Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Buste de femme au chapeau (Dora Maar)

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Buste de femme au chapeau (Dora Maar)
signed ‘Picasso’ (upper left)
oil on canvas
28 7/8 x 23 5/8 in. (73.3 x 59.9 cm.)
Painted on 28 May 1943

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Provenance
Galerie Louise Leiris (Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler), Paris.
Galerie Tarica, Paris.
Galleria Internazionale, Milan.
Davlyn Gallery, New York (by 1978).
Acquired from the above by the present owner, 18 January 1980.

Pre-Lot Text
The Defining Gesture: Modern Masters from the Eppler Family Collection
Across their more than sixty years together, Heinz and Ruthe Eppler were devoted partners in family, philanthropy, and a shared love of art and culture. Born in Germany, Heinz Eppler (d. 2012) escaped the looming Nazi threat to begin a new life in the United States. With great business acumen, Heinz co-founded a housewares distributing business that later acquired The Miller-Wohl Company, and built the firm into a national chain. At the same time, the Epplers created a lasting legacy in art, education, healthcare, and Jewish causes. As president and chair of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Heinz provided a strength of leadership that impacted countless lives around the globe, notably in Jewish communities in Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and Ethiopia. The Epplers’ philanthropic focus also extended to the arts.
The Epplers decided to build their own collection in the early 1980s, and began a friendship with Edward B. Henning (d. 1993), the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Chief Curator of Modern Art. The many correspondences between Henning and Heinz Eppler, often funny and personal, reveal an ongoing dialogue on family, the history of art, and the evolution of the Eppler Family Collection. Henning became a trusted advisor, relating his enthusiasm or hesitation on potential acquisitions. “Once again, let me simply state that when I see things that I think are very good I will mention them to you,” Henning wrote in 1981, “and depend on you to see whatever you think might be of interest to you.” The Epplers, for their part, were inquisitive and deliberate in their purchases. “Ruthe and I are very patient collectors,” Heinz Eppler explained to Henning in 1982, “and are not impulsive with respect to acquiring a specific rare work from an existing collection.” Rather than following the heady Contemporary fashions of the art world in the eighties, the Epplers turned to the artists that had spoken to them more directly in their formative adult years. What motivated the Epplers was the thrill of finding works of visual and intellectual resonance—paintings, sculpture, and works on paper by such legendary figures of Modernism as Franz Kline, Hans Hofmann, Lee Krasner, Arshile Gorky, David Smith, Milton Avery, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse. Like Heinz, many of the artists were also émigrés who found their voice and freedom in America.
Throughout the 1980’s, Henning was not only an important advisor, but he and the Epplers developed a close friendship and a shared vision about collecting “When you have an important collection, no matter how large or small,” the curator wrote, “it is a serious responsibility as well as a great pleasure.” Of Motherwell’s Je t’aime No. III with Loaf of Bread, he noted, “My feeling is that it is very important as well as being beautiful,” and he lauded the collectors for having chosen a “superb” painting by William Baziotes. Henning went to great lengths to commend the art historical significance of Abstract Expressionists such as Motherwell, Franz Kline, and Jackson Pollock. Upon hearing that the Epplers had purchased Kline’s Light Mechanic in 1985—a work Henning had suggested some two years earlier—the curator wrote to express his congratulations. “You now have an excellent, representative collection of American Abstract Expressionist art,” he enthused, “and that is the most important art of the twentieth century and the most important of all American art.”
The Epplers’ connection with Henning is indicative of their personal, heartfelt approach toward art—one that culminated in an inspired collection of works extending across the twentieth century. As Henning observed to the couple in December 1986: “For the past four years, each year I have thought that your collecting might be coming to a conclusion, and each year I’m surprised when we find something important.” Ultimately, the Epplers collected art that they loved to live with and share with others, both through loans to exhibitions and by opening their home to museum groups and fellow collectors. In 1986, the Epplers were asked to loan works to the Cleveland Museum exhibition The Art of Collecting Modern Art: An Exhibition of Works from the Collections of Clevelanders.
As Henning wrote, “Collecting art intelligently involves much more than having enough money. Collecting art successfully requires knowledge, taste and judgment. It may not require the same skills used to create works of art, but it does depend on a comparable level of taste and judgment.” The Eppler Family Collection is an enduring testament to the personal vision and discernment with which Heinz and Ruthe carefully built their collection.

Literature
C. Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Paris, 1962, vol. 13, no. 21 (illustrated, pl. 9).

Exhibited
The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Art of Collecting Modern Art An Exhibition of Works From Clevelanders, February-March 1986 (illustrated in color, fig. 3; titled Portrait de Femme).