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Lot Essay
Maya Widmaier-Picasso has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
Claude Picasso has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
Picasso executed Visage de femme four days after his 89th birthday, within the last three years of his life. It depicts his most frequently represented muse: his wife and companion Jacqueline Roque. He displays her profile from the left, which was his favourite view of her. In fact, he had noticed, at the outset of their relationship, that her profile resembled that of the odalisque on the right side in Delacroix’s Les femmes d’Alger, a painting he had long admired in the Louvre Museum, and which provided the inspiration for many of his figure studies and some of his most important works, including his own series by the same title, one of which holds the record for the most valuable work of art ever sold at auction (sold Christie’s, New York, 11 May 2015, lot 8).
This profile drawing of Jacqueline is based on the female head in the crayon study 26.10.70.II, which had as its immediate progenitor the profile seen in various heads of matadors that Picasso painted in mid-October 1970. During the three days prior to executing the present drawing, Picasso had used this profile - characterised by the figure-of-8 shape of the lips - in three dual figure paintings (C. Zervos, vol. XXXII, Paris, 1977, nos. 292-294).
Picasso completed the present drawing on 29 October amongst five variants, each of the works being numbered I to V, and VII. The basic outline of this profile is detectable within the male composite visage, numbered VI. Within this sequence, Picasso rounded out the face, and presented it in a three-quarter view. He returned to the original profile, however, having repositioned the eyes on a horizontal level, to depict the head of Jacqueline in Nu couché à la couronne de fleurs, which he painted the next day, 30 October (C. Zervos, vol. XXXII, Paris, 1977, no. 295).
Having completed the painting on 30 October, Picasso set aside this particular characterisation of Jacqueline’s profile until the following spring. Then, on 4 April 1971, he revived it in the painting Buste de femme à l’oiseau (C. Zervos, vol. XXXIII, Paris, 1978, no. 54). He turned to it again in drawings done, just a few weeks later between 22 and 28 April.
Claude Picasso has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
Picasso executed Visage de femme four days after his 89th birthday, within the last three years of his life. It depicts his most frequently represented muse: his wife and companion Jacqueline Roque. He displays her profile from the left, which was his favourite view of her. In fact, he had noticed, at the outset of their relationship, that her profile resembled that of the odalisque on the right side in Delacroix’s Les femmes d’Alger, a painting he had long admired in the Louvre Museum, and which provided the inspiration for many of his figure studies and some of his most important works, including his own series by the same title, one of which holds the record for the most valuable work of art ever sold at auction (sold Christie’s, New York, 11 May 2015, lot 8).
This profile drawing of Jacqueline is based on the female head in the crayon study 26.10.70.II, which had as its immediate progenitor the profile seen in various heads of matadors that Picasso painted in mid-October 1970. During the three days prior to executing the present drawing, Picasso had used this profile - characterised by the figure-of-8 shape of the lips - in three dual figure paintings (C. Zervos, vol. XXXII, Paris, 1977, nos. 292-294).
Picasso completed the present drawing on 29 October amongst five variants, each of the works being numbered I to V, and VII. The basic outline of this profile is detectable within the male composite visage, numbered VI. Within this sequence, Picasso rounded out the face, and presented it in a three-quarter view. He returned to the original profile, however, having repositioned the eyes on a horizontal level, to depict the head of Jacqueline in Nu couché à la couronne de fleurs, which he painted the next day, 30 October (C. Zervos, vol. XXXII, Paris, 1977, no. 295).
Having completed the painting on 30 October, Picasso set aside this particular characterisation of Jacqueline’s profile until the following spring. Then, on 4 April 1971, he revived it in the painting Buste de femme à l’oiseau (C. Zervos, vol. XXXIII, Paris, 1978, no. 54). He turned to it again in drawings done, just a few weeks later between 22 and 28 April.