Private Collection, Geneva
Galerie Jacques de la Béraudière, Geneva (acquired from the above in 2011)
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2012
Hélène Parmelin,
Picasso: Les Dames de Mougins, Paris, 1964, illustrated in colour p. 145
Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, œuvres de 1961 à 1962, Paris, 1968, vol. 20, no. 256, illustrated pl. 118
Tête de femme. Face is a delightful portrait of Jacqueline Roque, the last love of Picasso’s life, who inspired many of the masterpieces created in the last two decades of his career. It was painted in 1962, the year after Picasso and Jacqueline were married and moved to Notre-Dame-de-Vie outside Mougins (fig. 2). John Richardson wrote about Picasso’s depictions of Jacqueline at the beginning of their relationship: ‘The brilliant series of portraits that record Jacqueline’s triumphant rise as Picasso’s
maîtresse-en-titre reveal not only the splendors but also the miseries of her new role. Picasso and Jacqueline were more or less the same height (5 feet 4 inches), and they could easily be mistaken for father and daughter in that they both had strikingly larger features, notably very large eyes. […] In his portraits of Jacqueline, Picasso often gave her his eyes – enormously magnified, but nonetheless submissive; infinitely loving, but sometimes sick or scared’ (J. Richardson in
Picasso, The Mediterranean Years, 1945-1962 (exhibition catalogue), Gagosian Gallery, London, 2010, pp. 29 & 33). In the present composition Jacqueline’s large eyes are combined with her other characteristic attributes – a strong nose, accentuated eyebrows and long black hair – creating an expression that is at once self-assured and apprehensive.
According to Elizabeth Cowling, ‘One of Jacqueline’s attractions for Picasso was her uncanny ability to inhabit and blend with now one picture in his musée imaginaire, now another’ (E. Cowling in Picasso Portraits (exhibition catalogue), National Portrait Gallery, London, 2016-17, p. 184). Picasso painted Jacqueline in a variety of manners, from the more naturalistic, frontal depictions he explored in a range of media (fig. 1), including the present work, to the more stylised, abstract renderings reminiscent of his earlier portraits of Dora Maar. Throughout their life together, Jacqueline also served as a model for several of Picasso’s reinterpretations of art historical masterpieces, including his studies after Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe and Delacroix’s Les Femmes d’Algers. In the present work, however, he chose a more intimate rendering of his muse, who is depicted frontally, facing the viewer with her wide eyes, her long hair and striped ribbon giving her an innocent, youthful look.
