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Reclining Nude (Fernande)

Reclining Nude (Fernande)

1906

Pablo Picasso

(Spanish, 1881-1973)

Spain, 20th century

Watercolor and gouache, with graphite and possibly charcoal

Support: Beige modern laid paper

Sheet: 47.3 x 61.3 cm (18 5/8 x 24 1/8 in.)

© Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Michael Straight 1954.865

Catalogue raisonné: Daix, Boudaille, and Rosselet XV.47

Location

Did you know?

Picasso mixed his paints with an unidentified material to produce the spotted effect most noticeable on Fernande's lower torso and the blue blanket below her.

Description

This drawing depicts Picasso's lover Fernande Olivier, with whom he spent the summer of 1906 in the remote Spanish village of Gósol, where he made this sheet. Picasso was engaged in radical experimentation with technique and simplified formal distortions at this time, and this shift in his work can be seen in Fernande's stylized face and somewhat disjointed gesture, and in the expressive strokes and spotted effects of the gouache.

Artist biography

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Ruiz Picasso (1881-1973), the most prolific and influential artist of the 20th century, shifted the emphasis of art from its traditional concern with beauty toward radical innovation. The son of an art teacher, Picasso demonstrated remarkable talents as a child and entered the royal art academy in Madrid at age sixteen. Less than a year later, he abandoned his studies and soon joined several avant-garde artist and anarchist groups in Barcelona and Paris. After passing through a succession of stylistic periods, most notably the Blue (1901-1904) and Rose (1904-1906) Periods, he collaborated with Georges Braque (1882-1963) in 1908 to invent Cubism, a revolutionary method of restructuring pictorial space. Picasso remained active until his death in 1973. Although his art still appears radical, many of his works are over one hundred years old. Cubism, perhaps the most important development in 20th-century art, was invented around 1908 by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and Georges Braque (1882-1963). The most revolutionary aspect of the style was not its obvious emphasis on geometric form; rather, it was the introduction of a radically new approach to configuring pictorial space. Since the Renaissance, artists had used various methods to create the illusion of distant space receding behind the canvas surface. The Cubists rejected that idea and collapsed space by compressing foreground, middle ground, and background into a continuous web of overlapping, intersecting planes. During the 1910s, other painters and sculptors embraced or adapted Cubism to their own ends. This revolutionary approach inspired a host of related movements and continues to influence the visual language of artists, architects, and designers throughout the world.

Inscriptions

Inscription

signed, lower right, in pink crayon: Picasso [underlined]; verso, upper left, in black crayon: 2548 [in a box; upside down]; upper right, in black crayon: 2548 [in a box; sideways]; lower left, in blue crayon: ph / 94 [sideways]; lower right, in black crayon: 2548 [in a box; sideways]

Provenance

by 1934-by 1954

Paul Guillaume, Paris

?-1954

Mr. and Mrs. Michael Straight, Washington, D.C., given to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

1954-

The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

Citations

Zervos, Christian. Pablo Picasso, Vol. 1: Oeuvres de 1895 à 1906. Paris: Éditions Cahiers d'art, 1, 1932. Mentioned: no. 317; Reproduced: plate 143

Pablo Picasso. Exh. Cat. Hartford, CT: Wadsworth Atheneum, 1934. Mentioned: no. 91

An Inaugural Exhibition: El Greco, Rembrandt, Goya, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Picasso. Exh. Cat. Milwaukee: Milwaukee Art Institute, 1957. Mentioned and reproduced: no. 88

The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958. Mentioned and Reproduced: cat. no. 519 archive.org

Boggs, Jean Sutherland. Picasso and Man. Exh. Cat. Toronto: Art Gallery of Toronto, 1964. Mentioned and reproduced: no. 36

The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969. Reproduced: p. 195 archive.org

Gaya Nuño, Juan Antonio. Picasso. Madrid: Aguilar, 1975. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 65

Hilton, Timothy. Picasso. London: Thames and Hudson, 1975. Mentioned: p. 67; Reproduced: p. 71

Rubin, William, ed. Pablo Picasso: A Retrospective. Exh. Cat. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1980. Mentioned: p. 59; Reproduced: p. 72

Quarterly Bulletin, South African National Gallery (February 1981). Reproduced: fig. 5

Palau i Fabre, Josep. Picasso: The Early Years 1881-1907. New York: Rizzoli, 1981. Mentioned: p. 552; Reproduced: p. 461

Picasso: Masterpieces from Marina Picasso Collection and from Museums in U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. Exh. Cat. Tokyo: National Museum of Modern Art, 1983. Mentioned and reproduced: no. 29

Spies, Werner. Picasso: Pastelle, Zeichnungen, Aquarelle. Exh. Cat. Tübingen: Kunsthalle, 1986. Mentioned: p. 22; Reproduced: no. 42

Daix, Pierre, Georges Boudaille, and Joan Rosselet. Picasso 1900-1906: catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint. Neuchâtel: Editions Ides et Calendes, 1988. Mentioned: p. 100, 305, no. XV.47; Reproduced: p. 305

Rubin, William. "La Genèse des Demoiselles d'Avignon." In Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 367-488. Paris: Musée Picasso, 1988. Mentioned: p. 398; Reproduced: p. 399

Daix, Pierre. Picasso. Paris: Chêne, 1990. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 151, no. 1

Catoni, Maria Luisa. "Parigi 1904: Picasso 'iberico' e le 'Demoiselles d'Avignon'." Bollettino d'Arte 75, no. 6 (1990): 117-130. Mentioned: p. 122; Reproduced: p. 123

Lévy, Lorraine. Picasso. Translated by Barbara Beaumont. London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1991. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 151, no. 1

Oshima, Seiji. Picasso: Musée Picasso, Volume II. Toyko: Tokyo Art Institute, 1991. Reproduced: p. 94

Richardson, John. A Life of Picasso, Volume I: 1881-1906. New York: Random House, 1991. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 448

Chevalier, Denys. Picasso: The Blue and Rose Periods. New York: Crown Publishers, 1991. Mentioned: p. 88; Reproduced: back cover

Rivero, Núria. Picasso, 1905-1906: From the Rose Period to the Ochres of Gósol. Barcelona: Electa, 1992. Mentioned: p. 342, cat. no. 295; Reproduced: p. 343

Hovdenakk, Per. Picasso Besoker Norge. Exh. Cat. Oslo: Henie-Onstad Kunstsenter, 1992. Mentioned: p. 60; Reproduced: p. 61

Rubin, William and Matthew Armstrong. The William S. Paley Collection. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1992. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 168

Harrison, Charles, Francis Frascina, and Gill Perry. Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction: The Early Twentieth Century. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993. Mentioned: p. 120; Reproduced: p. 119

Rubin, William, Hélène Seckel, and Judith Cousins. Studies in Modern Art 3: Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1994. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 36

Rubin, William, ed. Picasso and Portraiture: Representation and Transformation. Exh. Cat. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1996. Mentioned: p. 266

McCully, Marilyn, ed. Picasso: The Early Years, 1892-1906. Exh. Cat. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1997. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 267, p. 296, no. 160

McCully, Marilyn, ed. and Natasha Elena Staller. Picasso--the Early Years, 1892-1906. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1997. Reproduced: p. 267

DeGrazia, Diane, and Carter E. Foster. Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Exh. Cat. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2000. Mentioned and reproduced: pp. 230-231, cat. no. 96, p. 296

Robinson, William H., Jordi Falgàs, and Carmen Belen Lord. Barcelona and Modernity: Picasso, Gaudí, Miró, Dalí. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art in association with Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2006. Mentioned: p. 242-247; Reproduced: p. 245

Galassi, Susan Grace and Marilyn McCully. Picasso's Drawings, 1890-1921: Reinventing Tradition. Exh. Cat. New York: Frick Collection, 2011. Mentioned and reproduced: pp. 128-129, no. 23

Vallès, Eduard. Picasso: obra catalana. Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana, 2015. Reproduced: p. 266-[267]

Mathieu, Camille. "Origin Points: Archaeology and the Search for Authenticity." In Picasso, Rivera: Conversations Across Time. Diana Magaloni, and Michael Govan, eds., 72-127. Los Angeles, California: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Munich: DelMonico Books/Prestel, 2016. Reproduced: p. 84, left

Lloyd, Christopher. Picasso and the Art of Drawing. London: Modern Art Press, 2018. Reproduced: p. 68, fig. 42

Dumas, Ann. "The Rose Period." In Picasso and Paper. William H. Robinson, et al., 80-101. London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2020. Reproduced: P. 101, cat. no. 74

Exhibition history

Pablo Picasso. Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT (February 6 - March 1, 1934).

An Inaugural Exhibition: El Greco, Rembrandt, Goya, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Picasso. Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI (organizer) (September 12-October 20, 1957).

Picasso and Man. Art Gallery of Ontario, Ontario M5T 1G4, Canada (organizer) (January 11-February 16, 1964); Montréal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Quebec, Canada (February 28-March 31, 1964).

In Memoriam - Pablo Picasso, 1881 - 1973. The Cleveland Museum of Art (April 10-May 7, 1973).

Pablo Picasso: A Retrospective. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (organizer) (May 22-September 16, 1980).

Pablo Picasso. The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan (organizer) (co-organizer) (April 2-May 29, 1983).

Picasso: Masterpieces from Marina Picasso Collection and from Museums in U.S.A. and U.S.S.R.. The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan (organizer) (April 2-May 29, 1983); Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, Kyoto, Japan (June 10-July 24, 1983).

Pablo Picasso. Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, Kyoto, Japan (co-organizer) (June 10-July 24, 1983).

Picasso: Pastelle, Zeichnungen, Aquarelle. Künsthalle Tubingen, D-72076 Tübingen, Germany (organizer) (April 5-June 1, 1986).

Picasso: Pastelle, Zeichnungen, Aquarelle (Picasso: Pastels, Paintings, Watercolors). Künsthalle Tubingen, D-72076 Tübingen, Germany (April 5-June 1, 1986); Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany, Dusseldorf 1, Germany (organizer) (June 13-July 27, 1986).

Picasso: Pastelle, Zeichnungen, Aquarelle. Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany (June 14-July 27, 1986).

Picasso, 1905-1906. Museu Picasso, Barcelona, Spain (organizer) (February 5-April 19, 1992); Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern, Switzerland (May 8-July 26, 1992).

Picasso: The Early Years, 1892-1906. National Gallery of Art (organizer) (March 30-July 27, 1997); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (September 10, 1997-January 4, 1998).

Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 27-October 17, 2000); The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY (May 23-August 19, 2001); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, TX (October 14, 2001-January 6, 2002).

Picasso's Drawings, 1890-1921: Reinventing Tradition . Frick Collection, New York, NY (organizer) (October 4, 2011-January 8, 2012); National Gallery of Art, Landover, MD (February 5-May 6, 2012).

Cite this page

{{cite web|title=Reclining Nude (Fernande)|url=https://clevelandart.org/art/1954.865|author=Pablo Picasso|year=1906|access-date=29 July 2021|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

See also

Collection:

Department:

Type of artwork:

Medium:

Watercolor and gouache, with graphite and possibly charcoal

Credit line:

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Michael Straight

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