MASP

The painting Toilette (Fernande) depicts Fernande Olivier (1881-1966), who was the artist’s partner between 1904 and 1909. They met when Picasso moved to the Bateau-Lavoir, a residential building and art studio in Montmartre, where Fernande also lived. The Bateau-Lavoir was frequented by several artists of the same generation, who later became famous in the context of the School of Paris. Fernande posed for more than 60 paintings by Picasso, mainly during his cubist period. Across the centuries, nudity in painting has been personified in the figure of goddesses and nymphs. The image of Venus looking in the mirror is recurrent in this roster of artistic references, which includes works by Titian (1490-1576), Rubens (1577-1640) and Velázquez (1599-1660). Both in terms of theme and palette, Picasso’s painting dialogues directly with this historical tradition. The work in the MASP collection is similar to a series of paintings produced in 1906, which culminated in a painting that today belongs to the Albright-Knox collection. We also see a striking similarity between the figure that holds the mirror and the painting Lady with a Fan (1905), mostly in terms of her clothes and position of the hands. Created with lighter and more colorful tones than the MASP work, the palette of the Albright-Knox painting is closer to Picasso’s work phase called the Rose Period, in which the artist used more earthy tones, such as different orange and rosy hues.

— MASP Curatorial Team, 2020

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The vanity toilette, a subject matter in which the artist plunges during this period, is evidently related to multiple Renaissance and Baroque subject matters, from The Toilet of Venus or Diana, to the Toilets of Betsabah, and above all the Vanitas scenes, predominantly Italian paintings featuring a naked young woman in her bath, usually assisted by a maidservant who holds a mirror for her. The composition effectively boasts the exceptional vigor of an old bas-relief and not without good reason it was requested for the exhibition Picasso and l’Italia, held in Verona, in 1990. The canvas of the Masp Collection – TheToillete (Fernande) – was painted in 1906, in Gosol. At that time Picasso produced several drawings with similar themes, of which five have been conserved, that finally led to the painting of the canvas currently found at Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, in the United States (Zervos 1932, I, 325). The model was always the same, Fernande, with whom the artist nurtured an intense love relationship during all those years.

— Unknown authorship, 1998

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