Artist: Pablo Picasso

Title: Jackeline on Profile, Cannes, 14.1.57

Medium: Lithographic pencil on Zinc

Year: 1956-57

Edition: Trial proof a side from the edition 100

Publisher-editor: Galerie H. Matarasso, Nice

Bibliograph/Published: Block 827, Mourlot 289

Sizes: 51.5x38.5 cm image, 50x65 cm paper

Signature: Signed  on pencil and inscribed Cannes 14.1.57

Condition: Perfect

Registered  on the MOMA collection, number 48.1996

Registered in the Museo Picasso Barcelona collection, Number MPB 70.215

Registered  in the Art Institut of Chicago collection, Number 1957.348

Jackeline Roque, A Tragic Love Story

Young and without a clear future, after divorcing her first husband, she moved to the south of France to work in her cousin's studio, Atelier Madoura, in Vallauris. This was the studio where Picasso worked for decades.

It was there that she met him, and despite half a century of age difference, he won her over with the persistence of a young man, sending her a rose every day for six months.

It was 1953. She became his muse, with her high cheekbones, feline expression, and those distinctive eyebrows. But they waited until 1961 to marry, partly because his first wife never granted him a divorce, and he could only marry after her death in 1955.

In our lithograph, created directly with crayon on zinc, I perceive that freedom with an aura of complete intimacy. This portrait was created in the very year their relationship stabilized and became an equal partnership.

Jacqueline was the model and muse he portrayed most frequently, from 1954 onwards, and in 1963 he painted her more than 160 times.

She was dressed and transformed into Velázquez, Manet, Delacroix, in peasant costumes, Spanish dancer outfits, Baroque lady attire, and so on. With her, he experimented with painting her in more classical, more abstract, and more Cubist styles, as if he wanted to have her explore all his styles, live all the Picassos throughout history.

After the master's death, disputes arose over his estate between Françoise Gilot, his children Paloma and Claude, and Jacqueline, supposedly ending in agreements and the founding of the Picasso Museum in Paris.

She died years later, taking her own life just before announcing her participation in a new Picasso exhibition with works from her collection.

She lies beside him in the Château de Vauvenargues.