La Lecture

La Lecture (or Reading) is a painting by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso completed in January 1932. The oil painting depicts Picasso's mistress and muse, Marie-Thérèse Walter, asleep with a book upon her lap. The painting led to the breakup of Picasso's marriage to Olga Khokhlova after she saw it at a retrospective exhibition and realised that the facial features were not her own. The painting went to auction in 1989 and in 1996, where it failed to sell. In January 2011, it was announced that La Lecture would be going to auction on 8 February. The painting, which had not been seen in Europe since the exhibition, was then displayed at Sotheby's in Paris. Picasso met Marie-Thérèse Walter in 1927 as she exited the Paris Metro and they later...