PABLO PICASSO La Dame à la Collerette (Portrait de Jacqueline à la fraise).
Color linoleum cut, 1962. 530x390 mm; 20⅞x15⅜ inches, full margins. Signed and numbered 29/50 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Arnéra, Vallauris. Published by Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris. A superb impression with strong colors.
Among the more than 150 color linoleum cuts that Picasso produced during the 1950s and 1960s, none stand out for their boldness of execution and sheer artistry as much as his colorful, semi-abstract portraits of his second wife, Jacqueline Roque (1927-1986). Picasso's entry to the medium of color linoleum cut coincided with his introduction to Jacqueline in the early 1950s, he had tried his hand at a few monochromatic linoleum cuts in the 1930s but never pursued the medium any further until the mid-1950s.
Abandoned by her father, Jacqueline was 18 years old when her mother died of a stroke. Following a short marriage to an engineer named André Hutin, she settled in southern France in the early 1950s and took a job at the Madoura pottery workshop in Vallauris. Picasso met Jacqueline, then 27 years old, in 1953 while he was beginning what would become a prodigious output of limited edition pottery at the Madoura workshop. Reputedly, Picasso pursued Jacqueline with a rose each day until she agreed to date him six months later. They were married in 1955, following the death of Picasso's first wife, Olga Koklova (from whom he was long-separated but never divorced).
In these color linoleum cut portraits of Jacqueline, Picasso exaggerates her dark eyes, arching eyebrows and high cheekbones. These characteristics would become steadfast in his later portraiture. Picasso's series of paintings that derived from Eugène Delacroix's The Women of Algiers was said to be inspired by Roque's beauty. Picasso declared that "Delacroix had already met Jacqueline" on his painting her into the famous series, as was his portrait of Jacqueline as Lola de Valence, an ode to her beauty playing on Édouard Manet's iconic portrait of the famed Spanish dancer.
Jacqueline's later years with Picasso were fraught with hardship and contention. After his death in 1973 she spent years in litigation with Picasso's mistress François Gilot and his children over his estate. Sadly, she committed suicide 13 years after his death, on the eve of the opening of an upcoming exhibition of her private collection of Picasso's work in Spain. Bloch 1147; Baer 1321.
