In the spring of 1954 Picasso painted a series of portraits "of Mademoiselle David, whose first name Sylvette, immediately conjures up the vivid image of a young girl with a long neck on narrow, sloping shoulders, a classical face, a straight nose, and thick, blond hair in a ponytail.

Picasso had got to know the girl near Vallauris, and in two months, between April and June, made more than thirty drawings and paintings of her. Sylvette herself posed for them, inspiring a series the stylistic range of which is unusually wide. The pictures are generally limited to grey tones and almost without exception show the girl in full to three-quarter profile, in every conceivable style from an almost imitative naturalism to a highly abstract variation of a simplified cubism. The portraits concentrate so single-mindedly on the youthful head that the individual features become subsidiary to the type into which Picasso condensed them. What makes the Sylvette portraits remarkable is that through Picasso's paintings this young girl came to typify a whole generation." (K. Gallwitz, Picasso at 90, the Late Work, London, 1971, p. 70)

The present painting is a particularly bold strongly coloured painting from this series of Sylvette portraits. It has hung in the same private collection since its purchase from Svensk Franska Konstgalleriet in Stockholm who established a strong reputation for handling the best Picassos of the period. The Gallery was responsible for bringing many important Picassos to Sweden in the 1950s and 1960s.