Pablo Picasso

Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris (acquired from the artist)

Herman Elkon, New York (acquired from the above)

Thence by descent to the present owner

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, oeuvres de 1959 à 1961, Paris, 1968, vol. 19, no. 167, illustrated pl. 42

The Picasso Project, Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture, The Sixties I, 1960-1963, San Francisco, 2002, no. 60-045, illustrated p. 15

In February 1960 Picasso executed several oils on the subject of a woman washing and drying her feet, including the present work. In all except the last version the figure is depicted in an indoor setting, often seated on an armchair in a bare, unidentified interior. Picasso captures the woman in one of the most intimate moments of her toilette, a theme reminiscent of old masters as well as of Degas’ and Bonnard’s intimiste interiors. Picasso, however, treats this classical theme with a witty approach to composition, treating the woman’s nude body with his characteristic post-cubist distortions, exaggerating her curves and contrasting them with the otherwise sharp, angular depiction of her arms and legs.

In 1958 Picasso bought the Château de Vauvenargues, just fourteen kilometers northeast of Aix-en-Provence, to which he returned in the following three years. The proximity to the home of Cézanne was a partial stimulus for Picasso to return to one of his great earlier themes, the Bathers. During this period he also explored the pictures of past masters such as Vélazquez, Delacroix, Poussin and Manet, which reinforced his interest in such classical subject-matter. Furthermore, the scene of the present work and the woman’s pose are reminiscent of The Spinario, the iconic Roman sculpture dating from the 1^st Century B.C. (see fig. 1), which Picasso would have seen either in the original bronze version in Rome, or the 16^th Century replica at the Louvre in Paris.

Fig. 1, The Spinario, bronze, 1^st Century B.C., Palazzo dei Conservatori, Musei Capitolini, Rome