Dimensions:

Vidalon cream wove; deckled edges on the right and at the bottom; untrimmed

Ambroise

Burr Wallen provides the following interesting insights into the background of this amusing work, "Commissioned by Vollard as early as 1931, Picasso's delightful aquatints for Buffon's Histoire Naturelle were worked in 1936, but they were not published until 1942 [after Vollard's death] by Martin Fabiani.  It was probably Vollard who conceived the idea of Picasso illustrating the monumental eighteenth-century scientific treatise by France's revered Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon (1707-1788).  A commercial rival to Diderot's grand Encyclopédie in the Age of Enlightenment, the [44 volume] Histoire Naturelle brought Buffon both fame and fortune....

"Picasso selected thirty-two common species from Buffon's massive zoological repertory.   Picasso clearly enjoyed the opportunity to produce his own version of a modern bestiary, a theme that had already inspired two outstanding livres de peintre: Jules Renards's Histoires naturelles, illustrated by Toulouse-Lautrec (1899), and Guillaume Apollinaire's Le Bestiare, ou cortege d'Orphée, containing thirty woodcuts by Raoul Dufy (1911).  More recently, Max Ernst had illustrated his own Histoire naturelle (1926)....  The eight plates selected for exhibit...show remarkable virtuosity of aquatint technique."

And Goeppert and Cramer add the following delightful commentary, "Picasso had written the name of the animal below each of his etchings....  These names, written in large letters, were intentionally omitted in the impressions of the plates for the book, and figure only on the impressions of the suite which accompanies the deluxe edition.  Picasso had made a 32nd etching, entitled La puce, for the book.  As the species had not been described by Buffon, the print was not used in the book, but was added to the suites.  In it, we see 'une pucelle' (this is a play on words: puce in French means flea, and pucelle means young girl or virgin) snatching a flea.  The person depicted is the callipygian Aphrodite (that is to say, Venus with the shapely buttocks), but the facial features are those of Marie-Thérèse Walter [his mistress].  Unlike with Hellenistic models, which the viewer has to walk around in order to admire completely, the pucelle of Picasso can be fully enjoyed at a single glance because the artist has presented all her physical charms frontwards."

I have always loved this exquisite print, not only for its beautiful, not to mention stylistically unique, rendering of Marie-Thérèse, but also for the humor of this afterthought to the 31other zoological illustrations.  I bought this impression of the print for its beauty, not for its signature, and am offering it for sale at an "unsigned price".  The type of pencil used in this signature is atypical for Picasso, but, then again, he may have signed it in passing at a much later date.  One could also quibble with the forms of some of the letters, though I have seen other signatures with these forms.   All in all, three experts have examined this signature (one in the flesh but with a conflict of interest, the other two through digital photos), and all believed that it looks authentic.  A fourth expert felt adamant that it is not.   Now that I have examined the piece "in the flesh", I believe it is more likely than not that the signature is forged. I certainly cannot pass it off as an authentic signature in good conscience.   As in many other cases with Picasso prints, notably The Vollard Suite and especially in much of its small-margined edition of 260, accepting the signature as real requires a leap of faith.  (For a more complete discussion of Picasso's signatures and their forgeries, please refer to the chapter on signatures in my manuscript, A Guide to Collecting Picasso's Prints, at http://ledorfineart.com/Chapter_12.html.) 

This richly inked and textured design, reflecting Picasso's extensively worked copper, must be seen "in the flesh" to be fully appreciated.  Clearly Picasso enjoyed himself in creating this marvelous work.