In bronze, Head of a Woman is energized by light. Highlights and shadows across its projecting planes suggest shifting volumes that convey different points of view. The tilt of the head and curve of the neck imply movement. The photographer Alfred Stieglitz was one of the first to acquire a bronze cast of the work, which he photographed and later published in his journal Camera Work. The sculpture’s publication there as well as its appearance in the influential New York presentation of the International Exhibition of Modern Art, known as the Armory Show, in 1913 garnered it great attention. This cast, from Foundry Désiré or Florentin Godard in Paris, is one of several that Picasso’s dealer Ambroise Vollard ordered to meet his clients’ interests after World War I.
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Date:Clay original: Paris, autumn 1909; Plaster model: Paris, late 1910; Bronze cast: Foundry Désiré or Florentin Godard, Paris, made to order for Ambroise Vollard between July 27, 1926, and March 11, 1927
Inscription: Signed (back of neck near bottom): Picasso
[Ambroise Vollard, Paris, until 1926; sold on July 27, 1926, for Fr 8,000, as "Tête cubiste," through William Aspenwall Bradley, to Weyhe]; [Weyhe Gallery, New York, 1926–early 1950s; sold in the early 1950s to Hines]; Mrs. Ralph J. Hines (née Mary Elizabeth Borden, former Mary Elizabeth Borden Pirie), New York (early 1950s–d. 1961); her son, Robert Pirie, Hamilton, Mass. (1961–84; sold in September 1984 to Lauder); Leonard A. Lauder, New York (1984–2013; transferred on April 8, 2013 to the Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Trust); The Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Trust, New York (2013–21; gift to MMA)
New York. Museum of Modern Art. "Cubism and Abstract Art," March 2–April 19, 1936, no. 212 (as "Head," lent by the Weyhe Gallery, New York).
New York. Museum of Modern Art. "Picasso: Forty Years of His Art," November 15, 1939–January 7, 1940, no. 83 (as "Woman’s Head," 1909?, lent by the Weyhe Gallery).
Art Institute of Chicago. "Picasso: Forty Years of His Art," February 1–March 5, 1940, no. 83.
City Art Museum of Saint Louis. "Picasso: Forty Years of His Art," March 16–April 14, 1940, no. 83.
Boston. Museum of Fine Arts. "Picasso: Forty Years of His Art," April 26–May 25, 1940, no. 83.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. "Picasso: Forty Years of His Art," June 25–July 22, 1940, no. 83.
Cincinnati Art Museum. "Picasso: Forty Years of His Art," September 29–October 27, no. 83.
Cleveland Museum of Art. "Picasso: Forty Years of His Art," November 7–December 8, 1940, no. 83.
New Orleans. Isaac Delgado Museum of Art. "Picasso: Forty Years of His Art," December 20, 1940–January 17, 1941, no. 83.
Minneapolis Institute of Arts. "Picasso: Forty Years of His Art," February 1–March 2, 1941, no. 83.
Pittsburgh. Carnegie Museum of Art. "Picasso: Forty Years of His Art," March 15–April 13, 1941, no. 83.
New York. Whitney Museum of American Art. "Picasso and American Art," September 28, 2006–February 4, 2007, unnumbered cat. (pl. 12; as "Head of Fernande").
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. "Picasso and American Art," February 25–May 28, 2007, unnumbered cat.
Minneapolis. Walker Art Center. "Picasso and American Art," June 17–September 7, 2007, unnumbered cat.
New York. Mnuchin Gallery. "Casting Modernity: Bronze in the XXth Century," April 24–June 7, 2014, no. 30.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Cubism: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection," October 20, 2014–February 16, 2015, no. 61.
National Portrait Gallery, London. "Picasso Portraits," October 5, 2016–February 5, 2017, no. 77.
Weyhe Gallery. Fine Prints. Catalogue 74. December 1935. New York, 1935, p. 11, as "Head," price listed as $1,000.
Alfred H. Barr Jr. inCubism and Abstract Art. Exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art. New York, 1936, pp. 103–4, 220, no. 212, ill. p. 105, fig. 90.
Weyhe Gallery. Fine Prints. Catalogue 77. December 1936. New York, 1936, p. 17, no. 580, price listed as $1,000.
Alfred H. Barr Jr. Picasso: Forty Years of His Art. Exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art. New York, 1939, p. 68, no. 83, ill.
Christian Zervos. Pablo Picasso. Vol. 2b, Works from 1912 to 1917. Paris, 1942, unpaginated, (list of plates) no. 573, pl. 266, as "Tête".
Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Les Sculptures de Picasso. Paris, 1949, unpaginated, pl. 8, dates it 1910.
Werner Spies. Sculpture by Picasso, with a Catalogue of the Works. New York, 1971, pp. 18, 24, 26–28, 48, 51, 55, 98, 302, no. 24, ill. pp. 42–43 (not specific to this cast), as "Tête de femme," 1909.
Franco Russoli and Fiorella Minervino. L'opera completa di Picasso cubista. Milan, 1972, p. 102, no. 296, ill. p. 101 (not specific to this cast), as "Testa femminile".
Françoise Cachin and Fiorella Minervino. Tout l'oeuvre peint de Picasso, 1907–1916. Paris, 1977, pp. 102–3, no. 296, ill. p. 101 (not specific to this cast)
, as "Tête de femme," 1909.
Werner Spies with Christine Piot. Pablo Picasso: Das Plastische Werk: Werkverzeichnis der Skulpturen. Exh. cat., Nationalgalerie Berlin. Stuttgart, 1983, pp. 47–54, 327, 373, no. 24, II, ill. pp. 48–49, 327 (not specific to this cast).
Nigel Vaux Halliday. More Than a Bookshop: Zwemmer's and Art in the 20th Century. London, 1991, p. 180, erroneously identifies it as formerly owned by Zwemmer.
Werner Spies with Christine Piot. Picasso: The Sculptures. Exh. cat., Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. Ostfildern-Ruit, 2000, pp. 57–67, 395, no. 24, II, ill. (not specific to this cast).
Valerie J. Fletcher inPicasso: The Cubist Portraits of Fernande Olivier. Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C. and Princeton, 2003, pp. 184–85.
Michael FitzGerald. Picasso and American Art. Exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art. New York, 2006, pp. 36, 386, pl. 12.
Diana Widmaier Picasso inCézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde. Ed. Rebecca A. Rabinow. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2006, p. 187 n. 35, as "Head of Fernande".
Lisa M. Messinger inPicasso in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ed. Gary Tinterow and Susan Alyson Stein. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2010, p. 141, as "Head of a Woman".
Carol Vogel. "Billion-Dollar Cubist Gift to the Met." International Herald Tribune (April 11, 2013), p. 12.
Carol Vogel. "$1 Billion Gift Gives Met a New Perspective (Cubist)." New York Times (April 10, 2013), p. A18.
"Objects Promised to the Museum during the Year 2012–2013." The Metropolitan Museum of Art, One Hundred Forty-third Annual Report of the Trustees for the Fiscal Year July 1, 2012, through June 30, 2013 (2013), p. 46.
Casting Modernity: Bronze in the XXth Century. Exh. cat., Mnuchin Gallery. New York, 2014, pp. 114, 141, no. 30, ill. p. 115.
David Ekserdjian inCasting Modernity: Bronze in the XXth Century. Exh. cat., Mnuchin Gallery. New York, 2014, p. 9.
Emily Braun and Rebecca Rabinow inCubism: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection. Ed. Emily Braun and Rebecca Rabinow. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2014, p. 234.
Andrea Bayer inCubism: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection. Ed. Emily Braun and Rebecca Rabinow. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2014, pp. 48, 55–57, no. 61, ill. p. 56 (color).
Anna Jozefacka and Luise Mahler inCubism: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection. Ed. Emily Braun and Rebecca Rabinow. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2014, pp. 284–85, fig. 61 (installation photo, Exh. New York 1939–40).
Emily Braun and Leonard A. Lauder inCubism: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection. Ed. Emily Braun and Rebecca Rabinow. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2014, p. 9.
Alan Hyman, ed. The Picasso Project: Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings, and Sculpture, A Comprehensive Illustrated Catalogue, 1885–1973. Vol. 1909–1912, Analytic Cubism. San Francisco, 2015, pp. xxiv [clay original], xxxviii [another cast; erroneously as “no. 1908-214"], 95, 323, no. 1909-214, ill. p. 95.
"The Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection: A Conversation with Emily Braun and Pepe Karmel." IFAR Journal 16, no. 3 (2015), p. 40, fig. 13 (color).
Elizabeth Cowling inPicasso Portraits. Ed. Elizabeth Cowling. Exh. cat., National Portrait Gallery, London. London, 2016, pp. 91, 238, no. 77, ill. p. 92 (color).
Charlotte Klonk. "Non-European Artifacts and the Art Interior of the Late 1920s and Early 1930s." Interiors and Interiority. Ed. Ewa Lajer-Burcharth and Beate Söntgen. Berlin, 2016, ill. p. 214, fig. 3 (as installed in the exhibition "Cubism and Abstract Art," the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1936).
Renzo Leonardi and Derek Pullen. "Picasso’s Sculpture 'Head of a Woman (Fernande)' 1909: A Collaborative Technical Study." Colloque Picasso Sculptures. 2017, pp. 3, 6.
Vérane Tasseau. "Lauder, Leonard A." Dictionnaire du Cubisme. Ed. Brigitte Leal. Paris, 2018, p. 403.
Cécile Godefroy. "Tête de femme (Fernande)." Dictionnaire du Cubisme. Ed. Brigitte Leal. Paris, 2018, pp. 759–62 (not this cast).
Paul Rodgers. Pablo Picasso–Simon Hantaï: Drama Shared: Cubism and the Fold. New York, 2020, fig. 8 (installation photo, Exh. New York 1939–40).
Daniel Cassady. "Picasso bronze deaccessioned by the Metropolitan Museum could bring $30m at Christie’s." theartnewspaper.com (March 9, 2022).
François Dareau inPicasso & Abstraction. Exh. cat., Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. Brussels, 2022, pp. 130–31, no. 32, ill. (color, Musée National Picasso-Paris edition).
The ninth-annual Women and the Critical Eye program featuring a conversation between Emily Braun and Rebecca Rabinow, who discuss Leonard Lauder's criteria for collecting, including the importance of the "aesthetic wow," rarity, state of conservation, and attention to a work's curriculum vitae.
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, Malaga 1881–1973 Mougins, France)
1929
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