John Richardson
A Life of Picasso, Volume III:
The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932.
Knopf, 608 pages, $40

It’s been sixteen years since volume 1, The Early Years, 1881–1906, of John Richardson’s monumental Life of Picasso first appeared and eleven since the publication of volume 2, The Painter of Modern Life, 1907–1917. This month, the long-awaited volume 3, The Triumphant Years, 1917–1932, has arrived. (A final fourth volume has been promised from the start.) In volume 1, Richardson and his superb collaborator, Marilyn McCully, set a new standard with their richly detailed, scrupulously researched, almost overwhelmingly informative account of Picasso’s childhood and his formative years as a student and a young artist in Barcelona and in Paris. With its lavish detail and ample servings of gossip, volume 1 both enlarged our knowledge and dispelled some of the Picasso myths—such as the story about Picasso’s artist father’s laying down his brushes forever, awed by his teen-age son’s gifts. Since Andrea Verrocchio is said to have reacted the same way to an angel painted by his apprentice Leonardo da Vinci, the tale always seemed problematic, but Richardson’s discussion of the earliest surviving works left no doubt that while the aspiring young artist was abundantly talented, he was not quite the prodigy that legend insisted on. Picasso’s virtuosity was not conferred upon him at birth by a benevolent fairy godmother, but rather was hard won, through diligent study.

Volume 2 dealt with more familiar territory—the Cubist years and the