Created in 1962, Portrait de Jacqueline en Carmen (L’Espagnole) belongs to the late period in which Picasso’s fascination with Jacqueline Roque became a dominant force in both his emotional life and artistic production. By this stage, Jacqueline had become not only a constant presence in the studio but the defining muse through whom Picasso revisited, reinterpreted, and re-energised entire strands of his earlier work. Here, he casts her in the guise of Carmen, drawing on the archetype of the Spanish heroine—at once seductive, self-possessed, and theatrically charged—to fuse personal intimacy with cultural mythology.

The composition demonstrates how deeply Picasso relied on Jacqueline’s features as an elastic, generative framework. Her characteristic almond eyes, strong jawline, and elongated profile are transformed into a stylised, iconic mask, revealing Picasso’s long-standing interest in the face as a site of reinvention. Jacqueline’s visage becomes a stage on which Picasso rehearses his own visual language: the decorative arabesques of the mantilla, the sharply modelled shadows, and the fan rendered as a rhythmic, almost architectural form all speak to his ability to merge portraiture with formal experiment.

Picasso’s use of colour—restricted yet richly orchestrated across ochres, blacks, and warm browns—intensifies the theatricality of the image. The contrast between the silhouetted veil and the luminous planes of the face pushes the portrait into a realm of emblematic abstraction, while retaining an unmistakable likeness. This balance between recognisable personality and stylised invention is central to Picasso’s late-period portraits of Jacqueline, in which she often appears as an amalgam of historical types: muse, odalisque, queen, dancer, Spaniard.

In Portrait de Jacqueline en Carmen, the fan becomes an extension of the sitter’s psychology, both concealing and revealing, alluding to the layered roles Jacqueline played in Picasso’s life—companion, anchor, and ultimate muse. The result is a portrait that is less a depiction of a moment than a crystallisation of Picasso’s lifelong engagement with the feminine as a catalyst for artistic metamorphosis. Through Jacqueline, he revisits Spanish identity, theatrical costume, and the eternal subject of the woman as icon, producing one of the most refined and emblematic prints of his final decades. For more information on Portrait de Jacqueline en Carmen (L’Espagnole) or to buy Portrait de Jacqueline en Carmen (L’Espagnole) contact our galleries using the form below.