Pablo Picasso

Gertrude & Leo Stein, Paris (acquired directly from the artist in 1907)
Alice B. Toklas, Paris (by descent from the above)
Georges & Edna Seligmann, New York (acquired from the above circa 1946-47)
Sale: Champin-Lombrail-Gauthier, Enghien, November 19, 1988, lot 45
Sale: Christie's, New York, November 12, 1992, lot 142
Acquired at the above sale

Paris, Galerie H. Odermatt-Ph. Cazeau, Maitres des XIXe et XXe Siècles, 1989, no. 30, illustrated in reverse in the catalogue

Hélè Seckel, ed., Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (exhibition catalogue), vol. I, Paris, Musée Picasso, 1988, Carnet 10 Sheet 3, illustrated n.p.
The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso and the Parisian Avant-Garde (exhibition catalogue), San Francisco, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Paris, Musée National-Grand Palais & New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011-12, no. 364, p. 445
The Picasso Project, ed., Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture, The African Period, 1907-1909, San Francisco, 2014, no. 1907-733, illustrated p. 199

Executed on cream wove paper, not laid down. The sheet is hinged to the mount at two points along the verso of the upper edge. The edges are slightly unevenly cut. The sheet is lightly time-stained with a faint old mat stain visible along the perimeter and a few scattered spots of foxing. There is a thin sinuous S-shaped repaired tear at the center of the figure's hairline which has been very sensitively restored. This work is in very good overall condition.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Tête de femme is one of at least ten closely related drawings that the artist completed in June and July of 1907, almost immediately after completing his landmark composition, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. According to Daix and Rosselet, this remarkable drawing is believed to be the third in a series of articulations of a female head from a sketchbook which includes direct studies for Nu à la draperie, now at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. This sketchbook, known as Carnet 10, was acquired in 1907 by Gertrude and Leo Stein—a brother and sister from Pittsburgh who settled in Paris and were amongst the earliest and most prominent of Picasso’s patrons. Photographs of their salon show that the sketchbook was soon dismantled with each of the drawings individually framed and mounted for display.

Picasso used drawing throughout his career in order to experiment with different artistic problems: how to show volume, mass and weight; how to convey movement through gesture; how to establish monumentality and scale. The preliminary drawings that he executed during this summer of outstanding productivity not only demonstrate the various stages and processes that led to the final compositions of the chef-d’oeuvres from this period, but also constitute a vital body of experimental work that ultimately resulted in the invention of Cubism. Almost all of these studies, the present work included, deal with the theme of the female nude—a subject of which Picasso never tired. Picasso’s attention here is on the figure’s face, particularly on the angularity and dimensions of the nose which is rendered with a network of cross-hatching.

This period for Picasso was marked by an enthusiastic reaction to the African tribal sculptures that began to flood the museums and private collections in Paris after the turn of the twentieth century. These objects encouraged an entire generation of artists in Paris to expand the boundaries of representation. Artists such as Constantin Brancusi, Henri Matisse and Andre Derain invoked the forms of tribal sculpture as they sought out a new visual language. The dramatic simplification of form and shamanistic presence of these works appealed to Picasso and his own reaction to these works was particularly resonant in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and related studies such as the present work.

Years after he completed the present work, Picasso told Françoise Gilot about his appreciation for African art and its impact on his pictures, “When I became interested in negro art….it was because at the time I was against what was called beauty in museums….men had made those masks for a sacred purpose, a magic purpose, as a kind of mediation between themselves and the unknown hostile forces that surrounded them, in order to overcome their fear and horror by giving it a form and an image.  At that moment, I realized that this was what painting was all about.  Painting isn’t an aesthetic operation; it’s a form of magic designed as a mediator between this strange, hostile world and us, a way of seizing power by giving form to our terrors as well as to our desires” (quoted in Pierre Daix, Picasso, Life and Art, New York, 1993, p. 75).