Picasso: The Royan Sketchbooks

[Picasso] acquired the sketchbooks at the local Hachette bookshop ‘and filled them all immediately with the general outlines of the pictures he was painting, in order to have a record of that which, in time, he might eliminate and change; he would jot down his ideas as they occurred to him, for in Royan his mode of expression was undergoing a change, and he felt the need for setting down everything in some sort of order’ [1].

This testimony from Picasso’s friend and secretary Jaime Sabartés sums up the singularity of this period in Picasso’s career. This unique moment was brought about by the dramatic historical events that ravaged Europe from 1 September 1939 and is the focus of the research carried out by Marilyn McCully and Michael Raeburn, the curators of the exhibition and the authors of the essays in the accompanying catalogue.

Picasso in Royan 1939–1940

Michael Raeburn’s essay ‘Picasso in Royan 1939-1940’ guides readers through the town on France’s Atlantic coast: it introduces us to the people who surrounded Picasso (Marcel Boudin, Jaime Sabartés, Marie-Thérèse Walter, Maya and Dora Maar, among others); the places he frequented and stayed in (Grand Hôtel & du Parc, Villa Gerbier de Jonc, Hôtel du Tigre and Les Voiliers); the trips and visits he made from Royan (to Paris, Saint-Raphaël, Fréjus, Antibes, Montecarlo, Nice and Juan-les-Pins); and his creative motivations and sources of inspiration. The whole account is interspersed with information that situates the reader in the geopolitical context of the Second World War.

Pages 86 and 87 of the Spanish edition of the exhibition catalogue Picasso: los cuadernos de Royan

The Royan sketchbooks

In the second essay in the catalogue, entitled ‘The Royan Sketchbooks’, Marilyn McCully examines the eight sketchbooks Picasso produced during these months. She explains in detail the supports he used (notebooks made of squared and lined paper – a choice partly influenced by the scarcity of canvases available in Royan and partly by the limited space in his studios); his models and depictions (skulls, figures, elements related to bullfighting, sketches for larger paintings, among others); how these drawings relate to the artist’s oeuvre in general; and the sources that could have inspired Picasso during these months (such as Goya and Cézanne).

The catalogue also includes a detailed chronology that spans the artist’s life, like a sort of diary, during the eleven months he spent in this small town in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region.

Pages 102 and 103 of the Spanish edition of the exhibition catalogue Picasso: los cuadernos de Royan

The book can be purchased from the Museo Picasso Málaga store.

[1] SABARTÉS, Jaime. Picasso: An Intimate Portrait, trans. Angel Flores, London: W.H. Allen, 1949, p. 195.