La Femme Au Portrait

[Myra Krallman]

PabloPicasso Tte de Femme (Head of a Woman), 1962 a cubist and iconic linoleum cut by Picasso demonstrates the artist's technical mastery over this relief printmaking medium. A striking and dynamic portrait of Jacqueline, this work is often also referred to as Portrait of Jacqueline au chapeau de paille. An abstracted woman's face is depicted from multiple perspective's in a menagerie of bright colors. She dons a straw hat adding an element of whimsy and character. Identified by Picasso's admirers as Jacqueline Roque, his second and last wife. Picasso fell in love with the raven-haired beauty around the same time that he became enamored with the linocut medium. The two married in 1961, and his affection for her is still present in this stunning portrayal.

Catalogue Raisonn & COA:

Pablo Picasso Head of a Woman (Tte de Femme), 1962 is fully documented and referenced in the below catalogue raisonns and texts (copies will be enclosed as added documentation with the invoices that will accompany the sale of the work).

About the Framing:

Framed to museum-grade, conservation standards, Pablo Picasso Head of a Woman (Tte de Femme), 1962 is presented in a complementary moulding and finished with silk-wrapped mats and optical grade Plexiglas.

Pablo Picasso revolutionized the art world and to many is THE artist of the 20th century. He is famous for his role in pioneering Cubism with Georges Braque and for his melancholy Blue Period pieces. Original signed Picasso lithographs and prints are a sure investment. Madoura Picasso ceramics are highly collectible in their own right.

A woman with pale white skin and her blond hair covered by a wide veil is shown from the waist up in this vertical portrait painting. Her folded hands rest on the lower edge of the panel, suggesting that she sits just on the other side, close to us. The transparent white veil covers her blond hair and falls in stiff, wide panes down in front of her shoulders. Her hair is pulled back behind a black ribbon over a high forehead. Her light brown eyes are downcast and she has a straight nose and full, pale pink lips. Her chest is covered by another veil and is tucked into the deep V-neck of her long-sleeved, black dress. A wide scarlet-red belt adorned with an ornately filigreed gold belt buckle encircles her narrow waist. Her skin, white veils, and red belt contrast sharply with her velvety black dress and the dark pine green of the background.

The stylish costume does not distract attention from the sitter. The dress, with its dark bands of fur, almost merges with the background. The spreading headdress frames and focuses attention upon her face. Light falls with exquisite beauty along the creases of the sheer veiling over her head, and gentle shadows mark her fine bone structure. In contrast to the spareness of execution in most of the painting, the gold filigree of her belt buckle is rendered with meticulous precision. The scarlet belt serves as a foil to set off her delicately clasped hands.

Rogier excelled as a portrait painter because he so vividly presented the character of the persons he portrayed. The downcast eyes, the firmly set lips, and the tense fingers reflect this woman's mental concentration. Rogier juxtaposed the strong sensation of the sitter's acute mental activity to his rigid control of the composition and the formality of her costume and pose, presenting the viewer with an image of passionate austerity.

Probably Leopold Friedrich Franz, Prince of Anhalt [d. 1817], Gotisches Haus, Wrlitz, near Dessau.[1] Probably Leopold Friedrich, Prince of Anhalt [d. 1871]; Friedrich I, Duke of Anhalt [d. 1904];[2] Friedrich II, Duke of Anhalt, Gotisches Haus, Wrlitz, and Herzogliches Schloss, Dessau; sold 1925 through (Bachstitz Gallery, The Hague) to (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris);[3] purchased December 1926 by Andrew W. Mellon, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.; deeded 30 March 1932 to The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh; gift 1937 to NGA.

[1] For the activity of this prince as a collector, see C. Rost, "Der alte Nassau-Oranische Bilderschatz und sein spterer Verbleib," Jahrbcher fr Kunstwissenschaft 6 (1873), 52-93. The numerous portraits in the Anhalt collection are not very precisely described in the early catalogues. However, Lorne Campbell has suggested that 1937.1.44 may be identical with no. 1318, "Dirk Bouts(?), Weibliches Portrt in schwarzer Kleidung mit rothem Grtel," in the bedroom of Duke Franz in the Gotisches Haus; Wilhelm Hosus, Wrlitz. Ein Handbuch fr die Besucher des Wrlitzer Gartens und die Wrlitzer Kunstammlungen, 2d ed. (Dessau, 1883), 40.

The panel is composed of a single board with vertical grain. There is an unpainted margin on all sides of the panel and a slight barbe at the edge of the painted surface. Incised lines at the edge of the painted surface were probably guidelines for the application of the ground. The painting is in excellent condition. It was cleaned about the time it left the Anhalt collection[1] and received a surface cleaning in 1980. There is a fine overall crackle pattern and some inpainting along the crackle. A few small, local losses on the lady's veil and kerchief, on her proper right sleeve, and to the left of her ear have been inpainted. There is some abrasion in the ear.

No underdrawing was made visible by infrared reflectography apart from a single stroke within the fur collar and parallel to its edge on the right side and another horizontal stroke in the little finger of the top hand. The lady's silhouette was originally even more slender than at present, since the thickly applied paint of the background extends into the area of the belt on either side. This change is visible in raking light, while the extreme slenderness of the original silhouette is evident in the x-radiograph.

A woman dressed in black ties the laces of her white ballet shoes, while resting her foot on a wooden bench. A pair of gloves and a rose are also lying on the bench. Marie-Denise Villers was a neoclassical painter who specialized in portraits.

A landmark of European portraiture that asserts a modern, scientifically minded couple in fashionable but simple dress, this painting was excluded from the Salon of 1789 for fears it would inflame revolutionary zeal. Technical analysis reveals that a first iteration excluded the scientific instruments and would have been a far more conventional portrait. Lavoisier, often described as the father of modern chemistry, is shown with his wife, who kept logbooks of experiments and provided etched illustrations to his publications. He was also involved in studies of gunpowder, and a misunderstanding about his removal of this precious commodity from the Bastille in the summer of 1789 threw his alliances into question. This mishap and his status as a tax collector led him to be guillotined in 1794.

Made in the same year in which Picasso created his famed Guernica and The Weeping Woman amid the tumultuous years of the Spanish civil war, Femme au bret depicts a more joyous image of his muse Marie-Thrse Walter in a blue outfit set against a bright red background.

At the evening sale, five bidders competed for the work, reportedly among them were Casino magnate Steve Wynn, Ohio retailer Leslie Wexner, and the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. But the portrait of Maar went instead to an eager bidder in the room wielding a paddle with the number 1340, in an unusually visible move for a transaction of that level at a marquee auction.

Held in private hands for 50 years, the painting was sold by Los Angeles philanthropist Frances Lasker Brody, who had purchased it with her husband Sidney F. Brody from New York dealer Paul Rosenberg in January 1951 for less than $20,000.

The great masterpiece of his career Guernica was created in 1937, and in the final month of that momentous year he painted this vivid, poignant and intense image of his 'golden muse' Marie-Thrse Walter.

There is a conscious blurring of styles inspired by the two muses, reaching its pinnacle in the silhouetted 'other' that emerges from behind the main subject. Whether the shadow represents Maar or indeed a self-portrait, the implication is that of duality and conflict. Picasso is quoted: "It must be painful for a girl to see in a painting that she is on the way out".

"With such a strong appetite for Picasso's work from across the globe, this defining portrait from a pivotal year in the oeuvre of the most globally recognised artist is the perfect piece to headline our first major auction season of 2018. It is all the more remarkable to be able to offer a painting of this calibre that has never been seen on the market before."

First exhibited at the 1905 Salon d'Automne in Paris, Women with a Hat (Femme au chapeau) was at the center of the controversy that led to the christening of the first modern art movement of the twentieth century - Fauvism. The term fauve ("wild beast"), coined by an art critic, became forever associated with the artists who exhibited their brightly colored canvases in the central gallery (dubbed the cage centrale) of the Grand Palais.

Femme au chapeau marked a stylistic change from the regulated brushstrokes of Matisse's earlier work to a more expressive individual style. His use of non-naturalistic colors and loose brushwork, which contributed to a sketchy or "unfinished" quality, seemed shocking to the viewers of the day.

The artist's wife, Amlie, posed for this half-length portrait. She is depicted in an elaborate outfit with classic attributes of the French bourgeoisie: a gloved arm holding a fan and an elaborate hat perched atop her head. Her costume's vibrant hues are purely expressive, however; when asked about the hue of the dress Madame Matisse was actually wearing when she posed for the portrait, the artist allegedly replied, "Black, of course."

The expatriate Stein family (Michael, Sarah, Leo, and Gertrude) bought the painting soon after its initial showing. Although Leo characterized the work as "the nastiest smear of paint I had ever seen," the Steins recognized its importance and began a long-lasting patronage of the French artist. Sarah and Michael Stein subsequently brought the painting to San Francisco where it was bought in the 1950s by the Haas family. In 1990 Elise S. Haas bequeathed to the Museum thirty-seven paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by modernist masters, among them Femme au chapeau.

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