Picasso - B6-Tete de Femme de Profil

Apart from one inconsequential, rare, and unpublished etching of 1899, Picasso began printmaking in earnest in 1904-1905 with a series of fifteen etchings and drypoints. The first of these was Le Repas Frugal, widely considered one of his very best prints, a testament to a genius that could master a new medium so readily and so completely as to emerge at its pinnacle by the time he had completed a single work. The second most famous print of the series, and one which is a small fraction of the cost yet, in my opinion, every bit as strking, is the one at hand, Tete de Femme de Profil. Picasso’s first art dealer, Ambrose Vollard, published and cleverly packaged these etchings and drypoints as La Suite des Saltimbanques (The Acrobat Suite—“Saltimbanque” means circus performer or acrobat in French), despite the fact that the best prints in the series are portraits having nothing to do with the circus. The Suite comprises all the prints of Picasso’s Blue and Rose Periods, both temporally and stylistically, if not in coloration (they are all printed in black ink) and are therefore the only Picasso prints that would strike the fancy of the typical Picasso hater, who likes only the Blue Period (such as my dear mother—I know this syndrome all too well). In general, these etchings and drypoints are very charming in that classically Blue and Rose Period sort of way: not necessarily with its famously elongated line (a number of the figures are frankly rather squat; see also Bloch numbers 4, 5, and 10), but with that certain nobility amid poverty and sadness that we’ve seen in the paintings of this period. But, well beyond simple charm, the drypoint at hand is gripping and strikingly beautiful.

Who is this mysterious woman? John Richardson informs us, as follows: “A new face in his work reveals that Picasso had found a new mistress. Madeleine she was called; all we know is that she was a model. …she was pretty in a delicate, birdlike way…. Madeleine’s thick hair, loosely drawn back into a chignon, and her boyishly lean body recur in a number of works done over the net six or nine months—works that mirror the blurring of the Blue into the Rose period…. Picasso would always take pleasure in the fact that the skinny allure he contrived for his Blue period girls predicted a look that fashionable women would cultivate decades later.” (John Richardson, A Life of Picasso, Volume I, pp. 302 + 304.)

Now a word about the quality of the impressions of the Suite in general and of our drypoint in particular. Unlike the vast majority of Picasso prints, in which the quality of the impression is consistently excellent, the quality of the impression of Picasso’s prints varies most in his first fifteen prints. The printer Fort pulled these prints, but his results were spottier and less consistent than Picasso’s successive printers. Certainly the few impressions prior to steelfacing are usually the best, and the very high prices they fetch reflect their beauty and rarity. But there is great variability even among the impressions that followed the steelfacing. Some are printed much more deeply than others, and some have much more plate tone than others. And one should not categorically assume that the impressions on “Japan” laid paper (about 10% of the edition) are better than the rest on van Gelder wove paper. Although it is true that the Japan rice paper takes the ink better than wood-pulp paper, the success of the printer’s efforts in pulling each impression trumps the paper type in determining the quality of the impression. Thus, the Saltimbanques must be closely and directly examined in order to assess the quality of each impression. Digital and printed images are largely insufficient to make the case. And the difference in the quality of the impressions is not just academic—poorly printed impressions look flat, in contradistinction to the richly printed ones, which look wonderful and dramatic.

The particular impression at hand is especially rich with vibrant line and deep plate tone—the most beautiful I have ever seen. Also, the sheet is full and untrimmed, unlike many impressions of this print that have been cut nearly to the quick, thereby losing their watermark to the butcher’s floor.