Executed in November 1948, Portrait de Françoise was completed during a t.mes when Picasso’s work was characterised by an increased sense of energy and artistic freedom. During the late 1940s, Picasso turned away from the sombre portraits and still-life works that dominated the war years and moved towards a brighter palette and more positive, almost organic, use of form. In the present work, it is the sheer exuberance of his draughtsmanship that dominates this exquisite portrait.

The sitter represented in the present work was the most significant motive for the change of mood in Picasso’s post-war works. As was often the case for the artist, the arrival of a new muse provided a renewed source of creative inspiration. In the late 1940s this muse was the artist Françoise Gilot, forty years his junior, with a fierce creative spirit to rival his own (fig. 1). Picasso met Françoise in May 1943, whilst still in the middle of his tumultuous relationship with Dora Maar. Gilot’s youthful spirit, combined with her desire to create, inspired in Picasso a renewed sense of optimism for the future. Just as Maar had been the antithesis to the oneiric presence of Marie-Thérèse Walter, so Gilot suggested an opportunity for rebirth that contrasted with the weeping woman that Maar had come to represent. Gilot’s ebullient nature has been described by the French photographer Brassaï, who met Gilot in 1943, as: ‘[…] passionate about painting, eager for advice, impatient to prove her talent [...]. I was struck by the vitality of this girl, by her tenacity to triumph over obstacles. Her entire personality radiated an impression of freshness and restless vitality’ (Brassaï quoted in Picasso and Portraiture, Representation and Transformation (exhibition catalogue), The Museum of Modern Art, New York & Grand Palais, Paris, 1996-97, p. 415)

Reflecting this vitality, Picasso began to represent Gilot as inherently linked with the natural world. Her features became increasingly stylized; Françoise was for Picasso an embodiment of spring and fecundity (fig. 3). As the artist observed: ‘I’ve been wondering how I could get across the idea that you belong to the vegetable kingdom rather than the animal. I’ve never felt impelled to portray anyone else this way. It’s strange, isn’t it? I think it’s just right, though. It represents you’ (Picasso quoted in Françoise Gilot & Carlton Lake, Life with Picasso, New York, 1964, p. 119). In the present work, the delicate brushstrokes delineate flowers and vines whose swirling forms are mirrored in the arrangement of her hair and the soft lines of her face. Moreover, there is a notable tranquility that is often found in Picasso’s depictions of Françoise (fig. 2). As Frank Elgar observed: ‘The portraits of Françoise Gilot have a Madonna-like appearance, in contrast to the tormented figures he was painting a few years earlier’ (Frank Elgar, Picasso, New York, 1972, p. 123).

Picasso spent 1948 between the villa La Galloise in the Cap d’Antibes and Paris, and at the t.mes that the present work was executed, Françoise was pregnant with the couple’s second child, Paloma. The happiness Picasso felt flowed into his work, resulting in numerous portraits, including the present work, that radiate with this newfound joyfulness.