Detail of Woman Asleep at a Table by Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, January 2019

Woman Asleep at a Table,1936


Object Details

Artist: Pablo Picasso (Spanish, Malaga 1881–1973 Mougins, France)

Date: 1936

Medium: Oil and charcoal on canvas

Dimensions: 38 1/4 x 51 1/4 in. (97.2 x 130.2 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: The Mr. and Mrs. Klaus G. Perls Collection, 1997

Accession Number: 1997.149.3


The ovoid shape of Marie-Thérèse Walter’s resting head and the simplification of her features recall the heaviness of sleep, as seen in Brancusi’s Sleeping Muse. Picasso moved his lover Marie-Thérèse and their one-year-old daughter, Maya, to a country house outside Paris in autumn 1936. Although he frequently depicted Marie-Thérèse asleep, this work may also reflect the sweet exhaustion of the new mother, as well as the perplexity of the fifty-five-year-old father: when Picasso painted this canvas, he had already met Dora Maar, his new lover.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/486841