NARRATOR:
Looking up from her reading, a solitary young woman gazes into the distance, lost in dreamy reverie. The compressed space results from Picasso’s emphasis on strong flat pattern. Everything is kept close to the surface, heightening the feeling of intimacy—a feeling not surprising, since the sitter is Marie-Thérèse Walter, Picasso’s mistress and chief model from 1927 until 1936.
In this striking portrait, Picasso creates a study in contrasts. He captures a private moment, using dramatic colors and curving lines for emotional impact. While the mood is restrained, Marie-Thérèse’s figure is voluptuous and enticing. And while the pitch-black outside the window tells us it’s nighttime, an artificial light glows brightly inside. Picasso applied heavily textured paint in exuberant strong colors—each segment defined by heavy black outlines that flow in sweeping curves to delineate the body, dress, and upholstered armchair.
Picasso believed that sticking to a particular style tied an artist down. In post-Cubist works such as this one, he explored unique combinations of the literal and the abstract—striving to convey underlying meaning as he felt it. Marie-Thérese’s prominent nose—the only element of her face in profile—is echoed by a similar profile in a frame behind her. Is it her reflection in a mirror, that of her lover, or simply a painting on the wall?… Picasso scorned those who idolized the traditional human figure:
PICASSO (ACTOR):
“All they have to do is look more attentively into a mirror. What is a face, really? Its own photo? Its make-up? Or is it a face as painted by such or such painter? That which is in front? Inside? Behind? And the rest? Doesn’t everyone look at himself in his own particular way? Deformations simply do not exist.”
Woman with a Book
1932
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973)
On View
Among Picasso’s most celebrated likenesses of his lover Marie-Thérèse Walter, Woman with a Book balances sensuality and restraint, enclosing exuberant, thickly applied color in a network of sinuous black lines. The composition pays homage to the Neoclassical master of line, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, whose work Picasso had admired since his youth, and whose Portrait of Madame Moitessier the Spanish painter had first encountered in 1921. Resting his model’s head on her hand, and replacing Madame Moitessier’s fan with the fluttering pages of a book, Picasso tapped into the eroticism latent beneath Ingres’s image of bourgeois respectability. The serene profile reflected in a mirror at right in Picasso’s portrait likewise references its Neoclassical precedent but may also constitute an abstract self-portrait.
Details
- Artist Name: Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973)
- Title: Woman with a Book
- Date: 1932
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 51-3/8 x 38-1/2 in. (130.5 x 97.8 cm)
- Credit Line: The Norton Simon Foundation
- Accession Number: F.1969.38.10.P
- Copyright: © Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Object Information
The artist, sold to;
[Paul Rosenberg, Paris, confiscated during WWII; claim for monetary compensation received from French government.]
Antoine Rinieri, Paris, sold 4 August 1960 to;
[Paul Rosenberg and Co., New York, stock no. 5832, sold 13 December 1960 to];
Robert Ellis Simon, Los Angeles, to;
The Norton Simon Foundation.
[Paul Rosenberg, Paris, confiscated during WWII; claim for monetary compensation received from French government.]
Antoine Rinieri, Paris, sold 4 August 1960 to;
[Paul Rosenberg and Co., New York, stock no. 5832, sold 13 December 1960 to];
Robert Ellis Simon, Los Angeles, to;
The Norton Simon Foundation.
"Bonne fête" Monsieur Picasso, from Southern California Collectors
- Los Angeles, University of California, Los Angeles, Art Gallery, 1961-10-05 to 1961-11-12
Picasso
- London, Rosenberg & Helft, Ltd., 1937-04-01 to 1937-04-30
Picasso Ingres: Face to Face_01
- The National Gallery, London, 2022-06-03 to 2022-10-09
Exposition d'oeuvres choisies de Pablo Picasso
- Paris, Paul Rosenberg, 1936-03-03 to 1936-03-31
Picasso Ingres: Face to Face_02
- Norton Simon Museum, 2022-10-21 to 2023-01-30
Les maîtres de l'art indépendant 1895-1937
- Paris, Petit Palais, 1937-06 to 1937-10
Gaze: Portraiture After Ingres
- Norton Simon Museum, 2009-10-30 to 2010-04-05
Seven Decades of Picasso
- Norton Simon Museum, 1979-10-11 to 1980
Reinstallation of South Wing
- Norton Simon Museum, 1993-10-07 to 1995-08-13
- Kahnweiler, Daniel H., Art News, p. 36
- Rosenblum, Robert, Ingres, fig. 71 p. 48
- Rosenblum, Robert, Arts Magazine, pp. 100-105, cover
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- Steadman, David W., The Connoisseur, pp. 230-231
- Duthuit, Georges, The Listener, 1936, pp. 829-831
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- Zervos, Christian, Pablo Picasso: Oeuvres de 1932 a 1937, 1957, pl. 70 p. 31
- Carmean, E.; and Rathbone, American Art at Mid Century: The Subjects of the Artist, 1978, pp. 159, 161
- Masterpieces from the Norton Simon Museum, 1989, p. 198
- Picasso and Portraiture: Representation and Transformation, 1996, p. 359
- Fleckner, Uwe, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres 1780-1867, 2000, fig. 6 p. 11
- Ehret, Terry, Translations from the Human Language, 2001, Cover
- Lesser, Wendy, Nothing Remains the Same, 2002, cover
- Museo del Prado and Museo Reina Sofia, Picasso. Tradición y Vanguardia, 2006, fig. 30.2 p. 250
- Campbell, Sara, Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best, 2010, cat. 90 p. 255
- Various (English students), Verso (Journal of Literary Criticism), 2012, Cover
- Various authors, edited by Mark Rogián, Spanish Art in America, 2016, p. 194 ; p. 195 (ill.)
- Christie's London, Picasso : Femme écrivant (Marie Thérèse), 1934, 2017, p. 34 (ill.)
- Madeline, Laurence, Picasso 1932, 2017, Fig. 39 p. 150
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