Pablo Picasso and Lump

Lump’s first visit to La Californie, Picasso’s villa, was on April 19, 1957. Duncan had brought him along partly because life at home wasn’t really peaceful: Lump didn’t get along well with Duncan’s much larger Afghan hound, Kubla.

At lunch, Picasso learned that Lump had never had a plate of his own. So he picked up the plate in front of him, painted a portrait of the dachshund on it, and dedicated it: “Pour Lump.”

Picasso and Lump met for the first time. Things were going pretty well.

Lump made himself at home at La Californie, where Picasso lived with Jacqueline Roque and an assortment of animals that included a boxer named Yan and a goat named Esmeralda. Then Duncan left without him.

What was supposed to be a visit became a six-year stay. Duncan later described the relationship between Picasso and Lump as a “love affair” and said the little dog effectively ran the house.

Picasso had other dogs, but according to Duncan, Lump was the only one he picked up and held in his arms.

A few months after Lump moved in, Picasso began his series of reinterpretations of Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas.

Velázquez’s original painting includes a large dog lying in the foreground. In Picasso’s versions, that dog sometimes became something much shorter and longer.

Lump appears across the series, transformed into Picasso’s unmistakable little dachshund. The dog who had arrived for lunch was now part of Picasso’s art.

Duncan’s photographs captured the less famous side of their relationship: Lump hanging around Picasso while he worked, eating from his hand, and generally behaving as though an artist’s villa in the south of France had always been his intended destination.

In one sequence, Picasso made Lump a rabbit from a cardboard box. Lump promptly attacked it and carried it into the garden. Picasso was delighted.

Lump lived with Picasso until the early 1960s, when health problems eventually brought him back to Duncan. He was treated for a spinal condition and lived for roughly another decade. Lump passed away on March 29, 1973. Picasso died ten days later.

For a dachshund who had technically belonged to someone else, Lump left quite a lot behind: photographs, paintings, a portrait on his own dinner plate, and a six-year stay that began because he went along for lunch.