Picasso, Pablo (1881-1973)
Femme nue dans un fauteuil rouge (Nude Woman in a Red Armchair)
July 27, 1932
Oil on canvas, 129.9 × 97.2 cm
Tate Britain, London
This sensual portrait of Picasso’s lover Marie-Thérèse Walter was painted at the artist’s Normandy estate in 1932. Picasso dated this work very precisely, suggesting he completed it in one day, which this study shows to be entirely possible. 1932 was an extraordinary year for Picasso and this essay examines the materials and techniques which produced such an assured and historically important painting.
Nude Woman in a Red Armchair is one of a series of nudes painted by Picasso in 1932 that were inspired by Marie-Thérèse Walter, the artist’s young lover and muse, and is the only work from this series in the Tate collection. The voluptuous contours of Marie-Thérèse Walter’s body contrast sharply with contemporaneous depictions of Picasso’s wife, Olga Khokhlova, a Ukrainian ballet dancer and a member of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. The marriage had begun in 1918 but by the 1930s was falling apart. Picasso expressed his disillusionment by painting increasingly violent, monstrous and fragmented images of Olga Khokhlova. He painted this image in the summer of 1932 in Deauville, Normandy, where he escaped with Marie-Thérèse Walter while his wife and son were away in Juan-les-Pins.
The painting is inscribed very precisely with a date, ‘Boisgeloup 27 juillet XXXII’ (27 July 32) painted onto the stretcher bars on the reverse side, which implies that Picasso created the painting in a single day. (Tate)
Compare:
Picasso, Pablo (1881-1973)
Le fauteuil rouge
1931
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
See also:
• Walter, Marie-Thérèse (1909-1977)