Focus on this artwork and explain the Provenance.
Picasso sold the painting to the Galerie du Vingtième Siècle run by art dealer Clovis Sagot near the gallery of Ambroise Vollard. Sagot drove a hard bargain. He originally offered 700 francs for three works - this painting, and two works in gouache made in the Netherlands. Picasso initially refused, but desperate for money he returned to take up Sagot's offer a few days later. Sagot cannily cut his offer to 500 francs, which Picasso also refused. Forced by his poverty to return to Sagot again some days later, the work was eventually sold for just 75 francs, and put up for sale in Sagot's gallery as La fleur du pavé ("The flower of the cobblestones").
It became the second of three Rose period paintings acquired by the collectors Gertrude Stein and Leo Stein. The Stein siblings had been living in Paris from 1903, and began collecting contemporary artworks in 1904, buying works by Cézanne, Gauguin and Renoir from Ambroise Vollard. Sagot sold Picasso's Famille d'acrobates avec singe (1905) to Leo Stein, and the couple later acquired Fillette à la corbeille fleurie. The Steins quarrelled about this second purchase, as Leo wanted it but Gertrude did not; in the end Gertrude relented and they bought it for 150 francs.  In time, Gertrude came to appreciate the painting and later acquired Leo's share. In 1938, Gertude Stein wrote that it "was painted at the great moment of the harlequin period, full of grace and delicacy and charm".
After Gertrude Stein died, the painting was retained by her estate, and then sold in 1968 to the Syndicate of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, but quickly resold later that year to David Rockefeller and Peggy Rockefeller. After David Rockefeller's death in 2017, it was sold at Christie's on 8 May 2018 with other works from the Rockefeller collection, achieving a sale price of $115 million.
Clovis Sagot David Rockefeller Famille d'acrobates avec singe Christie's harlequin Renoir Museum of Modern Art Cézanne gouache Ambroise Vollard Gertrude Gauguin Gertrude Stein Leo Stein