Pablo Picasso

Pierre Boncenne, Paris
Anne Couzineau-Boncenne, Paris
Private Collection (by descent from the above)

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Œuvres de 1920 à 1922,  Paris, 1951, vol. IV, no. 366, illustrated pl. 148
The Picasso Project, Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture: Neoclassicism II, 1922-1924, San Francisco, 1996, no. 22-026, illustrated p. 10
Josep Palau i Fabre, Picasso, From the Ballets to Drama (1917-1926), Barcelona, 1999, no. 1179, illustrated p. 319 

Executed on cream wove paper, T-hinged to the mount in the top two corners. There is a 1cm. sq. spot of paper infill to the bottom left corner. There are intermittent tiny nicks and tears running down the right edge, a tiny tear to the top left corner, a 1cm. repaired tear to the left of the top edge and some paper skinning, probably due to previous mounting, to all four edges of the reverse. Apart from some light time staining and discoloration to the edges of the sheet, this work is in good condition.
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Depictions of children feature sporadically throughout Picasso's career, invariably treated with irregularity but great intensity. Inspired by the birth of his son Paulo in February 1921, Picasso embarked during the subsequent few years upon one of his most fervent periods of production in this genre.

Executed with the clearly articulated lines and simplified forms that defined Picasso's neo-classical style, the present work depicts the young Anne Boncenne sketched after a walk in the Parc Monceau in Paris on 24^th March 1922. Shyly poised, the three year old self-consciously maintains her pose for the artist, dressed in knee-length stockings and a smock dress. The innocent gaze of Anne's large eyes draws the viewer's attention away from her right hand as it reaches down attempting to hide a stain on her red dress made while playing in the park. In addition to this finished drawing, Picasso executed some other smaller sketches of Anne (Zervos, op. cit., vol. XXX, nos. 345 & 347) that he had intended to use as studies for an oil portrait, however this was never completed following Madame Boncenne's death.

The present work is treated in a similarly ritualistic way to Picasso's depictions of his own son. Isolated, as if imprisoned in their own infantile world, the poses adopted by Picasso's young models were, almost without exception, strictly frontal and neoclassically mannered rendering the images timeless and universal.