The model for this rare lithograph was Françoise Gilot, Picasso's lover and muse from 1943-1953. Their burgeoning relationship coincided with Picasso’s return to lithography at the end of 1945, after a fifteen year break from the medium. Creatively inspired Picasso threw himself into an intensive period of experimentation, radically adapting traditional lithographic methods and inventing new ones, often developing images through successive states and numerous proofs.

Buste de jeune femme exists in two states. The image is largely complete in the first state, with Françoise’s elegant features deftly described with tusche wash, and scraper for the contour of her cheek. For the stripes of the dress Picasso used the side of a lithographic crayon, making parallel bands of tone. In the second the hair is lightened, probably with sandpaper, to lift the dense tone present in the first, and the date added. An edition was not published, with only six impressions printed of each state.

Brigitte Baer aptly describes this lithograph as `a loving portrait [of Françoise] and a true likeness of the model’ (Picasso the Printmaker: Graphics from the Marina Picasso Collection, Dallas Museum of Art, 1983, no. 106, p. 138; another impression illustrated).