The model for this figure was fifty-eight-year-old Madame Putman (1850-1939), who, at more than six feet tall and nearly three hundred pounds, fascinated the diminutive Picasso. A widow and mother of seven, she was the artist's landlady in La Rue-des-Bois, a small village north of Paris where Picasso stayed from early August to early September 1908. This is one of seven drawings the artist made of the powerful woman as she went about her chores (she was too busy to pose) in preparation for two paintings.
