Les Femmes d'Alger (Version O)

Fifteen answers to Delacroix

In 1834 Eugene Delacroix painted The Women of Algiers in Their Apartment, an interior in which Algerian women sit beside a hookah in a harem. The scholar Zeynep Celik has noted that the picture alluded to penetrating the most private, sacred part of Algerian society. It hung in the Louvre, and Francoise Gilot later recalled that Picasso went there regularly to study it.

In December 1954 Picasso began a series of free variations on the Delacroix. Over roughly two months he made 15 oil paintings, lettered A through O, along with a large body of drawings and two lithographs. One account of the project counts nearly 100 studies on paper behind the final canvas.

Version O, finished in February 1955, carries the last letter in the sequence and is the canvas most often described as the culmination of the series. Picasso broke Delacroix's scene into cubist planes of vivid color. Critics have called the series violent in color and bold in perspective.

Matisse's legacy, Jacqueline's face

Picasso began the first version about six weeks after learning that Henri Matisse, his lifelong friend and rival, had died on November 3, 1954. Matisse had spent decades painting odalisques and North African interiors, so for Picasso the subject of Delacroix's harem was bound up with Matisse as much as with Delacroix. 'When Matisse died he left his odalisques to me as a legacy,' Picasso joked.

The series is also tied to Jacqueline Roque, Picasso's companion at the time. Many of his portrayals of Jacqueline from about 1955 and 1956 show her in the guise of one of the women of Algiers.

Picasso himself was unsure where the project was heading. He told his dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 'You never know how your work will turn out.'

Algeria, 1954

The series was begun in the same weeks that Algeria rose against French rule. The Algerian war of independence began in November 1954, and Picasso started painting Delacroix's Algerian women within weeks of it.

Writers on the series argue that the uprising was a likely spur. Picasso sympathized with the Algerian nationalists fighting to end more than 120 years of French rule, and he chose to remake, at that exact moment, the most famous French image of Algerian women.

It was also a year when the Cold War was hardening into its long shape. Weeks after Version O was painted, the Baghdad Pact was signed, and in May the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc states signed the Warsaw Pact.

From the Ganzes to a world record

In June 1956 the New York collectors Victor and Sally Ganz bought the entire series of 15 paintings from Picasso's Paris dealer for $212,500. The Ganzes had bought their first Picasso, Le Reve of 1932, in 1941 and went on to form what has been called the most significant private collection of the artist's work in the United States.

They did not keep all 15. Ten were later sold to a gallery, and the couple kept versions C, H, K, M and O. Version O hung in the Ganz collection for four decades.

In 1997 the Ganz collection was sold at auction in New York. The sale totaled $206.5 million, and Version O brought $31.9 million, bought by the art dealer Libby Howie on behalf of a Saudi collector.

On the evening of May 11, 2015, Version O was offered again in New York, in a themed sale of 20th-century masterpieces, with an estimate of about $140 million. Bidding opened at $100 million and ran for more than 11 minutes among several telephone bidders before the hammer fell at $160 million. With fees, the price was $179,365,000, at the time the highest price ever paid for any artwork at auction. The buyer was reported to be Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, the former prime minister of Qatar.

What the record meant

The 2015 price beat the previous Picasso auction record, $106.5 million for Nude, Green Leaves and Bust in May 2010, by $72.88 million, a 68 percent jump. It also beat the previous record for any artwork at auction, $142.4 million for Francis Bacon's Three Studies of Lucian Freud in November 2013.

Minutes after the Picasso sold, Alberto Giacometti's bronze Pointing Man brought $141.3 million, a record for sculpture, in the same sale. The evening as a whole realized $705.9 million, and the auctioneer's president said the market had entered a new era.

Version O held the record for the most expensive painting ever sold at auction until Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi passed it in November 2017. Other versions of the series have since sold separately, including Version F for $29.22 million in 2020, while Version L belongs to the Berggruen Museum in Berlin.

The numbers

Paintings in the series

15 (A to O), plus drawings and two lithographs

Versions the Ganzes kept

C, H, K, M and O

1956 price, whole series

$212,500

2015 hammer price

$160 million ($179.4 million with fees)

Timeline

1. 1834

   Eugene Delacroix paints The Women of Algiers in Their Apartment.

2. 1941

   Victor and Sally Ganz buy their first Picasso, Le Reve.

3. Nov 3, 1954

   Henri Matisse dies.

4. Nov 1954

   The Algerian war of independence begins.

5. Dec 1954

   Picasso begins his series of variations on Delacroix's painting.

6. Feb 1955

   Picasso completes Version O, the canvas lettered last in the 15-painting series.

7. Jun 1956

   Victor and Sally Ganz buy all 15 paintings in Paris for $212,500; they later keep five, including O.

8. 1997

   The Ganz collection is sold at auction in New York for $206.5 million in total; Version O brings $31.9 million.

9. May 11, 2015

   Version O sells at auction in New York for $179,365,000 with fees after more than 11 minutes of bidding, a world record for any artwork at auction.

10. Nov 2017

    Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi passes Version O as the most expensive painting ever sold at auction.

11. 2020

    Version F of the series sells for $29.22 million.

The world in 1955

• Jan 17, 1955

  USS Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine, puts to sea from Groton, Connecticut.

• Feb 24, 1955

  The Baghdad Pact is signed between Iraq and Turkey.

• Apr 12, 1955

  The Salk polio vaccine receives full approval after successful U.S. trials.

• May 14, 1955

  The Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc states sign the Warsaw Pact.

• Jul 17, 1955

  Disneyland opens in Anaheim, California.

• Oct 26, 1955

  Austria declares permanent neutrality after regaining its independence.

• Dec 1, 1955

  Rosa Parks is arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, sparking the Montgomery bus boycott.

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, Les Femmes d'Alger (Version O) is number 1 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 (1 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The Ganzes paid $212,500 for all 15 paintings in 1956. In 2015 Version O alone sold for more than 840 times that sum.
• Picasso joked that when Matisse died, he left his odalisques to Picasso as a legacy.
• Bidding in 2015 opened at $100 million and still ran for more than 11 minutes.
• The 2015 sale broke the previous Picasso auction record by $72.88 million, a 68 percent jump.
• Minutes after Version O sold, a Giacometti bronze set a record for sculpture in the same room, at $141.3 million.
• Version O was the most expensive painting ever sold at auction for two and a half years, until Salvator Mundi in November 2017.