巴布羅 · 畢加索

路易斯·賴瑞斯畫廊，巴黎
鄧克爾曼畫廊，多倫多（售出：紐約蘇富比帕克·伯奈特畫廊，1975年10月22日，拍品編號188）
西奧畫廊，馬德里及瓦倫西亞
私人收藏，西班牙（1981年購自上述畫廊；售出：倫敦蘇富比，2004年2月3日，拍品編號51）
哈肯·克里斯滕森，挪威（購自上述拍賣；身後售出：倫敦蘇富比，2008年6月25日，拍品編號32）
愛德華·泰萊·納函畫廊，紐約
購自上述畫廊

多倫多，鄧克爾曼畫廊，〈畢加索〉，1969-70年，品號3，圖錄載圖

奧斯陸，哈肯畫廊，〈畢加索：油畫-雕塑-素描〉，2004年，品號不詳，圖錄載彩圖

克里斯蒂安·澤爾沃斯，《巴布羅·畢加索》，巴黎，1971年，第XXIII冊，品號62，圖版27載圖

Executed in luminous, expressionistic brushstrokes Femme au chapeau assise, buste is a powerful depiction of Picasso’s second wife, Jacqueline. According to the photographer Edward Quinn, whose photographs document Picasso's studio work in the early 1960s at Notre-Dame-de-Vie, Jacqueline was the driving force behind Picasso's ceaseless production: "His close friends agree that Jacqueline's presence and attention were mainly responsible for Picasso's having remained so active until his death. His outlook on life and his enthusiasm for work helped him defy old age and stay young in mind, and even in body. He liked to be with younger people, and his 'eternal youth' coupled with Jacqueline's adaptability, made the great difference between their ages unimportant" (E. Quinn & P. Daix, The Private Picasso, New York, 1987, p. 291).

Throughout their life together, Jacqueline served as a model for several of Picasso's reinterpretations of art historical masterworks, including his studies of Manet's Déjeuner sur l'herbe and Delacroix' Femmes d'Algiers. But here, the artist has chosen to paint her not in any narrative context, but rather as the singular object and focus of his attention. In the present composition Jacqueline’s large eyes are combined with her other characteristic attributes – a strong nose and accentuated eyebrows – creating an expression that is at once self-assured and apprehensive. 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, to the more stylized, abstract renderings reminiscent of his earlier portraits of Dora Maar, including the present work. In the present work Jacqueline is depicted in characteristic double-profile, a jaunty hat set on her head and the outline of one of the chairs she regally inhabited, picked out in bold strokes of white and aquamarine.

During his final decades, Picasso reexamined artists who had come before. At one point in the 1960s Picasso was so fixated on Van Gogh that he carried in his wallet the original news article detailing Van Gogh’s self-mutilation of his ear. It was here on his hilltop in Notre Dame de Vie that Picasso would further deepen his study of the old masters. According to Elizabeth Cowling “In old age, when he no longer went to Paris and left his country house outside Mougins with the greatest reluctance, Picasso immersed himself in masterpieces like Poussin’s Massacre of the Innocents (1628), Rembrandt’s Night Watch (1642) and a van Gogh Self Portrait (1889) by projecting slides blown up to a gigantic scale onto his studio wall” (Picasso, Challenging the Past (exhibition catalogue), National Gallery, London, 2009, pp. 12-13). Vincent van Gogh was the artist Picasso admired most and he referred to him frequently throughout his career. In Picasso’s final decade, Van Gogh came to be the greatest source of inspiration: “Of all the artists with whom Picasso identified, van Gogh is the least often cited but probably the one that meant the most to him in later years. He talked of him as his patron saint, talked of him with intense admiration and compassion, never with any of his habitual irony or mockery. Van Gogh, like Cézanne earlier in Picasso’s life, was sacrosanct…. Why, one wonders, should a great artist want to paint self-portraits in the guise of another great artist?... The answer is surely that in losing your identity to someone else you gain a measure of control over them…I suspect that Picasso also wanted to galvanize his paint surface…with some of the Dutchman’s Dyonisian fervor. The surface of the late paintings has a freedom, a plasticity, that was never there before; they are more spontaneous, more expressive and more instinctive than virtually all his previous work" (J. Richardson in Late Picasso, Paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints 1953-1972, Tate Gallery, London & Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, 1988, pp. 31-34).