Portrait of Suzanne Bloch - Picasso's Portrait

Picasso's Portrait

The portrait in oils has been described by Luiz Marques, professor of art history at Unicamp, as exemplary of "the blue period, to which it fully belongs." It has been called the last important work of the blue period, although Palau i Fabre says that it is "difficult to date and determine the stage of transition from one period to the other—which in any case was not a sudden shift but a gently nuanced, though intermittent, progress". In a similar vein, Denys Chevalier has written: "Any attempt ... to date the blue period too precisely can only lead to errors".

The painting, fully imbued with a somber, melancholy aura, is rendered in monochromatic shades, varying from blue to blue-green, with the sporadic presence of warmer tones. Nevertheless, it is possible to notice that the painting already announces some characteristics of a future transition in the Spanish painter’s pictorial style, foreshadowing cubism. In the words of Camesasca, quoted by Marques: “ this portrait is marked by the emergence of a reflection about the plastic-chromatic structure of Cézanne’s works, in the scope of a 'post-impressionism, already absorbed in the problems which will make the art explode.'”