Literature

The complexity and layering of this portrait embodies the tangled web of Picasso’s seven-year relationship with his lover Marie-Thérèse Walter, which would soon be coming to a close.  It stands in stark contrast to the idealized simplicity of his first portrait of her as a young woman, Visage de Marie-Thérèse (Bloch 95), which was created six years prior.   Picasso’s style changed in the intervening years, but Walter’s maturity from a schoolgirl to a young woman is also recorded here. 

Though the image is certainly more fraught than this early example, Picasso’s love for Marie-Thérèse is apparent in this image—her eyes smile, her dainty lips beckon, and her cheeks are flush with life.  Picasso was not interested in portraiture, per se, and most of his work was generated from memory.  Here, we can see evidence of his working and reworking of the plate, changing orientation, perspective, and scale.   He used a combination of line etching, aquatint, and drypoint to convey her youthful glow.

As with Profil sculptural de Marie-Thérèse (Bloch 255), this portrait bears some stylistic resemblance to Picasso’s friend and artistic rival Henri Matisse. Picasso held Matisse in high regard, and often visited his his studio incorporating innovations he found there into his own work.  Their competitive friendship and mutual regard was explored in depth in the 2002 exhibition Matisse/Picasso at the Museum of Modern Art.  Though Matisse limited himself to simple contours, he depicted several models in similarly seductive close-up frontal views that emphasized their eyes and full lips, such as the 1913 lithograph Face with Fringe (Visage à la frange).