In this artwork, how is the Description discussed?
Femme au Chien is a large oil-on-canvas painting measuring 162 x 130 cm. It was signed by Picasso on the upper left and dated on the reverse. The painting depicts Roque seated next to Kaboul and displays Picasso's affection for both subjects. It also reflects the influence that Roque had on Picasso's life during this period. Picasso produced the painting from November 1962 and completed it in the following month.Picasso's rendering of Roque is indicative of her significance and status as his wife and muse. In this portrait she is depicted enthroned on an armchair in a regal manner, enhanced by the placement of Kaboul at her side. Hélène Parmelin often visited Mougins and remarked on Picasso's portraits of Roque and Kaboul, "Picasso had just been showing us serious faces with huge close-set eyes, sort of Mona Lisas with elongated hands, a multiplication of women seated in their dresses with the Afghan hound Kaboul close against the folds of their skirts... 'They are the Dames de Mougins,' [he said]. 'The queens, the beloved ones, the Jacquelines, all watching us at once with an incomparable serenity".
The painting is an example of Picasso's many portraits that he produced of the women in his life seated in an armchair. This recurring motif exists in numerous portraits of his lovers throughout his artistic career painted in a variety of artistic styles and serves as a reflection of his relationship with each of his muses. Marie-Laure Bernadac commented on Picasso's treatment of women in his portraits.It is characteristic of Picasso that he takes as his model—or as his Muse—the woman he loves and who loves with him, not a professional model. So what his paintings show is never a 'model' of a woman, but woman as model. This has its consequences for his emotional as well as his artistic life: for the beloved woman stands for 'painting', and the painted woman is the beloved: detachment is an impossibility. Picasso never paints from life: Jacqueline never poses for him; but she is there always, everywhere. All the women of these years are Jacqueline, and yet they are rarely portraits. The image of the woman he loves is a model imprinted deep within him, and it emerges every time he paints a woman.
Mougins oil-on-canvas