This powerful portrait is printed from five plates (blue, bistre, yellow, red and black), the proofs being pulled by Lacourière, probably in 1942, using paper stocks also used for printing the Vollard Suite. As with the other color aquatint portraits produced contemporaneously, the Tête de Femme No. 4. was not published during the artist's lifetime. After two impressions were deposited in the Picasso Museum the others were distributed commercially by the artist's heirs.