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Overlapping, geometric shapes painted in tones of tan, oatmeal, and coffee brown and outlined in black cluster along the center of this tall, vertical, abstract painting. Except for the outlines, the paint is put on in long, horizontal strokes to create patches of color. The unpainted canvas shows through in some areas, especially in the lower corners and up along the right edge. A few shapes could recall body parts, like curved shapes for breasts near the top and an angled line for an elbow. The artist signed the work with black paint at the lower center: “Picasso.”

Pablo Picasso

Nude Woman, 1910

East Building, Mezzanine - Gallery 217B

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 187.3 x 61 cm (73 3/4 x 24 in.)

framed: 215.3 x 88.9 x 6.9 cm (84 3/4 x 35 x 2 11/16 in.)

Credit Line

Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund

Accession Number

1972.46.1

Artists / Makers

Pablo Picasso (artist) Spanish, 1881 - 1973

Image Use

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Copyright

Overview

In 1909, Hamilton Easter Field, a Brooklyn painter and critic, asked Picasso to create a group of eleven paintings as a decoration for his library. Picasso accepted but, although he worked on the commission intermittently over the next several years, he never completed all eleven of the panels.

Nude Woman may be the first of the paintings Picasso did produce for Field. Its narrow, vertical format, dictated by the terms of the commission, is unusual in the artist's oeuvre, but in other respects the painting is typical of Picasso's analytic cubist style. Details of the figure, a breast, the head, may be made out, but in most respects the painting appears as disembodied shards of modeled form. Those forms are delineated by sharp lines which describe roughly geometric shapes, and which in turn make for a kind of grid pattern across the surface of the canvas. The color scheme of Nude Woman, limited to shades of brown, gray, and black, is also typical of analytic cubism. The muted palette allowed Picasso to concentrate upon the depiction of subtly shifting, overlapping planes in shallow space.

Inscription

lower center: Picasso

Provenance

Possibly (Galerie Pierre, Paris);[1] Mary Callery [1903-1977], Boulogne-sur-Seine and New York, by 1939.[2] Carlo Frua de Angeli [1895-1969], Milan, by 1959;[3] his estate; purchased May 1972 by (Galerie Beyeler, Basel);[4] purchased 5 October 1972 by NGA.

[1] Speculation that the painting was originally in Gertrude Stein's collection in Paris appears to be incorrect, despite the presence of a label on the back of the painting with the name "Mlle Toklas" and an address she shared with Stein on it. See the letter, 27 September 1972, from Margaret Potter, former curator at the Museum of Modern Art, to NGA curator John Bullard; in NGA curatorial files, as well as the 1977 statement of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler quoted in Anne Carnegie Edgerton, "Picasso's 'Nude Woman' of 1910," The Burlington Magazine (July 1980).

The appendix of Edgerton's article also discusses a letter from Pierre Loeb dated 22 March 1939 that concerns payment for a "Nu époque cubiste." Informed about this letter in 1977 by Mary Callery's niece and executrix, Edgerton speculates that it probably refers to the NGA painting.

[2] The American sculptor Mary Callery lent the painting to a Picasso exhibition in New York in 1939, and all of the published references during her ownership give her name as "Mrs. Meric Callery." She was married twice, to Frederic R. Coudert, Jr., from June 1923 to May 1931, and for two years, beginning in May 1934, to the Italian industrialist and collector Carlo Frua de Angeli (she was his second wife).

[3] The painting is identified as in a private collection in Milan in John Golding, Cubism: A History and an Analysis, New York, 1959: 87, pl. 9b, which was likely that of Frua de Angeli. The collector lent the painting to a 1960 exhibition in London. He and Mary Callery were married for two years, 1934 to 1936, and it is possible he acquired the painting directly from her.

[4] Letter, 9 December 1974, Ernst Beyeler to J. Carter Brown, in NGA curatorial files.

Associated Names

Angeli, Carl Frua de
Callery, Mary
Galerie Beyeler
Galerie Pierre

Exhibition History

1939: Picasso: Forty Years of his Art, Museum of Modern Art, New York; followed by a U.S. tour, 1939-1941, no. 94, repro., as Standing Figure.

1945: The Callery Collection: Picasso-Léger, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1945, unnumbered catalogue, repro., as Standing Figure.

1949: Dipinti di Picasso, Galleria del Miione, Milan, possibly no. 1, as Donna nuda.[1]

1955: Picasso: Peintures 1900-1955, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, 1955, no. 23, repro.

1960: Picasso, Tate Gallery, London, 1960, no. 54, repro.

1978: Aspects of Twentieth-Century Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1978-1979, no. 11, repro.

1980: Abstraction: Towards a New Art, Painting 1910-20, Tate Gallery, London, no. 1, repro.

1980: Pablo Picasso: A Retrospective, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1980, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

1981: Picasso 1881-1973, Exposició Antològica, Museo Español de Arte Contemporáneo, Madrid; Museu Picasso, Barcelona, 1981-1982, no. 59, repro.

1983: Pablo Picasso Exhibition, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, 1983.

2014: Collection Conversations: The Chrysler and the National Gallery, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, 2014-2015, no catalogue.

Exhibition History Notes

[1] The painting identified as Donna nuda in the exhibition catalogue (no. 1) is not reproduced, but is dated 1910 with the dimensions 187.3 x 61 cm, almost exactly those of 1972.46.1. Biancalucia Maglione kindly brought this exhibition and the possibility that no. 1 was the Gallery's painting to the attention of NGA Curatorial Records. See email of 10 September 2021 in the curatorial file.

Bibliography

1932: Zervos, Christian. Pablo Picasso. 33 vols. Paris, 1932-1978: 2, part 1(1942): no. 233.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 268, repro.

1979: Watson, Ross. The National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1979: 130, pl. 117.

1984: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 606, no. 939, color repro.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 310, repro.

1989: Kramer, Hilton. "Modern Art at the National Gallery." The New Criterion 7, no. 8 (April 1989): 3.

1989: Rubin, William. Picasso and Braque: Pioneering Cubism. Exh. cat. Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1989: 63-69, repro. 65.

1991: Kopper, Philip. America's National Gallery of Art: A Gift to the Nation. New York, 1991: 262-263, color repro.

1992: National Gallery of Art, Washington. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 255, repro.

2004: Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 408, no. 339, color repro.

2009: Cooper, Harry. The Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection: Selected Works. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2009: 22, repro.