Femme aux Bras Croisés

Femme aux Bras Croisés (Woman with Folded Arms), is a painting by Pablo Picasso done in 1902 during his Blue Period. The subject of the painting is unknown, but she may be an inmate of the Saint-Lazare hospital-prison in Paris. In her book Pablo Picasso, Antonina Vallentin devotes a great deal of time to writing about the haunting qualities of this painting. She describes her views of the subject as an inmate, who recently attempted suicide and now carries the blank but menacing stare of those unfortunates who found themselves at Saint-Lazare during the early 1900s. Gertrude Stein originally bought the painting from Picasso. From 1936 it was in the collection of the family of Chauncey McCormick, who lent it to the Art Institute of...