Femme de profil dans un fauteuil (III)

Pablo Picasso and Jacqueline Roque first met in the summer of 1952 at the Madoura pottery in Vallauris, where the artist had been creating his ceramics for almost a decade; Roque worked as a salesperson there. Picasso was quickly charmed and began to court the brunette. But it was not until 1954, after Picasso’s relationship with Françoise Gilot ended, that he allowed himself to paint Roque, a visual declaration of his new love that inaugurated what John Richardson called ‘l'époque Jacqueline’ (‘L’Epoque Jacqueline’, in Late Picasso, exh. cat., The Tate Gallery, London, 1988, p. 18). From this point on, Roque’s presence dominated Picasso’s output. Marie-Laure Bernadac observed that throughout his career Picasso, unlike other artists, made his paramours his models and none more so than Roque: ‘Jacqueline never poses for him: but she is there always, everywhere. All the women of these years are Jacquelines’ (‘Picasso 1953-1972: Painting as Model’, in ibid., p. 78).
After living together in his studio on the Rue des Grands Augustins in Paris, the couple moved into La Californie, a spacious villa in Cannes, in the fall of 1955. That year, he began his series of atelier paintings, a theme he took up again in March and April of 1956, and then again, in May of that year, when Femme de profil dans un fauteuil was painted; likely, the present work was created alongside or just before the third atelier series. Across these canvases, Roque is shown seated, and her presence fills Picasso’s paintings of these years. As Richardson noted, ‘It is Jacqueline's image that permeates Picasso's work from 1954 until his death, twice as long as any of her predecessors… It is her body that we are able to explore more exhaustively and more intimately than any other body in the history of art’ (exh. cat., op. cit., 1988, p. 47).
In the present work, Picasso chose to depict Roque seated, a recurrent framing device for the artist. From his earliest Cubist experiments, he enthusiastically tackled the image of a woman enthroned, and subsequently painted the women of his life, from his first wife Olga Khokhlova, to the serene Marie-Thérèse Walter, Dora Maar during the turbulent years of the Second World War, and Gilot. But unlike so many of these previous works – particularly those of Maar – the paintings of Roque are calm and resolute, suggesting a peaceable period in the artist’s life.
The distinctive look of Picasso’s favourite Thonet bentwood rocker was featured in numerous paintings of the period, and in the present work, its curvilinear form is just visible behind Roque. ‘Jacqueline,’ reminisced David Douglas Duncan, ‘sometimes mirrored Picasso sitting in his favourite turn-of-the-century rocker. He had two. They followed him whenever he changed homes, his always faithful refuge in which to curl up, isolated – just to think.’ (Picasso and Jacqueline, New York, 1988, p. 123). In Femme de profil dans un fauteuil, Roque almost merges with the chair, the curl of her fingers echoing the arms they rest upon, and both rocker and model have been rendered from the same subdued palette. Roland Penrose noted the ‘austerity of colour’ in the works from 1955 and 1956, seen here in the soft greys and deep green that comprise the image (Picasso: His Life and His Work, London, 1958, p. 359).
While not truly monochromatic, Femme de profil dans un fauteuil is markedly absent of colour, and Picasso played a central role in the evolution of painting en grisaille, linking historical traditions with the more abstract compositions that were to come. While some of the artist’s earliest experiments in monochrome involved printed material, it was Guernica, 1937, that would become his most iconic work in black and white. Created in response to the bombing of the Basque town by the Germans, Guernica speaks of unimaginable pain, a sense underscored by its limited chromatic palette. But Picasso’s choice to remove colour from his compositions was about more than just evoking emotion: As Olivier Berggruen has argued, ‘Surely, Picasso’s monochrome works proclaim, more loudly than others, that the reality of the painting is that of the picture. The painter’s colour scheme (or lack thereof) not only clarifies the distribution of light and dark areas, but becomes the means to dematerialize the object’ (‘Picasso Monochrome’ in Picasso Black and White, exh. cat., Guggenheim, New York, 2013, p. 74).
For Picasso, monochrome was a bold choice, and one connected to the work of his Spanish predecessors, including Francisco Goya and Diego Velázquez who both ‘made a colour of black’ (D. Sylvester, About Modern Art: Critical Essays 1948-2000, London, 2002, p. 80). Picasso, like so many, believed that painting within such limitations forced him to push himself and thus display his prowess: his legacy was at the forefront of his mind during these late years. Indeed, grisaille imbues an image with a sense of timelessness, evoking antique sculptures and the architecture of yore. By eschewing flamboyant tonalities in Femme de profil dans un fauteuil, Picasso suggests that both he and Roque are eternal.
Femme de profil dans un fauteuil has a distinguished provenance. The painting was purchased by André Lefèvre, the French financier who retired at forty-four in order to fully devote himself to collecting art. He was particularly invested in Cubism, and his collection contained paintings by Juan Gris, Georges Braque, and Fernand Léger, in addition to several by Picasso. Following his death, a portion of his art was donated to French museums; today, works from Lefèvre’s collection can be found at institutions worldwide including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., and the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris.