Pablo Picasso Madame Picasso

Shown from the knees up, young woman with ivory-white skin sits facing us in a brown armchair with her hands loosely clasped in her lap in this vertical portrait painting. Her hair is parted in the middle and gathered at the back of her head. Her head is turned to our left, and she looks off into the distance with dark brown eyes under thin, arched brows. She has a long nose and a pale, petite mouth. Her steel-blue dress has elbow-length sleeves and a brown fur collar. The blue dress is marked with off-white, zigzagging lines, and shadows are created with gray smudges. The armchair frames her torso, being just taller than her shoulders and wider than her arms. The chair, her hair, and collar are all ginger brown. Wavy lines and angled strokes of smoke gray and black delineate the texture of her hair, collar, and folds of her dress. Her facial features, clothing, and the chair are outlined in black and set against a taupe background. The artist has signed and dated in the upper right, “Picasso 23.”