This print was made from an original creative reproduction of the Pablo Picasso's Portrait of Jacqueline, 1954. Print is hand-numbered series of 400 and signed on the plate. Actual number received will vary.
Printed on BFK Rives Cotton (France) with deckled edges.
Overall print size is 19 x 26 inches, image is 14.6 x 18.75 inches.
Print is delivered unframed.
Jacqueline Picasso or Jacqueline Roque (24 February 1927 – 15 October 1986) was born in Paris on 24 February 1927. She is best known as the muse and second wife of Pablo Picasso. Their marriage lasted 11 years until his death, during which time he created over 400 portraits of her, more than any of Picasso's other loves.
Pablo Picasso met Jacqueline in 1953 at the pottery when she was 27 years old and he was 72. He romanced her by drawing a dove on her house in chalk and bringing her one rose a day until she agreed to date him six months later. In 1955, when Picasso's first wife Olga Koklova died, he was free to marry. They married in Vallauris on 2 March 1961.
Roque's image began to appear in Picasso's paintings in May 1954. These portraits are characterized by an exaggerated neck and feline face, distortions of Roque's features. Eventually her dark eyes and eyebrows, high cheekbones, and classical profile would become familiar symbols in his late paintings. It is likely that Picasso's series of paintings derived from Eugène Delacroix's The Women of Algiers was inspired by Roque's beauty; the artist commented that "Delacroix had already met Jacqueline." In 1955 he drew Jacqueline as "Lola de Valence", a reference to Édouard Manet painting of the Spanish dancer. In 1963 he painted her portrait 160 times, and continued to paint her, in increasingly abstracted forms, until 1972