Buste de femme à la robe brune is a compelling portrait of Picasso’s lover and muse, Dora Maar (fig. 1), from a hugely important period in the artist’s life. Picasso's love affair with Maar was a partnership of intellectual exchange as well as of intense passion, and her influence on the artist resulted in some of the most daring and most renowned portraits of his career. Picasso met Maar, already an established Surrealist photographer, in early 1936, and was immediately enchanted by the young woman's intellect and beauty and by her commanding presence. Although still involved with Marie-Thérèse Walter and still married to Olga at the t.mes , Picasso quickly became intimately involved with Maar. Unlike the docile and domestic Marie-Thérèse, Maar was an artist, spoke Picasso's native Spanish, and shared his intellectual and political concerns. They remained together until 1943, throughout a particularly tumultuous period of the artist’s life, and also during almost the only period in his life when world events would make themselves felt in his work.

Maar’s arrival marked an important change for the artist: ‘I just felt finally, here was somebody I could carry on a conversation with’ (Picasso quoted in Françoise Gilot & Carlton Lake, Life with Picasso, New York, 1964, p. 236). This very quickly made itself felt in his art, with a distinct shift from the sweeping curvilinear forms of Marie-Thérèse Walter that had dominated the artist’s œuvre since the late 1920s. Françoise Gilot commented on the women’s contrasting personalities noting that: ‘Marie-Thérèse had no problems. With her, Pablo could throw off his intellectual life and follow his instinct. With Dora, he lived a life of the mind’ (F. Gilot, ibid., p. 236).

The marked difference between the two women’s personalities is evident in the visual languages that Picasso chose for them, and Buste de femme à la robe brune captures the essence of the more academic and independent Maar. As a portrait, it balances a sense of her beauty with other concerns. Her face is framed by the characteristic dark hair, creating a silhouette that has its visual echo in the swirls of yellow that outline her breasts. Yet there is also a studied seriousness to this portrait. The pared down palette of browns and greys, the way her hair tucks neatly behind her ear, the piercing blue of those button-like eyes and the very deft and specific marks that delineate her features all contribute to conveying a deliberate sense of character that goes beyond mere desire.

Picasso perfectly captures what his later lover Françoise Gilot observed of Maar: ‘She had a beautiful oval face but a heavy jaw […]. The most remarkable thing about her was her extraordinary immobility. She talked little, made no gestures at all, and there was something in her bearing that was more than dignity – a certain rigidity. There is a French expression that is very apt: she carried herself like the holy sacrament’ (F. Gilot quoted in Picasso Portraits (exhibition catalogue), National Portrait Gallery, London & Museu Picasso, Barcelona, 2016-17, p. 158). Perhaps inevitably, there is a snide undertone to Gilot’s words, but the truth of them can be seen in the present work. There is a Golden-Age solemnity to the rendering that is reminiscent of Goya’s portraits of women (fig. 2); more so than in many other portraits there is a sense of Maar posing formally. This allusion to one of Spain’s greatest artists was deliberate, because whilst Picasso was interested in exploring Maar’s features, they were also a means through which he could express other underlying emotions.

These were tumultuous days for Picasso. Quite aside from the drama of his personal life - balancing Maar and Walter in an increasingly complex and acrimonious domestic environment - world events were also reaching a climax. Since the outbreak of civil war in Spain in 1936 and the bombings of town of Guernica in April 1937, Picasso had been increasingly troubled and as always, his feelings found expression through his art. Maar is inextricably linked to this aspect of his work. When Picasso embarked on the great masterpiece Guernica, Maar assisted as well as producing a photo-documentary of the work in progress (fig. 4). In the intervening years, as Picasso mourned the destruction of his homeland in civil war, it was Maar whose face became the weeping woman (fig. 3), an embodiment of universal suffering, a mater dolorosa: ‘An artist isn’t as free as he somet.mes s appears. It’s the same way with the portraits I’ve done of Dora Maar. I couldn’t make a portrait of her laughing. For me she’s the weeping woman. For years I’ve painted her in tortured forms, not through sadism, and not with pleasure, either; just obeying a vision that forced itself on me. It was the deep reality, not the superficial one’ (Picasso quoted in F. Gilot & C. Lake, op. cit., p. 122).

Yet, Buste de femme à la robe brune is very different from the depictions of Maar in the Weeping Woman series. It belongs to a small group of oils on board painted between 27th and 29th March that refer to a very specific moment in history (figs. 5 & 6). Looking at two of the earlier examples from the group, it is possible to trace Picasso’s thoughts. Both works are more naturalistic, although there is a clear movement towards the stylisation of the present work. In Tête de femme [Dora Maar] (fig. 6) Maar’s figure is conflated with that of Marie-Thérèse, reminding us of the personal conflict that must have exacerbated Picasso’s feelings at the t.mes . Of most interest is the building sense of anxiety; in the present work the translation of the mouth across the face creates the ‘double’ face that was one of Picasso’s most common deformations and the individual features are reduced to fretful ellipses.

The final days of March 1939 were critical in Spain – it briefly seemed like a peace deal might be brokered between Republican and Nationalist forces but when this broke down, the Nationalists occupied Madrid and on the 1st April General Franco announced his victory. One can imagine Picasso, an exile in France, listening anxiously to radio bulletins. Yet, as Josep Palau i Fabre notes of these months: ‘Picasso did not like to moan or cry all day in adversity. He must have heard enough complaints among his compatriots, and did not want to be dragged down by their pessimism. He understood that his only defence at this t.mes , in Paris, was work’ (J. Palau i Fabre, Picasso 1927-1939. From the Minotaur to Guernica, Barcelona, 2011, p. 415). Buste de femme à la robe brune is the result of that work and offers an important insight into Picasso’s emotions over those few days. The distortion of form, the penetrating eyes, that deliberate allusion to the Spanish Golden Age; they all speak eloquently of Picasso’s feelings. The result is a remarkable and powerful portrait in which Picasso succeeds in conveying a real sense of Maar’s personality even whilst he overwrites it with the story and emotion of the t.mes s.