SALVADOR DALI (Spanish, 1904-1989)
Triumph of the Toreador (1969)
Watercolor, oil and pencil on card
19⅜ x 15. in. (49.2cm x 40cm.)
Signed and dated “Dalí/ 1969″ lower center
Provenance
Private Collection
Sale: Sotheby’s, New York, 8 November 2001, lot 294
Private Collection, New York
Private Collection, Texas
This work is an idea for a set design for the opera Carmen act IV “Lillias Pastia’s Tavern”
This work is accompanied by the original certification of authenticity from Robert Descharnes (Ref# D-968) This represents the Gold-Standard of certification for Dali, used by all major auctions.
Salvador Dali venerated Spanish master Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (nee. Diego Velasquez). Velasquez (1599-1660) was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV. He is considered the most important painter of the Spanish Golden Age. Dali stated “I [Dali] am not a good painter, because I am too intelligent to be a good painter. To be a good painter you’ve got to be a bit stupid, with the exception of Velasquez, who is a genius whose talent surpasses the art of painting and to life. I owe everything. Because the day that Dali paints a picture as good as Velasquez, Vermeer or Raphael… The next week he will die. So I prefer to paint bad pictures and live longer“.
Velasquez’s towering masterpiece “Las Meninas” (1656), primarily depicts the infanta Margarita surrounded by maids and chaperones beside the painter himself working on a large canvas. The painting’s mind-bending affects place the viewer in the viewpoint of the King and Queen (who are reflected in the mirror on the far wall) while being painted by Velasquez and attended by their daughter. A mysterious man lingers in the background. The painting, which hung in Spain’s Museo Nacional del Prado during the lifetime of Dali, became a pilgrimage point any aspiring artist would undertake for intensive study. Velasquez’s profound influence is found in Dali’s paintings such as Velázquez Painting the Infanta Margarita with the Lights and Shadows of His Own Glory (1958), The Maids of Honour (Las Meninas) (1960), and Portrait of Juan de Pareja repairing a mandolin string (1960). In 1960 he took part in a group exhibition at the Sala Gaspar Gallery in Barcelona, entitled O figura. Homenaje informal a Velázquez, with a text that praises Velazquez, illustrated with a reproduction of Las Meninas. At the end of that same year he organized an exhibition at the Carstairs Gallery in New York under the title The Secret Number of Velázquez Revealed.
The 1960s were also the years the Theatre-Museum idea was taking shape. We find a photo-montage showing the courtyard with various works by Salvador Dalí. Presiding over the doorway leading into the entrance hall from the courtyard and drawing back a curtain, we find the personality which lets us in, José Nieto by Velázquez (to whom Dalí also dedicated a work). In 1965 he painted The Apotheosis of the Dollar, a work which brings together the most significant images of Dalí’s iconography. In the bottom right part of the painting you can notice the figure of Dalí viewed from behind, dressed like Velázquez, painting Gala in which a fragment of the work Las Meninas is appears up to three times.
The central figure in each work is the same as depicted in the Velasquez work, the Queen’s Chamberlain Don Jose Nieto, with knee bent neither coming nor going. It is meant to draw the viewer into the center of the work.
