 1955.
All 15 paintings, titled Les Femmes d'Alger and lettered 'A' through 'O', were sold in 1956 to American art collectors Victor and Sally Ganz in Paris. The Ganz's resold many of the works in the US, and today, they are dispersed throughout private collections and museums, such as LACMA, SFMOMA and the Wadsworth Atheneum. Picasso's final painting of the series, Version 'O', was sold in May 2015 at Christie's for $179.4 million (£116.7 mil) to the Prime Minister of Qatar, making it the second-most-expensive painting ever auctioned.
See also: The 12 Most Expensive Paintings Ever Auctioned
Now, Version 'F' will be auctioned by Christie's on 10 July . While no estimate has been publicly announced, it is expected to fetch in the $25-million range (£20 mil).
Picasso painted Version 'F' in January 1955, and it marks a half-way point between the smaller canvases of the first seven works and the larger sizes of the second half. However, Version 'F' arguably resembles the famous Version 'O,' the pièce de résistance of the series, more than any of the other works. The impressive use of colour, geometrical abstraction and similar composition make Version 'F' appear as a smaller oil study for the Picasso's masterpiece Version 'O', in which he sharpened the lines, enhanced the details and saturated the brushstrokes.
See also: How Cubism Changed the World
This painting will be one of the top highlights for Christie's blockbuster ONE sale on 10 July. Spanning four cities (New York, Paris, London, Hong Kong), the two-hour livestream auction will feature 35 modern and contemporary works by Roy Lichtenstein, Ed Ruscha, Zao Wou-Ki, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Brice Marden.
