It is my understanding that it is in fact a Picasso; I think he was about fourteen or fifteen when he did it. Very talented man, Picasso. Doesn't mean we have to like anything he did later on though. ;-)
Sasha wrote:
That painting looks a lot more sophisticated and accurate than the many realist paintings I've seen on a Picasso web site. Those were generally mediocre at best. They generally had figures that were somewhat badly proportioned. I suspect a scam here. I would not be surprised if Picasso or some other people have falsely attributed certain drawings and paintings to him in order to build up his reputation for talent. He was a big jerk, a communist, and a crook as far as I'm concerned. Him taking false credit would not surprise me at all. It's exactly the kind of thing I'd expect him and his allies to do to try to discredit traditional painting.
And Travis replied:
That's what I thought, until I asked my friend Mark Elliott, who knows plenty about the subject (he's my friendly neighborhood art scholar) about it and he told me it was a Picasso, but it looked different then the image in his book. He came to the conclusion that it may have either been retouched recently or photoshopped a bit and as you know, on the web, paintings are always altered in some way. On closer inspection, I didn't think it was all that impressive. I can't seem to remember if it was Frederick Leighton or John Everett Millais being more impressive in their youth then Picasso, but nobody seems to bring that up.
Travis
