The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of March 26, 2024

Head of a Boy

Head of a Boy

1905–6
(Spanish, 1881–1973)
Sheet: 24.6 x 18.6 cm (9 11/16 x 7 5/16 in.)
© Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Catalogue raisonné: Daix and Boudaille XV.7
Location: not on view

Did You Know?

This Picasso drawing was once owned by the American writer Gertrude Stein (1874–1946); a photograph of her apartment in Paris taken around 1907 shows the work hanging there.

Description

Created during Pablo Picasso's Rose Period (1904–6), this drawing features a warm palette and thin delicate lines. It might have been created during a summer that Picasso spent in Gósol, a Catalan village in the Spanish Pyrenees. The sheet presents an adolescent with pensive lips, almond-shaped eyes, and a dreamy expression—all characteristics that recur throughout the artist's depictions of figures around this time. Picasso began with a layer of pink opaque paint, allowing the color to give the boy's skin a warm tone that contrasts with the gray used to delineate his head. The subject's skull and jaw were then carefully modeled using a darker tone in roughly applied marks. The close-up view—stark in the present drawing—was later reused in Picasso's 1906 painting The Two Brothers (Kunstmuseum Basel), in which a nude adolescent carries a young boy on his back.
  • by 1907-?
    Gertrude Stein [1874-1946], Paris
    ?-?
    Horst Bohrmann [1906-1999], Berlin
    ?-?
    Jacques Doucet [1853-1929], Paris
    ?-1937
    (Jacques Seligmann & Co., Inc., New York, sold to Leonard C. Hanna, Jr., Cleveland, OH)
    1937-1957
    Leonard C. Hanna Jr. [1889-1957], Cleveland, OH, bequest to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
    1958-
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Dumas, Ann. "The Rose Period." In Picasso and Paper. William H. Robinson, et al., 80-101. London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2020. Reproduced: P. 94, cat. no. 66
    Zervos, Christian. Pablo Picasso. Vol. 1: Oeuvres de 1895 à 1906. Paris: Éditions 'Cahiers d'art,' 1932. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 135, xlvii, no. 303
    20 Years in the Evolution of Picasso, 1903-1923. Exh. Cat. New York: Jacques Seligmann, 1937. Mentioned and reproduced: no. 4
    Picasso Before 1907: Loan Exhibition for the Benefit of the Public Education Association. Exh. Cat. New York: Knoedler Galleries, 1947. Mentioned: no. 27
    In Memoriam: Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958. Mentioned and reproduced: no. 28
    Chessex, Jacques, and Francis Ponge. Dessins de Pablo Picasso: époques bleue et rose. Lausanne: Mermod, 1960. Mentioned: p. 74; Reproduced: no. 25
    Seligman, Germain. Merchants of Art, 1880-1960: Eighty Years of Professional Collecting. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1961. Mentioned and reproduced: plate 92
    UCLA Art Council. Years of Ferment; The Birth of Twentieth Century Art 1886-1914. [Los Angeles]: [UCLA Art Council], 1965. Reproduced: P. 37, no. 42
    Sutton, Denys and Paolo Lecaldano. The Complete Painting of Picasso: Blue and Rose Periods. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1968. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 108, no. 256
    The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969. Reproduced: p. 195 archive.org
    Four Americans in Paris: The Collections of Gertrude Stein and Her Family. Exh. Cat. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1970. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 91, 166, plate 39
    The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978. Reproduced: p. 241 archive.org
    Palau i Fabre, Josep. Picasso: The Early Years 1881-1907. New York: Rizzoli, 1981. Mentioned: pp. 444-445, 880, no. 1231; Reproduced: p. 445
    Small Paintings from Famous Collections. Cincinnati: Taft Museum, 1981. Mentioned: p. 13
    Daix, Pierre, Georges Boudaille, and Joan Rosselet. Picasso 1900-1906: catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint. Neuchâtel: Editions Ides et Calendes, 1988. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 294, no. XV.7
    Richardson, John. A Life of Picasso. Vol. 1, 1881-1906. New York: Random House, 1991. Reproduced: p. 324
    Turner, Evan H., ed. Object Lessons: Cleveland Creates an Art Museum. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1991. Reproduced: p. 153
    Rivero, Núria. Picasso, 1905-1906: From the Rose Period to the Ochres of Gósol. Exh. Cat. Barcelona: Museu Picasso, in association with Electa, 1992. Mentioned: p. 264
    Geelhaar, Christian. Picasso: Wegbereiter und Förderer seines Aufstiegs 1899-1939. Zürich: Palladion, 1993. Mentioned: p. 26; Reproduced: p. 25
    Mailer, Norman. Portrait of Picasso As a Young Man: An Interpretive Biography. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995. Reproduced: p. 203
    DeGrazia, Diane, and Carter E. Foster. Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Exh. Cat. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2000. Mentioned: p. 7, pp. 228-229, 296; Reproduced: p. 229
    DeGrazia, Diane. "The Evolution of a Collection: Drawings in Cleveland." Master Drawings 38, no. 3 (Fall 2000). Mentioned and reproduced: p. 255
    Belloli, Lucy. "Los Paintings beneath Picasso's La Coiffure." Metropolitan Museum Journal 40 (2005): 151-161. Mentioned: p. 156; Reproduced: p. 158
    Robinson, William H., Jordi Falgàs, Carmen Belen Lord, and Josefina Alix Trueba. Barcelona and Modernity: Picasso, Gaudí, Miró, Dalí. [Cleveland, OH]: Cleveland Museum of Art in association with Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2006. Mentioned and reproduced: P. 240, fig. 3, no. 6.6
    Bishop, Janet C., et al. The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde. Exh. Cat. San Francisco: Museum of Modern Art, in association with Yale University Press, 2011. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 119, no. 294
    Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings, and Sculpture: A Comprehensive Illustrated Catalogue, 1885-1973: The Rose Period, 1905-1906. San Francisco: Alan Wofsy Fine Arts, 2012. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 201
  • Impressionism to Modernism: The Keithley Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 11, 2022-January 8, 2023).
    The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso and the Parisian Avant-Garde. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (February 21-June 3, 2012).
    Monet to Dalí: Modern Masters from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Seoul Art Center, South Korea (December 22, 2006-March 28, 2007); Seoul Olympic Museum of Art, South Korea (April 7-May 20, 2007).
    Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 27-October 17, 2000); The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY (May 23-August 19, 2001); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, TX (October 14, 2001-January 6, 2002).
    Object Lessons: Cleveland Creates an Art Museum. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 7-September 8, 1991).
    Small Paintings from Famous Collections. Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati, OH (organizer) (April 4-June 7, 1981).
    In Memoriam - Pablo Picasso, 1881 - 1973. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (April 10-May 7, 1973).
    Four Americans in Paris: The Collections of Gertrude Stein and Her Family. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (December 19, 1970-March 1, 1971).
    Years of Ferment: The Birth of Twentieth-century Art. Frederick S. Wight Art Gallery, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA (January 24-March 7, 1965); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA (March 28-May 16, 1965); The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (July 14-August 22, 1965).
    Picasso Before 1907: Loan Exhibition for the Benefit of the Public Education Association. Knoedler Galleries, New York (October 15 - November 8, 1947).
    Expressionism and Related Movements. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 26-February 28, 1939).
    20 Years in the Evolution of Picasso, 1903 - 1923. Jacques Seligmann & Co., Inc., New York (November 1 - November 20, 1937).
  • {{cite web|title=Head of a Boy|url=false|author=Pablo Picasso|year=1905–6|access-date=26 March 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1958.43