Picasso's "Sylvette" Breaks Auction Records in Australia

If you are a follower of Picasso you know that the women that graced his bed also grace his pictures. You could always tell when Picasso had taken a new lover (and sadly so could the women in his life) as his painting style would start to morph and new faces, new styles and even new colors would begin to push their way out of his canvases and creations. Not that his discarded ladies got much slack. As he was tiring of them they would begin to morph on the canvas as well. For example-Olga Koklova, his first wife became a face of pointed teeth and gaping mouth as Picasso dealt with her nagging and anger. Dora Marr who began as large yes and bright colors became a hardened, bitter woman who Picasso portrayed as the “weeping woman”.

There is one model that (wisely) never made the jump from model to lover. Sylvette David, who sat for the famous “Sylvette” painting at the age of just 17, kept her relationship with Picasso a platonic one. It’s even said that Brigette Bardot got her signature long, blonde ponytail from David.

Picasso met Sylvette when she was living in the south of France with her English-born mother and her mother’s boyfriend Toby Jelinek, a maker of avant-garde metal chairs. Picasso took a fancy to Jelinek’s style and ordered two chairs for his nearby studio. When Jelinek delivered the works he had Sylvette in tow. Several days later, Picasso appeared with a picture of her, drawn from memory and asked her to pose for him. In the months that she sat for him he produced over forty pictures of her.

Yesterday, in Sydney, Australia one of the most famous of those portraits entitled “Sylvette” was auctioned off for $6.9 million (6.1 million American dollars) smashing the record for the most paid for a work of art in that country. The painting was formerly part of the collection of the director of the gallery and famous art collector, Rodney Menzies.