The acquisition of this portrait of the French composer Erik Satie (Honfleur, Calvados, Normandy, 1866–Paris, 1925) helped to fill a gap in the museum’s existing collection of works by Ignacio Zuloaga, as works from his youth are virtually impossible to find on the art market. The canvas was painted at a time when Zuloaga’s painting denoted the influence of Eugène Carrière and he traded naturalism and the Impressionist palette for more limited colours and a dim lighting that brought his style closer to symbolism. The bust of the young Satie emerges from an unidentified interior; his face, in three-quarter profile, is barely illuminated and he sports the bohemian Montmartre aesthetic, with long hair, a beard, pince-nez and frock coat, that preceded the green corduroy ‘uniform’ which the composer wore for over a decade beginning in 1895.

Zuloaga painted this work in Paris when he was twenty-three and just starting his career: a self-taught artist, he was eager to round out his education by soaking up the atmosphere of modernity in the French capital. There he joined the bohemian circles of poets, painters and musicians and the many Basque and Catalan artists who gathered at cafés and cabarets. He became friends with Pablo Uranga, and in late 1892 the two decided to share lodgings in the rue Cortot. One of their neighbours was fellow painter Suzanne Valadon, who had an affair with Erik Satie in 1893. By then Zuloaga must have been acquainted with the musician, as he played piano at Le Chat Noir, a cabaret which the artist frequented and where he befriended the painters Ramón Casals and Santiago Rusiñol.

All of them—Valadon, Uranga, Casas and Rusiñol—sketched or painted Satie, who already stood out as an unusual character and whose influence would extend from his contemporaries, as a forerunner of Debussy and Ravel, to the present day, inspiring minimalist composers John Cage and Steve Reich and many others. Satie was also portrayed by avant-garde artists like Cocteau, Picasso, Larionov, Goncharova, Brancusi, Man Ray and Picabia. He composed the soundtrack for René Clair’s experimental short film Entr’acte (1924), which is now being screened at the museum as a prelude to the Intermission exhibition.Jean Cocteau introduced him to Serge Diaghilev’s famous Ballets Russes, and he wrote the music for the ballet Parade (1917), with sets and costumes designed by Picasso.

This picture was a gift from Ignacio Zuloaga to the musician—it is signed and dedicated ‘A mon cher ami Erik Satie’ [sic]—who kept it until his death in 1925.