In early 1932 Picasso was planning a major retrospective scheduled for June, and in preparation for the exhibition began his first dedicated series of paintings depicting his muse and mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter in the seclusion of his new country home of Boisgeloup. In Femme nue couchée, which was completed during this period, Picasso charted new territory with his portrait of Marie-Thérèse, not only in his own body of work, but in the history of the nude figure with his depiction of her reclining in a highly abstracted space, highlighting her biomorphic figure with touches of fertility, sexuality, and grace. As a landmark work within Picasso’s oeuvre and his famed series completed in 1932, as well as a pivotal example in the history of portraiture, Femme nue couchée’s arrival at auction for the first time this Spring marks a significant moment in Picasso’s unrivaled legacy in the art market.

The story of Picasso’s first encounter with Marie-Thérèse, and their subsequent love affair, is among the most compelling in 20th century art history. Picasso first met Marie-Thérèse in Paris in 1927 when she was seventeen years old. The couple’s relationship was kept a well-guarded secret for many years, both on account of the fact that Picasso was then still married to Olga Khokhlova, a Russian-Ukrainian dancer he had met on tour with Diaghilev, and because of Marie-Thérèse’s age. It was during these preceding months that he first cast his artistic spotlight on the voluptuous blonde. Until then, Picasso had only referenced his extramarital affair with Marie-Thérèse in code, sometimes embedding her symbolically in a composition or rendering her unmistakable profile as a feature of the background. But by the end of 1931, Picasso could no longer repress the creative impulse that his lover inspired, and over Christmas 1931 and into early 1932, Marie- Thérèse emerged, for the first time, in fully recognizable, languorous, form in his work.

For Picasso, Marie-Thérèse offered a sensual amalgam of the lover, the model, and the goddess, and would be cast in many roles throughout his body of work. In Boisgeloup, Picasso increasingly devoted his time and creative energy to sculpture, including a number of plaster busts and reclining nude portraits of Marie-Thérèse. The influence of this medium is visible in Femme nue couchée in the monumental sculptural force with which Picasso portrays the female body. At the same time, the psychological state of the sleeping woman resonates in the soft modelling of the figure, creating an atmosphere of reverie and carefree abandon. Seeking to convey his erotic desire, Picasso generates morphological permutations and distortions of the female anatomy. Abandoning any attempt at naturalism, he creates a figure composed of biomorphic forms, a technique that developed from his earlier, Surrealist works.

Picasso’s treatment of the female figure is undoubtedly rooted in the great tradition of the reclining nude in art history, following his predecessors Goya, Ingres, and Manet, among others. Yet, the artist’s shocking new take on the nude and frank sexuality would provide an influence to some of the greatest artists in the generations to follow.