Portrait de Jacqueline accoudée is one of Picasso’s defining portraits of his second wife Jacqueline Roque in the linocut medium.

Jacqueline is depicted in a moment of repose, leaning on her elbows, her head cupped in her hands. The cubist device of a double profile splits her gaze, with her left eye focused on the viewer while her right looks away in reverie. Her hair is tied up with a bow and she sits in a cane-backed chair, very likely the bentwood rocking chair so familiar from the famous photographs of Picasso’s studio at Villa la Californie by David Douglas Duncan and Edward Quinn. The gentle abstraction of her features is harmonious rather than jarring, reflecting Jacqueline’s calm strength and beauty.

Created in Cannes on 2 October 1959, Picasso tweaked the reductive linocut method, reversing the standard practice of printing colours progressively from lightest to darkest. For Portrait de Jacqueline accoudée Picasso printed the uncut block in black first. Working on the same block, he then carved away the profile of Jacqueline, which was then printed in blanc crème, with the exposed black ground creating the graphic contours of Jacqueline’s features. The overprinting of white on black shifts the tone of the white to grey, creating the elegant grisaille effect - a nod in printmaking towards the oeuvre of black and white paintings which Picasso had made throughout his career.