Visage de Marie-Thérèse

Details

Published by the Galerie Percier, Paris. In addition to this edition, 200 further copies were published as the frontispiece of the book “Picasso” by André Level, Paris 1928.
Bloch 95; Baer 243 c (of c).

Description

– One of the earliest depictions of Picasso’s muse and lover Marie-Thérèse Walter

– The work initially bears the simple title Visage, as Picasso, still married to Olga Khokhlova, wanted to keep his affair with Marie-Thérèse a secret

– The softly drawn lines lend Marie-Thérèse’s sculptural features an intimate tenderness

Picasso meets Marie-Thérèse Walter outside a department store in Paris in 1927. He addressed her with the iconic words: “Mademoiselle, you have an interesting face. I would like to paint your portrait, I am sure we will achieve great things together, I am Picasso”. She is almost thirty years younger than him and he is married with a son. Nevertheless, Marie-Thérèse quickly became his lover and muse. Strengthened by this new relationship, Picasso embarked on an intensive creative period.

This lithograph is one of Picasso’s earliest depictions of his new muse. It was first created as a frontispiece to the de-luxe edition of a book about the artist and was later published as a separate edition. At first, he did not reveal the identity of the model as he wanted to keep the beginning of their affair a secret, inscribing the work simply as Visage. In this chalk lithograph, Picasso abandons a traditional rule of portraiture – the depiction of the whole head – in order to emphasise the even, classical features of his lover in an extreme close-up. The softly drawn, almost tender depiction of the facial features and the tight framing convey a sense of intimacy and intensity, almost as if the viewer is privy to the secret of their liaison.

Marie-Thérèse Walter (1909-1977) describes her first encounter with the artist as follows: “He took me into his studio. He looked at me, he seduced me. He kept looking at my face. When I left, he said: ‘Come back tomorrow’. And after that it was always ‘tomorrow’.” The relationship between the two and the artistic inspiration they gave Picasso would last for decades.