Lithograph, 14 June 1946, on Arches wove paper, signed in pencil by the artist, numbered from the edition of 50, 64 x 49.5 cm. (25¼ x 19½ in.)

Françoise Gilot was Pablo Picasso’s muse and lover during the period 1943-1953. This decade spent together was to be one of the most transformative periods of Picasso’s artistic career; Europe was emerging from World War II, the artist left Paris for his first residence in the South of France at Vallauris and he and Gilot became parents to children Claude and Paloma. Françoise Gilot was just twenty-one years old and an art student in Paris when she first met Picasso, presenting a forty-year age gap between the couple. Picasso had grown tired of his then mistress Dora Maar and swiftly became consumed with Gilot’s striking beauty and vitality. He created numerous portraits of Gilot throughout their relationship, often in a hyper-stylised, abstract manner. In this lithograph, Picasso uses his simplified mark-making to capture her characteristic dark arching eyebrows, luscious locks and youthful doe-eyed face.