Jacqueline Seated

‘Picasso met Jacqueline Roque (1927-1986) in June 1954 at the ceramic workshop of Suzanne and Georges Ramié in Vallauris and inmmediately began to paint her. The first portraits of Jacqueline date from 2 and 3 June and include Jacqueline with Hands Clasped (MP 1990-26, Z.XVI.324), which is much like the present example and also remained in the artist’s estate.

Pablo Picasso. Jacqueline With Crossed Hands, Vallauris, June 3, 1954. Musée national Picasso-Paris © GrandPalaisRmn (musée national Picasso-Paris)/Adrien Didierjean © Succession Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Madrid, 2024

The present portrait is later, however, one of a series depicting Jacqueline in Picasso’s Paris studio on the rue des Grands-Augustins between 5 and 16 October 1954. These October paintings also reflect Jacqueline’s initial influence as a source of inspiration for Picasso. In the Museum’s example, two other paintings of the same date and size (Z.XVI.329 and a painting uncatalogued by Zervos in a private collection), and one from 14 October (Z.XVI.330), he continued to explore the majestic, reserved attitude of the isolated seated figure clasping her knees. Only the faces of these works changed: from a realistic three-quarter profile into the cubist-style face shown here in which Jacqueline’s superimposed profile looks directly into her own face.

Historians have pointed out an amazing similarity between Jacqueline’s profile and that of the seated woman with a rose in her hair and a hookah in her hand in Eugène Delacroix’s Women of Algiers, 1834 (Musée du Louvre, Paris); and Pierre Daix has noted that Picasso’s Royan notebook from 1940 (MP 1879), shows four drawings made after Delacroix’s famous painting. However, Picasso did not paint his variations on the subject until December 1954, months after this portrait series; therefore, references in the present example to Delacroix’s masterpiece seem premature. Nonetheless, Picasso’s lifelong search for beauty reveals a penchant for certain classic archetypes. Consciously or not, he chose models and mistresses who fit his quest. Jacqueline’s beauty is that of Delacroix’s woman, but she also represents the ideal that inspired Picasso’s predecessors—both a prototype and a muse, perfectly commingled.

Eugène Delacroix. Women of Algiers in their Apartment, 1834. Musée du Louvre © GrandPalaisRmn (musée du Louvre)/Franck Raux

Pablo Picasso. Sketchbook after Women of Algiers in their Apartment, by Eugène Delacroix (sheet 4, The Royan Sketchbook no. 45, January 9 – May 26, 1940. Musée national Picasso-Paris © GrandPalaisRmn (musée national Picasso-Paris)/Mathieu Rabeau © Succession Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Madrid, 2024

The manner in which the figure’s head and body have been fitted into the painting’s three zones of primary colors contributes to its sculptural qualities, as does the way in which the figure sits like a statue on a red base. In the present work and the two other paintings from 8 October noted above, Jacqueline’s head rises into the flat field of blue where, almost floating, it draws the viewer’s attention like a target. There is a contradiction between flatness and implied volume in the Museum’s painting: although the overall visual effects are two-dimensional, the treatment of the head, torso, and arms impart a pronounced sense of depth. Added dimension comes from the contrast and black shading of Jacqueline’s upper body, as well as her left arm as it protrudes from her round black sleeve and bends at the elbow. The head also, with its profile and three-quarter views, has aspects of three dimensions. Picasso’s perfect integration of the “double-perspective” head in which optical distortion is overridden by a realistic placement of features further enhances the figure’s physical being.

Parts of the canvas have been left unpainted; but, in most areas, paint has been lightly applied, sometimes stippled, so that the colors create relief against the white of the canvas. Jacqueline’s body is shaped within an underlying white field, which separates her from the yellow background and gives a playful but false impression of depth. Traces of a white outline along her head and back, the bottom of her dress, and behind her feet and buttocks accentuate the rounded mass of her bent knees and encircling arms. This outline alludes to sculpture—especially the folded and cutout sculptures inspired by Jacqueline that Picasso made in Cannes in 1961’

Text: GIMÉNEZ, Carmen (ed.). Museo Picasso Málaga Collection. Malaga: Museo Picasso Málaga, 2003, vol. I, pp. 146-148.