Pablo Picasso

Madame Toula, (sold: Sotheby's, London, April 1, 1981, lot 35)
Phillips, London
Dr. Marino Chiavelli, Johannesburg (sold: Sotheby's, New York, November 13, 1985, lot 61)
Acquavella Galleries, Inc., New York
Acquired from the above in 1986

La Lecture was executed during the three and a half months Picasso spent in Madrid early in 1901. Aside from being involved with the avant-garde review Arte Joven, Picasso produced a series of portraits of women belonging to Madrid's high society, of which this pastel is one. Palau i Fabre wrote: “In these works Picasso appears to have been endeavouring, momentarily, to ingratiate himself with that section of Madrid society that could free him from his financial straits. Thus he painted the likenesses of some of the ladies in good society, whom he saw or knew ... This series of portraits ... is enough to give us a clear idea of what Madrid women in good society were like at that time and how they appeared to Picasso. Differing from one another though they may, and with certain variations of detail, they have one feature in common, for they all, almost without exception, wear particulary enormous skirts, the sort of skirts that are only suitable for walking straight from the carriage to the drawing -room ... Thus Picasso captured the two extremes of Madrid society: the aristocracy and the poorest classes of all ... in dealing with the rich men's wives he resorted to a really seductive use of colour, both in pastel and in oils ... in one or two instances they are portrayed with lapdogs”(Josep Palau i Fabre, Picasso: The Early Years 1881-1907, New York, 1981, p. 219).

The sitter for this work can be identified as the daughter of D. Paco, a member of Madrid's high society and probably a friend of Picasso's uncle, seen reading in a room in her parents’ house. This brilliantly colored pastel was executed after a drawing in the Museu de Cau Ferrat at Sitges (Zervos, vol. 21, no. 239, see fig. 1), which shows the girl in the same clothes and headdress, an identical background and accompanied by the same little dog a her feet. Picasso undoubtedly did the drawing first, depicting her seated next to her mother and father, and then executed the pastel concentrating on the girl's figure.

Fig. 1, Pablo Picasso, La familia de D. Paco en su casa, charcoal on paper, 1901, Museu de Cau Ferrat, Sitges