Portrait de femme à la mantille

Being one of the greatest experimenters and innovators in the entire history of printmaking, it is no surprise that Picasso exercised his skills also in the medium of the monotype. Picasso's experiments date from his earliest associations with printmaking and reveal themselves again at various crucial points of his career. Following the early works executed during 1905, he executed a large group during the early 1930s during the years of the Suite Vollard, then again a number of portraits of Dora Maar during the late 1930s, and much fewer during his later years. Most of the monotypes were executed on zinc or copper. The present work was executed on a sheet of glass before the transfer of the image to paper. Picasso's earliest monotypes vary greatly in subject matter, size and degree of elaboration. Portrait de Femme à la Mantille is, according to Brigitte Baer, certainly the earliest monotype executed by Picasso and it is also considered to be one of the most significant and elaborate of his early works in this medium.

The sitter for this portrait is not recorded, and the apparently swift and inspired execution of the work as well as the serendipitous nature of the medium, necessarily add a certain mystery to monotype such as this. The subject may relate to several works of the period, but is closest to the portrait of Fernande à la Mantille (Zervos Vol. I, no. 253) - Fernande Olivier was the celebrated model of some of Picasso's most important Rose Period works - and to the portrait of Benedetta Canals (Zervos Vol. I, no. 263) - it was Picasso's friend Ricardo Canals, Benedetta's husband, who is thought to have been the artist's instructor in the medium of etching, and therefore with whose aid Picasso achieved the mastery displayed in Le repas frugal, only his second etching.