About This Artwork

Pablo Picasso
Spanish, 1881-1973

Head of a Woman, 1909

Watercolor on tan wove paper
332 x 256 mm
Signed verso, lower left, in charcoal: "Picasso"
Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949.578

© Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories

Exhibition History

New York, Gallery 291, "Exhibition of Early and Recent Drawings and Water-Colors by Pablo Picasso, of Paris," March 28–April 25, 1911.

New York, Gallery 291, "Drawings and Paintings by Picasso and Braque," December 9, 1914–January 11, 1915.

The Art Institute of Chicago, "Picasso in Chicago," February 3– March 31, 1968, pp. 67, and 116, cat. 71 (ill.).

Kunsthalle Bielefeld, "Zeichnungen und Collagen des Kubismus: Picasso, Braque, Gris," March 11–April 29, 1979, n. p., cat. 56 (ill.).

New York, The Museum of Modern Art, "Picasso: Retrospective," May1–September 16, 1980, p. 132 (ill.).

Cambridge, Mass., Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, "Master Drawings by Picasso," 1981, p. 254, no. 13; shown only at The Art Institute of Chicago, April 29–June 14, 1981.

New York, The Museum of Modern Art, "Picasso and Braque: Pioneering Cubism," September 20, 1989–January 16, 1990, p. 141 (ill.).

Washington, D.C., The National Gallery of Art, "Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and His New York Galleries," January 28–April 22, 2001, pp. 189 and 198, cat. 53 (ill.).

Washington, D.C., The National Gallery of Art, "Picasso: The Cubist Portraits of Fernande Olivier," October 1, 2003–January 18, 2004, p. 105, cat. 63 (ill.).

Publication History

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, XXVI (Paris, 1973), p. 150, no. 413 (ill.).

William Innes Homer, Alfred Stieglitz and the American Avant-Garde (New York, 1977), pp. 62, and 64, fig. 31.

Pierre Daix and Joan Rosselet, Le Cubisme de Picasso: Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint 1907-1916 (Neuchâtel, 1979), p. 244, no. 289 (ill.).

Gary Tinterow, Master Drawings by Picasso, exh. cat. (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), p. 254, no. 13.

Alan G. Wilkinson, Gauguin to Moore: Primitivism in Modern Sculpture, exh. cat. (Ontario, 1981), p. 117, fig. 34.

Alan G. Wilkinson, “Picasso: Head of a Woman (Fernande),” Art Gallery of Ontario, Masterpiece Exhibition Series, 3, (1986), pp. 8 and 9, fig. 7.

Josep Palau i Fabre, Picasso: Cubism (1907–1917) (Barcelona, 1990), p. 151, no. 430 (ill.).

Joan Perucho, Picasso, el Cubisme I Horta de Sant Joan (Barcelona, 1993), pp. 123 and 151, no. 86 (ill.).

John Richardson, A Life of Picasso: Volume II 1907–1917 (New York, 1996), p. 141 (ill.).

Picasso: 200 Masterworks from 1898–1972 (Boston, 2002), pp. 120–121 (ill.).

Karmel Pepe, Picasso and the Invention of Cubism (New Haven, Conn., 2003), pp. 64 and 66, fig. 76.

Enrique Mallen, The Visual Grammar of Pablo Picasso (New York, 2003), p. 311.

Enrique Mallen, The On-Line Picasso Project (http://www.tamu.edu/mocl/picasso/), no. 09:99 (ill.).

Ownership History

Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946), New York, 1911 [National Gallery of Art 2001]; Stieglitz Estate (Georgia O'Keefe (1887–1986), executor); given to the Art Institute, 1949.