Pablo Picasso

Tête de femme was executed in the summer of 1906, during Picasso’s stay in the village of Gósol in the Spanish Pyrenees. The artist and his companion Fernande Olivier left Paris in May and, having spent several weeks in Barcelona, visiting Picasso’s family and friends, they left for Gósol in early June. This remote mountain village offered magnificent views and tranquillity, but little in terms of comfort and luxury – the couple stayed in one of the two rooms at Gósol’s only inn, Cal Tampanada. The calm, peaceful atmosphere of his native country gave Picasso new inspiration and energy; he was immensely prolific during the ten weeks spent at Gósol, executing a number of paintings, drawings, watercolours, gouaches and carvings. It was not, however, the magnificent nature and splendid scenery that excited Picasso. During his time at Gósol, he executed very few landscapes, and instead concentrated on portraits and figure-studies inspired by the peasant girls and youths, the innkeeper Josep Fontdevila, as well as Fernande. He also explored this theme in sculpture, executing Tete de femme (Fernande) in the same year (fig. 1).

Depicting an anonymous local girl, the present work, nevertheless, reflects the refined features of Fernande. As John Richardson pointed out: "The noble beauty with which he invests the girls of Gósol, has a faint, cat-like hint of Fernande, but then, the looks of the reigning mistress are always an ingredient in Picasso’s physiognomical combinations" (J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso, 1881-1906, London, 1991, vol. I, p. 438). Apart from the tranquillity of the milieu that surrounded Picasso, the simple, calm beauty of the present work derives from another source: a twelfth-century wooden Madonna and Child sculpture which, according to Richardson, "left more of a mark on Picasso‘s work than is generally allowed" (ibid., p. 452). Richardson argues that the linear, highly stylised features of this Romanesque statue had a strong influence on the development of Picasso’s style during the crucial period of 1906-07, that culminated in his celebrated Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (fig. 2).


Fig. 1, Pablo Picasso, Tête de femme (Fernande), 1906, bronze

Fig. 2, Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907, oil on canvas, The Museum of Modern Art, New York