Sylvette

The twenty-year old Sylvette David was engaged to a young English furniture maker from whom Picasso had purchased some odd and impractical chairs for his villa at "La Galloise" in Vallauris. Now that Françoise Gilot had left him and taken their children, Picasso was living alone for the first time in many years. He found the young couple appealing, and thought that Sylvette's pretty profile, blond pony tail and long bangs had pictorial possibilities. She posed extensively for Picasso from mid-April through May 1954, with her fiancé always present. Picasso completed more than forty oil paintings and drawings of her, as well as a painted sheet metal sculpture.