In 1958 Picasso returned to a theme that had fascinated him twenty years earlier - the Arlésienne. Now in his 60s and celebrating both artistic and financial success, Picasso had left Paris for his retreat La Californie in Southern France. Here he was able to move around freely without the photographers and journalists that followed his every step in Paris, sheltered by his partner Jacqueline Roque. Reflecting on his past and the art of his most admired predecessors, Van Gogh (fig. 2) and Delacroix, Picasso revisited the theme of the Arlésienne for the third time in his career - the first being a cubist rendition completed in 1912 (fig. 1), and the second a major group of portraits of Lee Miller and Nush Éluard painted in 1937 (figs. 3 & 4). The present work is one from a series of eight paintings titled Arlésienne produced in July 1957 (figs. 7-9), four of which were produced on 14th July. The bold colours and black outlines of Picasso’s late style is perfectly exemplified by this work; the face is modelled in thick sinuous lines which break up and link the asymmetric front and profile views of the face, playing with the use of light and shade in a manner evocative of Spanish baroque portraiture.

In the summer of 1937, Picasso was surrounded in Mougins by some of his closest friends, such as the Surrealist poet Paul Éluard and art critic Roland Penrose who was accompanied by his new partner, American photographer Lee Miller. Previously the student and muse of Man Ray, Miller was by this time a prominent figure in the world of Surrealism. During the seemingly carefree summer months, Picasso was ‘seized by diabolical playfulness’ (R. Penrose quoted in Picasso: His Life and Work, London, 1958, p. 279) and painted numerous lively and colourful portraits of his companions. Picasso was particularly struck by the vivacious personality and sharp intellect of Lee Miller and captured her wearing the traditional costume of Arles in a series of seven paintings (figs. 3 & 4). Perched upon her head is the signature headdress with a ribbon flowing behind and the Arlésienne shawl wrapped around her shoulders. The wide eyes and large mouth undoubtedly capture Miller’s exuberance and vitality without the conventional attributions of a portrait.

Picasso’s return to the theme of the Arlésienne in 1958 was partly inspired b ya suggestion from the photographer Lucien Clergue that Jacqueline dress as an Arlésienne for the inauguration of the Musée Réattu in Arles. Despite Jacqueline declining to wear the costume to the vernissage, Picasso was intrigued enough to create a series of eight portraits of Jacqueline wearing the distinctive hat and ribbon, including the present work. Jacqueline’s role as muse had already required her to assume an art-historical guise - in 1954, she posed as the women of Algiers in Picasso’s seminal series Femmes d’Alger (a response to Eugène Delacroix's 1834 rendition of the same subject) and in 1958 she inspired Picasso’s Portrait of a Woman after Cranach the Younger (fig. 5).

While the 1950s represented a very settled and happy time for Picasso, they were also years of increased introspection and reflection by an artist contemplating his own age and the legacy he wished to leave behind. Paul Éluard died in late 1952 and Picasso's great partner and rival Henri Matisse passed away in 1954. Picasso felt increasingly left behind by his close companions, commenting after the passing of Matisse: ‘Who was there to talk to?’ (quoted in Brassaï, Conversations with Picasso, Chicago, 1999, p. 333). As ever, Picasso turned toward his work and with the memory of his friend Matisse ever present, he began his variations on Delacroix. In these pictures he initiated the systematic and sequential process that he would continue for the rest of his career, in which he took on and reinterpreted the great masters of the recent and distant past: Matisse and Delacroix at first, followed by Velázquez, Rembrandt, Ingres, Manet and van Gogh. It was time to measure himself against them, in order to stake his claim in posterity, and define his place in the larger art historical canon.