Tete de femme de profile

Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973)

Title: Tete de femme de profile

Medium: Original Etching, Paris, about February 1905, on velin Van Gelder watermarked paper. This series was not signed or numbered.

Edition: 250

Reference: Bloch 6 ; Baer 7.b.2

Note 1 : The series of etchings, known as the Saltimbanques, consisted of a group of works all relating to the same theme. Picasso was a very young man when he completed these works but they are considered to be amongst the very best he ever made. The name of the series comes from the Italian words saltare, meaning «to leap, » and banco, «bench, » which refers to the stage on which the acrobats usually performed. Saltimbanques were the lowest order of acrobats; Picasso pictured them as vagabonds with simple props in an empty, desertlike landscape. He was familiar with earlier representations of clowns and harlequins from eighteenth-century art, which frequently included figures from the commedia dell'arte, a popular theatrical form featuring stock characters and their antics. These characters played significant roles in the paintings of such artists as Tiepolo, the Le Nain, and Watteau. Picasso was particularly drawn to the circus people, many of whom were his Spanish countrymen. Their agility and pursuit of the art of illusion delighted him, and their gypsy like lives touched the artist, who himself searched for new horizons. Picasso identified most closely with the clowns, those performers who masked their true selves with costumes and makeup. In fact, Picasso portrayed himself as the harlequin in a diamond-patterned costume in “The Family of Saltimbanques.”. The most famous and memorable of the series was, without doubt “Le repas frugal” which is counted amongst Picasso’s earliest print masterpieces.

Note 2: This is, no doubt, a portrait of Fernande Oliver, the first major love of Picasso’s life who he met shortly after his moving to Parius from Spain in 1904. La Belle Fernande was to feature in many of the artists works of this period including the famous “Tete de Fernande” which is one of the great icons of modernist sculpture. Ultimately their relationship ended and the two of them split up. However she had proved to be his lover and muse during the “Blue Period” and much of the important time of the development of cubism and the development of African style art. She was, without doubt, a most important figure. Much to the chagrin of the artist many years later she published a book relating to the bohemian lifestyle led by the “Bande Picasso” during his early years in which she had taken part. Despite Picasso’s anger at this provocative book in her old age, when she was sick and poor, Picasso aided her financially until her death.

Note 3: The cancelled plate for this still exists. It was for some time in the collection of Ambroise Vollard.

Published by: Ambroise Vollard, Paris, 1913

Printed by: Louis Fort, Paris, France

Size: 185 x 232 mms (Image size)

Price: £12, 000-00