The Cleveland Museum of Art
Collection Online as of March 26, 2024
Head of a Boy
1905–6
(Spanish, 1881–1973)
Sheet: 24.6 x 18.6 cm (9 11/16 x 7 5/16 in.)
Bequest of Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. 1958.43
© 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)1937-1957Leonard C. Hanna Jr. [1889-1957], Cleveland, OH, bequest to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH1958-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. 66Zervos, Christian. Pablo Picasso. Vol. 1: Oeuvres de 1895 à 1906. Paris: Éditions 'Cahiers d'art,' 1932. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 135, xlvii, no. 30320 Years in the Evolution of Picasso, 1903-1923. Exh. Cat. New York: Jacques Seligmann, 1937. Mentioned and reproduced: no. 4Picasso Before 1907: Loan Exhibition for the Benefit of the Public Education Association. Exh. Cat. New York: Knoedler Galleries, 1947. Mentioned: no. 27In Memoriam: Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958. Mentioned and reproduced: no. 28Chessex, Jacques, and Francis Ponge. Dessins de Pablo Picasso: époques bleue et rose. Lausanne: Mermod, 1960. Mentioned: p. 74; Reproduced: no. 25Seligman, Germain. Merchants of Art, 1880-1960: Eighty Years of Professional Collecting. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1961. Mentioned and reproduced: plate 92UCLA Art Council. Years of Ferment; The Birth of Twentieth Century Art 1886-1914. [Los Angeles]: [UCLA Art Council], 1965. Reproduced: P. 37, no. 42Sutton, 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. 256The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969. Reproduced: p. 195 archive.orgFour 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 39The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978. Reproduced: p. 241 archive.orgPalau i Fabre, Josep. Picasso: The Early Years 1881-1907. New York: Rizzoli, 1981. Mentioned: pp. 444-445, 880, no. 1231; Reproduced: p. 445Small Paintings from Famous Collections. Cincinnati: Taft Museum, 1981. Mentioned: p. 13Daix, 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.7Richardson, John. A Life of Picasso. Vol. 1, 1881-1906. New York: Random House, 1991. Reproduced: p. 324Turner, Evan H., ed. Object Lessons: Cleveland Creates an Art Museum. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1991. Reproduced: p. 153Rivero, 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. 264Geelhaar, Christian. Picasso: Wegbereiter und Förderer seines Aufstiegs 1899-1939. Zürich: Palladion, 1993. Mentioned: p. 26; Reproduced: p. 25Mailer, Norman. Portrait of Picasso As a Young Man: An Interpretive Biography. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995. Reproduced: p. 203DeGrazia, 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. 229DeGrazia, Diane. "The Evolution of a Collection: Drawings in Cleveland." Master Drawings 38, no. 3 (Fall 2000). Mentioned and reproduced: p. 255Belloli, Lucy. "Los Paintings beneath Picasso's La Coiffure." Metropolitan Museum Journal 40 (2005): 151-161. Mentioned: p. 156; Reproduced: p. 158Robinson, 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. 6.6Bishop, 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. 294Picasso'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
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- {{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