When Picasso was a boy wonder

Exhibitions are only as good as the loans that can be secured for them, as was seen at the Royal Academy’s Manet exhibition recently. The exhibits at Burlington House were thin on the ground because in some cases promised loans were rescinded, and other items were simply not available. Whatever one thinks of that controversial figure Norman Rosenthal, for so many years exhibitions secretary at the RA, his ability to seek out and obtain loans amounted to genius, backed by two important characteristics: audacity and tenacity. When I first saw the Courtauld’s Picasso show, I immediately thought of a painting of the artist’s friend Casagemas on his deathbed, lit by a flickering candle. An intense and memorable image, it was painted in the period surveyed by this exhibition, and should, ideally, be on the walls at Somerset House. The fact that it’s not there has less to do with the wishes of the show’s curator, Dr Barnaby Wright, and more with the fact that the painting’s owner, the Picasso Museum in Paris, is currently closed and has sent its collection off on tour to raise revenue.