PABLO PICASSO | Jeune fille nue de profil

Maurice Rheims, Paris (acquired by 1966)
Private Collection, Paris (acquired from the above)
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Frankfurt, Kunstverein & Hamburg, Kunstverein, Picasso, 150 Handzeichnungen aus sieben Jahrzehnten, 1965, no. 2, illustrated in the catalogue
Paris, Galerie Knoedler, Picasso. Cent dessins et aquarelles 1899-1965, 1966, no. 2

Pierre Daix & Georges Boudaille, Picasso 1900-1906, Catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre peint, Neuchâtel, 1966, no. DI3, illustrated p. 115 (titled La Lecture de la lettre)
Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Supplément aux années 1892-1902, Paris, 1970, vol. XXI, no. 132, illustrated p. 52

Executed on cream wove paper, not laid down and attached to the mount along all four edges with conservation tape. The sheet is gently undulating. There is a thin strip of paper added to the right edge of the recto, which has been coloured to match the border of the other three edges. The sheet is lightly time stained with a few scattered spots of foxing in the background. There is some scuffing and medium stains, which are possibly inherent to the artist's process, visible along the lower left edge and in the background at the lower left. There are some further spots of discolouration to the lower half of the composition on the recto which are also visible on the verso. There are some further spots of foxing visible on the verso. This work is in good overall condition.
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Executed in late 1899, Pablo Picasso’s Jeune fille nue de profil dates from a period of extraordinary productivity for the artist who was in the midst of preparing his first ever solo exhibition. Held at Els Quatre Gats in Barcelona in February 1900, the show featured a large group of charcoal portraits which are closely related to the present work; each had a coloured wash background in watercolour or diluted oil and—as is the case of Jeune fille nue de profil—was adorned with a loosely painted dark blue or black line along the edges of the sheet which functioned as a makeshift frame since the drawings were pinned directly onto the walls of the tavern. The show was a critical success that imbued the ambitious young Picasso—then only eighteen years old—with great confidence and expectation for what was to come. More than one anonymous reviewer exhorted the artist’s exceptional talent: ‘We had never seen so rich an exhibition, and seldom one with so many good things,’ one such critic wrote. ‘Picasso is an artist from head to toe […] In each stroke of the pencil or of charcoal, in each brushstroke, one can see a profound faith in the art he is making, and a kind of inspired fever reminiscent of the best works of El Greco and Goya […] His portraits can be rated as masterpieces; they are all true embodiments of those pipe-smoking characters we have seen walking down Las Ramblas, but this collection presents more than personalities, it is a portrait of the present age’ (Unidentified review, 1900, quoted in Marilyn McCully (ed.), A Picasso Anthology: Documents, Criticism, Reminiscences, Princeton, 1981, pp. 24-25).

Although no catalogue of the Quatre Gats show is known to exist and it is unclear whether Jeune fille nue de profil was itself included, the present work certainly adheres to the uniform approach that Picasso took in his execution of the works which are known to have been included based on contemporary testimony and provides an example of the young artist at the height of his powers. Using bold, swiftly applied lines of charcoal heightened with swathes of watercolour, Picasso has brought his young, blonde subject to life, capturing not just a likeness, but conveying something of her character as she stands nude, seemingly unaware of being observed, her attention captured by the letter she holds in her hands. The artist has emphasised her most distinctive features, slightly exaggerating the curvilinear profile of her back and upturned button nose. Drawn instinctively to caricature, Picasso had admired Goya’s preparatory studies for Los Caprichos at the Prado in Madrid the previous year and his figurative work of this period is testament to the lessons he had assimilated from the Spanish Master as well as the graphic work of Theophile-Alexandre Steinlen and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec which was circulated widely through journals across Spain as well as France at that time.

According to Picasso’s friend Jaime Sabartés, this entire series of works was executed as a provocative challenge to Ramon Casas—a senior member of the Modernista group that congregated at Els Quatre Gats—whose virtuoso charcoal portraits of the city’s wealthy, bourgeois elite had been exhibited to great acclaim at the Sala Parés gallery in October 1899 (cf. William Rubin (ed.), Picasso and Portraiture (exhibition catalogue), Museum of Modern Art, New York & Grand Palais, Paris, 1996-97, p. 237). The young challenger Picasso courted comparison, Sabartés observed; the scale of the show spoke for itself (there were over 150 works exhibited at Els Quatre Gats) and instead of depicting the sophisticated circles of Barcelona, Picasso took as his subjects his own little-known group of friends and acquaintances, artists, poets, performers and students. The resultant works, including  Jeune fille nue de profil, therefore not only captured Picasso’s skill at rendering the particular physiognomic characteristics of his models but also provide a telling record of the intellectual and artistic circles of the Catalan avant-garde which John Richardson later described as a ‘gallery of bohemians’ (John Richardson, A Life of Picasso, London, 1991, vol. I: 1881-1906, p. 145).

On the verso of the present work are the silhouettes of three well-dressed men, each carrying a cane and bedecked in a hat. Deftly sketched in strong fluid lines of charcoal, they are almost certainly anonymous figures that Picasso glimpsed on the streets of Barcelona.