- 27
Pablo Picasso
Description
- Pablo Picasso
- Tête de femme. Face
- dated 13.6.62. II (upper left)
- oil on paper
- 42 by 27cm.
- 16 1/2 by 10 5/8 in.
Provenance
Galerie Jacques de la Béraudière, Geneva (acquired from the above in 2011)
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2012
Exhibited
Literature
Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, œuvres de 1961 à 1962, Paris, 1968, vol. 20, no. 256, illustrated pl. 118
Catalogue Note
According to Elizabeth Cowling, ‘One of Jacqueline’s attractions for Picasso was her uncanny ability to inhabit and blend with now one picture in his musée imaginaire, now another’ (E. Cowling in Picasso Portraits (exhibition catalogue), National Portrait Gallery, London, 2016-17, p. 184). Picasso painted Jacqueline in a variety of manners, from the more naturalistic, frontal depictions he explored in a range of media (fig. 1), including the present work, to the more stylised, abstract renderings reminiscent of his earlier portraits of Dora Maar. Throughout their life together, Jacqueline also served as a model for several of Picasso’s reinterpretations of art historical masterpieces, including his studies after Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe and Delacroix’s Les Femmes d’Algers. In the present work, however, he chose a more intimate rendering of his muse, who is depicted frontally, facing the viewer with her wide eyes, her long hair and striped ribbon giving her an innocent, youthful look.