Detail

In monumental format and strictly frontal perspective, Pablo Picasso painted his partner Jacqueline Rocque, who he met in 1953 and married in 1961, a year after the portrait was completed. Throughout his life, Picasso painted his wives and girlfriends. Unlike many 20th-century painters, Picasso never worked with a professional model, always painting the woman with whom he was living at a given time, whose character helped shape his life and whom he wished to understand and include in his pictures. The portrait of Jacqueline shows us the whole person at a glance, larger than life, and not just from a single perspective, but with front, side, and back views in one. This method is rooted in Cubism, which Picasso devised early in the 20th century and continued to develop throughout his life. In his late work, Picasso divided the surface of the picture into large, soft-edged planes of color, dominated by calm blue and green. Individual traits are suppressed: Jacqueline is only identifiable by the yellow band in her hair and her red nail varnish. The calmly relaxed and almost merry atmosphere of the portrait is characteristic of the relationship between the 79-year-old Picasso and his last companion