Pablo Picasso

Estate of the artist

Bielefeld, Kunsthalle, Picasso’s Klassizismus Werke 1914-1934, 1988, no. 9

The Picasso Project, Picasso’s Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture From Cubism to Neoclassicism 1917-1919, San Francisco, 1995, no.18-162, illustrated p. 145

 

Josep Palau I Fabre, Picasso from the Ballet to Drama (1917-1926), Barcelona, 1999, no. 295, illustrated p.107

Picasso completed this drawing of the elegant Madame Patri, an acquaintence of Eugenia Errazuriz, while he was on vacation with Olga in the town of La Mimoteraie. Michael C. Fitzgerald has written the following about this excursion: “Following their [Picasso and Olga Khokhlova] marriage on July 12, 1918, the couple spent their honeymoon at Biarritz, where Picasso elaborated the Neoclassical elegance of his recent painting in a series of drawings portraying the wealthy and attractive women who increasingly surrounded them.  Eugenia Errazuriz provided accommodations for the honeymooners in her villa, as she had previously shepherded Picasso through high society. Most of the portraits were exquisite pencil sketches on paper, but the major composition was a large painting of Madame Paul Rosenberg and her young daughter, Micheline” (Michael C.Fitzgerald, “The Modernist’s Dilemma: Neoclassicism and the Portrayal of Olga Khokhlova,” in William Rubin (ed.) Picasso and Portraiture Representation and Transformation , New York, 1996, p.314)

 

In the present composition, Madame Patri is seated in a brocade-covered, high-backed chair that appears in a number of other works from this period, including the portrait of Mme. Rosenberg and her daughter. Three other less highly-finished drawings represent the same sitter (Picasso Project nos. 18-159 -161)