In 1905, Picasso did a series of sketches,Hommes assis et mains, étude (or Study of Seated Men and Hands), which Sotheby’s describes in its auction catalogue as studies done in advance of Picasso’s 1905 Boy with a Pipe. “Although the model for the present work has sometimes been identified as an actor,” the cataloguer writes, “it seems likely that he was an adolescent known as ‘p’tit Louis,’ who was frequently to be found at the Bateau Lavoir [in Picasso’s Montmarte studio]” (Sotheby’s 4).
Yet examining the sketches closely, one notices firstly the casual latitude of motion exhibited by the model. The sketches depict what appears to be the same male figure in a variety of poses, leaning against a wall, smoking, lighting a pipe, sitting, each pose struck, or at least depicted, with a physical litheness and nonchalance one might not expect of a first-time adolescent model. The model further knows how to smoke a pipe and how to hold it expertly. In one image (top left corner), he even seems to be in a sort of ecstasy with the pipe, reclining his head, eyes closed, in a pose of perfect relaxation as a cloud drifts languorously from the pipe. In yet another, we see the same figure in what appears an almost sarcastic pose (left, bottom, center): legs crossed, arms folded impatiently across his chest, the model is looking at the artist in a confident and ‘knowing’ gesture. The poses and postures themselves convey a sense of familiarity. Indeed in certain poses (see right, center, bottom,) the model seems almost flirtatious, as though he’s playing with the pipe. It seems unlikely that such familiarity would have existed between Picasso and a Parisian working boy he barely knew and mentioned only once in his life, in his late eighties. Was this Max Jacob? In several poses, the model clearly resembles Picasso’s Etude d’homme, a sketch of Jacob from the same period. The spread-legged pose in the sketch to the left is indeed similarly suggestive.
One critical clue, however, can be found in the coy pose of the sketch to the right (center, bottom). If you look closely, you can make out what seem to be long, dark eyelashes over the eyes of the model, especially over his half-closed right eye. While Picasso does not detail the model’s eyes in any other part of the sketch, here the action of the eyes—half-closed, almost fluttering—is critical to explaining the model’s coy pose. The sketch certainly conveys a sense of playfulness and humor. Max Jacob’s eyelashes were famously long and dark. Indeed, wearing his head clean-shaven at the time, they seem to have proven his most salient features! Both by Picasso and by Jean Cocteau caricature Jacob’s eyelashes in their sketches of him (see below, right).
The emotional import of Boy with a Pipe for Picasso also becomes clear in André Salmon’s narration of the artist’s final touches:
One night, Picasso abandoned the company of his friends and their intellectual chit-chat. He returned to his studio, took the canvas he had abandoned a month before and crowned the figure of the lad with roses. He made his work a masterpiece thanks to a sublime whim. (Sotheby’s 4).
Here, we might consider the nature of the models Picasso would depict throughout his life. Of the nearly 200 paintings of children he finished, all but a handful were of his own (Spies). Most of his female models were lovers. Picasso’s daughter, Maya Picasso, speculates that it was through his art that Picasso “caressed with his hands and his eyes” those he loved (see “Picasso and his Children” gallery). It seems unlikely, then, that the artist would have found himself compelled by a “sublime whim” in his thoughts in recollection of a hired model or an adolescent admirer, but he might perhaps have been moved by a glance at, or thoughts about, Jacob, to whom he was “my beloved” (see “Max Jacob” gallery).