In Tête de femme endormie, Picasso combined yellow, violet, blue and soft rose—colors that he favored in his treatment of Marie-Thérèse’s hair and flesh, to capture his sleeping muse reclining on the sand. He placed her between two other complementary hues, red and yellow, thickly applied onto the canvas and enhances her features and the abstracted shape of the beach tent with the use of black outlines. In other compositions the setting is even less certain as seen in Le Repos of 1932 and Reclining Figure of 1934 (see fig. 1). Writing about another of these sleeping women, Robert Rosenblum makes this point: “The eruptive force of Picasso’s passion could even be translated into language: for in words as well he made love to Marie-Thérèse, describings her rapturously and chromatically in the image-ridden, unpunctuated flow of his poetry of 1935, [with] her ‘cheveux blonds’ and her ‘bras couleurs lilas’” (Picasso and Portraiture: Representation and Transformation (exhibition catalogue), The Museum of Modern Art, New York & Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, 1996-97, p. 345). It was not just in coloration that Picasso’s works evolved during the Marie-Thérèse years but also in form. Patrick McCaughey wrote about the canvases depicting Picasso’s muse: “Marie-Thérèse embodied for Picasso an ideal type—lover, model and goddess. She offered him a release into sensuality and inspired the series of reclining, sleeping nudes of the early 1930s. Through Marie-Thérèse, Picasso discovered a new amplitude of form; less solemn than the monumental neo-classical nudes of the 1920s and with a promise of abundance and pleasure. She was also the model for an extensive series of large sculpted heads which progressively became more Sibyl-like—an image of eternal womanhood” (P. McCaughey in Picasso (exhibition catalogue), National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne & Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1984, p. 211; see figs. 2 & 3).

Tête de femme endormie is constructed with a sharp juxtaposition between the somnolent form of Marie-Thérèse at center and the geo-linear background. The colors in the present work are unlike any that Picasso has ever used before—pulsating red, electric orange and yellow, and soothing marine tones of green, purple and blue. Marie-Thérèse is dreaming and the painting itself embodies Picasso’s dream of her, a multilayered and clever means of conveying his supreme happiness while in her company. Distinguished by their rich coloration, harmonic curves and sweeping arabesques, Picasso's Marie-Thérèse pictures are renowned as Picasso's most euphoric, sexually-charged and inspired compositions, and they rank among the most instantly recognizable works of twentieth-century art. In fact, of all the manifestations of Picasso's exceptionally prolific career, it is during his “Marie-Thérèse period,” when his creative force was at its most powerful.

Picasso completed this radiant canvas at the height of the Surrealist movement in July 1934, when his palette was at its most vibrant and Freudian psycho-sexual symbolism played a defining role in the imagery of the avant-garde. But Picasso's composition here, with the deconstructed appearance of striped tent and sand of the beach, is a decidedly forthright example of the artist's individualism, as it incorporates elements of his groundbreaking Cubist compositions of the 1910s. While painted at his country estate of Boisegeloup—where Picasso and Marie-Thérèse sheltered from the prying eye of his estranged wife Olga—the beach tent and sand refer to their early amorous summers on the beach at Dinard (see figs. 4 & 5). Indeed, more than any other model, Marie-Thérèse inspired Picasso's creative genius, and her very image conjured a creative synthesis of the most radical aspects of Picasso's production.

“You have an interesting face. I would like to do a portrait of you. I feel we are going to do great things together.” It was with these words that Picasso began his near-decade long seduction of the Marie-Thérèse, the young woman who would forever be remembered as the artist’s golden muse. Marie-Thérèse's potent mix of physical attractiveness and sexual naïvete had an intoxicating effect on Picasso. His rapturous desire for the girl gave rise to a wealth of images that have been acclaimed as the most erotic and emotionally uplifting compositions of his long career. Picasso's reverence is nowhere more apparent than in the depictions of his lover reading, sleeping or writing, the embodiment of tranquility and physical acquiescence. Her passivity in these pictures makes her body all the more pliant to Picasso's manipulations and distortions.It must be remembered that Marie-Thérèse came into Picasso's life when the avant-garde was enthralled by Surrealism. Exaltations of sexual deviance and grotesque manipulations of form fanned the flames of Picasso's creative and physical desire, resulting in some of the most extraordinary interpretations of his lover. In May of 1936 Picasso was still depicting Marie-Thérèse on the beach. On a sheet with several lines of handwritten verse, she lays recumbent on a rock, her pelvis open and taking the literal shape of a heart, her head in profile, asleep in her entwined arms and her breasts jutting forth (see fig. 6). She is both a surrealist object and an embodiment of fertility—the prior September their daughter Maya was born. A small beach hut sits on the shore to the right; Picasso never tired throughout their relationship of referring back to their first years together on the beach at Dinard.

In later years, Françoise Gilot (another of Picasso's lovers and an artist herself) recognized the tantalizingly sculptural possibilities presented by Marie-Thérèse's body during this feverish period: "I found Marie-Thérèse fascinating to look at. I could see that she was certainly the woman who had inspired Pablo plastically more than any other. She had a very arresting face with a Grecian profile. The whole series of portraits of blonde women Pablo painted between 1927 and 1935 are almost exact replicas of her.... Her forms were handsomely sculptural, with a fullness of volume and a purity of line that gave her body and her face an extraordinary perfection. To the extent that nature offers ideas or stimuli to an artist, there are some forms that are closer than others to any artist's own aesthetic and thus serve as a springboard for his imagination. Marie-Thérèse brought a great deal to Pablo in the sense that her physical form demanded recognition" (quoted in Anne Umland, Picasso: Girl Before a Mirror, New York, 2012, p. 8).

It is not a surprise to say that Pablo Picasso has had a profound influence on artists throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; it is an understat.mes nt. In looking at his paintings of Marie-Thérèse from her arabesque form, cotton candy coloration and thick application of paint to the surface of each canvas echos of contemporary masters such as Wayne Thiebaud come to mind. In 2018 he placed a 1937 still life by Picasso, La Cruche fleurie, into the SF MOMA exhibition Wayne Thiebaud: Artist's Choice. Marie-Thérèse's figure may not drape the scene but echoes of her features and the special palette Picasso dedicated to her suffuse the picture. In Thiebaud's oil Cakes No. 1 Picasso's sublime works of the 1930s come to the fore (see figs. 7 & 8).

Tête de femme endormie exemplifies the very best of Picasso’s deep fascination with his golden muse. Acquired by Carmen & David Lloyd Kreeger in 1962, the work has remained in their Foundation’s collects ion until today; it last appeared at auction at Replica Shoes ’s, London in 1960.