Jacqueline au chapeau de paille portrays Jacqueline Roque, Picasso’s second wife and final muse, who became the most enduring presence in his later life and work. Executed in 1962, the portrait captures Jacqueline wearing a straw hat, her features reimagined in bold, fractured planes of color. Picasso used only a single linoleum block to create this image, expertly carving and printing in stages to achieve the vibrant palette of yellow, red, blue, green, and black. The technique reflects his mastery of reduction linocut, a method he embraced for its ability to generate both immediacy and complexity.

The composition is at once abstracted and deeply personal. Jacqueline’s large almond-shaped eyes dominate the work, conveying both intensity and tenderness. Her face is broken into angular patches of color, a mosaic of bright hues that animate her likeness and emphasize Picasso’s unending drive to reinvent portraiture. The bold lines, paired with the almost kaleidoscopic color contrasts, suggest vitality and devotion, but also reveal Picasso’s playfulness with form and his ability to turn a personal subject into a universal symbol of beauty and strength.

Jacqueline Roque was not only Picasso’s muse but also his companion for over two decades, from their meeting in the 1950s until his death in 1973. She appears in more works than any other woman in Picasso’s life—surpassing even Dora Maar, Marie-Thérèse Walter, and Olga Khokhlova. For Picasso, Jacqueline embodied serenity and devotion, qualities that balanced the turbulence of his artistic and personal world. In this linocut, the straw hat becomes both a casual accessory and a crown-like motif, elevating Jacqueline to a timeless, iconic status within his oeuvre.

Picasso’s choice of blazing, contrasting tones reflects both the intensity of his feelings for Jacqueline and his fascination with color as a means of sculpting space and emotional resonance. The work fuses intimacy with grandeur, cementing Jacqueline not only as Picasso’s muse but also as the defining figure of his late creative period.