Pablo Picasso's Femme endormie

Sothebys

Not recent news but still worth an article we think, is the auction which took place two months ago at Sotheby’s in London where a largely unseen portrait by Pablo Picasso was sold. The portrait Femme endormie (woman asleep) is a gentle and intimate charcoal drawing that depicts Marie-Thérèse Walter who was Pablo’s lover and muse. As he walked by Galeries Lafayette in Paris in 1927, he saw Marie-Thérèse through the glass window and fell for her immediately. At the time for the portrait we are writing about, the affair was still a secret however Walter would further on come to inspire some of Picasso’s greatest sculptures, paintings and drawings. The drawing was kept by Picasso himself until his death in 1973 and has only been publicly exhibited in 1986 when it was first bought.

Sothebys

Because of the exclusiveness of this portrait, Pablo Picasso’s Femme endormie was sold at auction at Sotheby’s London previously this summer for nothing less than £7,316,750!