Le Repas frugal

His second print, and a plate he didn't clean

Le repas frugal (The Frugal Repast) is only the second print Picasso ever made. The first, El Zurdo, was a clumsy etching made in Barcelona in 1899, and only one impression of it survives. Five years later, in Paris, he went back to printmaking and produced this large, confident plate with almost no practice. He had only rudimentary instruction from his friend and neighbor, the Spanish painter Ricard Canals.

He was too poor, or too careless, to buy a fresh plate. He used one that had already been etched with a landscape by Joan González, brother of the sculptor Julio González, and neither he nor Canals burnished out the old design. Traces of plants and landscape still show through in the upper background of every impression. Sources disagree on the metal: the Museu Picasso in Barcelona and a 2020 newspaper report call it a zinc plate, while other accounts describe Vollard's later steel-facing of a copper plate.

The image shows a gaunt couple at a nearly bare table, with a few scraps of bread and a little wine. The man, thought to be blind, holds the woman with long, thin fingers but turns his face away from her. She rests her chin on her hand and looks out of the picture. The bodies are stretched and bony, and the effect has led writers to call it a mannerist print.

Madeleine, a blind man from Barcelona, and Fernande

Picasso was 23 and had moved to Paris for good in April 1904, settling in a cheap studio in the Bateau-Lavoir on the rue Ravignan in Montmartre. Painters, poets and writers passed through, including Guillaume Apollinaire, Georges Braque and Henri Matisse.

The woman in the print is a portrait of Madeleine, Picasso's lover at the time. The man is a figure from his Barcelona years: he appears in sketches and a gouache from 1903 and in the painting The Blind Man's Meal, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Fernande Olivier, who would become Picasso's first great love, saw the etching on her first visit to his studio in August 1904. One catalog essay notes that she probably had no idea the woman in it was her rival.

The print sits on the hinge between Picasso's Blue Period and his Rose Period. The grief of his Barcelona paintings is still there, but softened by the couple's embrace and the woman's half smile. The crumpled tablecloth has even been read as an early hint of the Cubist still lifes he would paint five years later.

From a few proofs to an edition of 250

The earliest impressions were pulled in small numbers by the master printer Auguste Delâtre between September 1904 and March 1905, apparently whenever Picasso asked for one. He hoped to make money from them. He sent two to his friend Sebastià Junyent in Barcelona, one for his father and one to show to buyers, and showed the etching in early 1905 at the Galeries Serrurier in Paris alongside his new prints of street performers. The proceeds barely covered his costs.

How many early proofs exist is not settled. MoMA counts about 30 proofs before the edition; one catalog essay records a single first-state impression in the Musée Picasso in Paris and about 35 of the second state, three of them printed in Prussian blue. A separate group of 25 to 27 impressions on Japan paper was printed at the Louis Fort workshop in 1913.

In 1913 the dealer Ambroise Vollard bought the plates for the whole group of early prints, had them steel-faced so they could survive a long print run, and published them in editions of 250. Steel-facing makes the lines shallower and the print paler, which is why the early Delâtre proofs, rich with ink left on the plate surface, are far more prized than the edition. The group became known as La Suite des Saltimbanques, after the traveling acrobats who fill most of the plates.

Le repas frugal is one of the most traded Picasso prints. One market tracker counts 49 auction sales since 1999. An edition impression with a Van Gelder Zonen watermark, once owned by Jack Greenberg, the longtime director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, sold in April 2022 for $112,500.

The most expensive print ever sold

One early Delâtre proof, on laid Arches paper, was bought in Paris in the 1930s by a European collector and passed down in the family. It was sold in London on November 30, 2004, a sale the trade press reported as a record for a print. The buyer was Heinz Berggruen, the Berlin and Paris dealer and collector who had known Picasso.

Berggruen's heirs sold it in London on March 1, 2022. Estimated at £1.5 million to £2.5 million, it brought £6,014,500, a world record for a Picasso print and the highest price ever paid for any print at auction.

That record belongs to the rare proofs. The 1913 edition of 250 trades in a very different range, and the gap between the two printings is the clearest lesson the print market draws from this image.

How to tell what you are looking at

Early proofs: printed by Delâtre in 1904-05 before steel-facing, with deep blacks, strong contrast and a film of ink on the plate surface. A few are signed or dedicated, including MoMA's impression dedicated to Junyent and the numbered impressions in the Musée Picasso, Paris (no. 1), the Museu Picasso, Barcelona (no. 2), the National Gallery of Art (no. 3) and the Clark Art Institute (no. 4).

The 1913 edition: printed by Louis Fort for Vollard on Van Gelder Zonen paper, from the steel-faced plate, with thinner lines and less tone. The Metropolitan Museum's impression is from this printing, on a sheet of 65.2 x 50 cm; it was bought in 1923.

Every impression shows the plate's reused origin: the ghost of González's foliage at upper right.

The numbers

Medium

Etching and scraper (also cataloged as etching and drypoint)

Plate

463 x 377 mm (18 1/4 x 14 7/8 in)

Edition

250 (Vollard, 1913, printed by Louis Fort on Van Gelder paper), plus about 30 to 35 earlier Delâtre proofs and 25 to 27 Japan-paper impressions

Catalogue raisonné

Bloch 1; Geiser/Baer 2

Public collections

MoMA (683.1993); Metropolitan Museum of Art (1923); National Gallery of Art (1971.87.13); Museu Picasso, Barcelona (MPB 110.011)

Timeline

1. 1899

   Picasso makes his first print, El Zurdo, in Barcelona. Only one impression survives.

2. 1903

   The blind man appears in Picasso's sketches, a gouache and the painting The Blind Man's Meal.

3. Apr 1904

   Picasso moves to Paris for good and settles in the Bateau-Lavoir in Montmartre.

4. Aug 1904

   Fernande Olivier sees the etching on her first visit to Picasso's studio.

5. Sep 1904

   Auguste Delâtre begins printing the first small run of proofs, continuing until March 1905.

6. 1905

   The etching is shown at the Galeries Serrurier in Paris with Picasso's prints of street performers.

7. 1913

   Ambroise Vollard buys the plates, has them steel-faced and publishes the Saltimbanques in editions of 250.

8. 1923

   The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquires an impression of the 1913 edition.

9. 1970

   Picasso gives an impression to the Museu Picasso, Barcelona.

10. Nov 30, 2004

    An early Delâtre proof sells in London; Heinz Berggruen buys it.

11. Sep 2020

    An edition impression leads an online charity sale of Picasso prints benefiting Orange County food banks.

12. Mar 1, 2022

    The Berggruen proof sells in London for £6,014,500, the auction record for any print.

13. Apr 28, 2022

    An edition impression from the Jack Greenberg collection sells for $112,500.

14. Sep 2025

    An edition impression sells in London; the buyer pays $140,000.

The world in 1904

• Feb 8, 1904

  A surprise Japanese attack on Port Arthur starts the Russo-Japanese War.

• Feb 17, 1904

  Puccini's Madama Butterfly premieres at La Scala in Milan to a cool reception.

• Apr 30, 1904

  The Louisiana Purchase Exposition, the St. Louis World's Fair, opens.

• May 21, 1904

  FIFA is founded.

• Jun 15, 1904

  A fire aboard the steamboat General Slocum in New York's East River kills 1,021 people.

• Oct 27, 1904

  The first underground line of the New York City Subway opens.

• Nov 8, 1904

  Theodore Roosevelt wins the U.S. presidential election.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Le Repas frugal is number 40 of 100 in the art entries of the FLOAT 100. 88 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (99 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Picasso etched it over another artist's landscape plate, and the old foliage still shows in the background.
• It was only the second print he ever made.
• Vollard steel-faced the plate in 1913 so it could print 250 copies, which is why the earliest proofs are worth many times more than the edition.
• The 2022 record proof had first set a print record in 2004, when it was bought by Heinz Berggruen.
• One impression was sold in 2020 with half the auction department's commission going to food banks.