Mlle Leonie on a Chaise Longue, Plate III in "Saint Matorel" by Max Jacob
1910 (published 1911)
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973)
Not on View

At the height of his interest in Cubism, Pablo Picasso applied his radical spatial experiments to all of his work, regardless of medium or subject matter. Here Picasso illustrates a scene from Saint Matorel, a novel by Max Jacob that positioned the author as a leader among modernist writers. The story expounds on Jacob’s complex religious experience (he was born a Jew, and converted to Catholicism). Picasso depicts a barely discernible Mlle. Léonie—the wife of protagonist Victor Matorel. During his analytic Cubist period, as shown here, Picasso was at his most abstract, dissolving representational subject matter into an unrecognizable gnarl of zigzagging lines. Though Picasso shortly moved on from this style, the four illustrations made for Jacob’s novel were shown at the second Blue Rider exhibition in Munich, where Paul Klee and Vassily Kandinsky, among others, were likely to have been inspired by their near-abstraction.

Details

  • Artist Name: Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973)
  • Title: Mlle Leonie on a Chaise Longue, Plate III in "Saint Matorel" by Max Jacob
  • Date: 1910 (published 1911)
  • Medium: Etching, scraper and drypoint on Van Gelder paper
  • Edition: Edition of 87, No. 23; 3rd state
  • Dimensions: plate: 7-7/8 x 5-5/8 in. (20.0 x 14.3 cm)
  • Publisher: Kahnweiler, Paris
  • Printer: Eugène Delâtre, Paris
  • Credit Line: Norton Simon Art Foundation
  • Accession Number: M.1977.17.3.G
  • Copyright: © Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Object Information

Gaze: Portraiture After Ingres

  • Norton Simon Museum, 2009-10-30 to 2010-04-05

Picasso and Braque: The Cubist Experiment, 1910-12

  • Kimbell Art Museum, 2011-05-29 to 2011-08-21
  • Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 2011-09-17 to 2012-01-09

Seven Decades of Picasso

  • Norton Simon Museum, 1984 to 1986

Picasso: Graphic Magician, Prints from the Norton Simon Museum

  • Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, 1999-01-24 to 1999-03-28
  • Toledo Museum of Art, 1999-11-07 to 2000-01-16
  • Norton Simon Museum, 2000-04-12 to 2000-09-04

Seven Decades of Picasso

  • Norton Simon Museum, 1979-10-11 to 1980
  • Fryberger, Betsy G. and Gloria Williams, Clinton Adams, David Carrier, and Pat Gilmour, Picasso: Graphic Magician, Prints from the Norton Simon Museum, 1998, p. 116
  • Campbell, Sara, Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best, 2010, cat. 1451 p. 408
  • Picasso and Braque: the Cubist Experiment, 1910-1912, 2011, Fig. 27 p. 79, p. 130

Additional Artwork by Artist

La Table, Plate II in "Saint Matorel" by Max Jacob Pablo Picasso 1910 (published 1911)
Long-Haired Young Girl Pablo Picasso November 6, 1945
Long-Haired Young Girl Pablo Picasso November 7, 1945

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