Pablo Picasso Drawing ‘Pours Mes Chers Fiancés, ‘ 1956

Provenance: Given by Pablo Picasso to Sylvette David and Tobias Jellinek on their engagement and who later married; thence sold to Eila Grahame.

Other notes: “In 1956 the art periodical, Verve, had an image of Sylvette on the cover and Sylvette and I were given a copy. We went to see Picasso that day and took the book with us, and asked Picasso if he would sign it for us. He went and found some colored crayons and wrote the dedication, adding the little sketch of us both.

The likeness of Sylvette shows how comfortable he was with producing her image, which he had previously worked with for several months. His drawing of me with my new beard is less of a
likeness!”

Tobias Jellinek, April 2017.

Pablo Picasso had been working on a portrait of Sylvette David, aged 19, as the girl with the ponytail before doing the present cartoon sketch.

“Sylvette” is the title of one of Picasso’s numerous paintings featuring a young woman with a ponytail. The model for the painting, Lydia Sylvette David, also known later by her married name Lydia Corbett, was a French woman who, during the summer of 1953, worked in a pottery studio near Picasso’s studio in Vallauris. Finding her appearance appealing, Picasso created 40 works inspired by her. Sylvette’s portrait from 2 May 1954 is one of the last of a long series. Picasso’s grandson Olivier Widmaier Picasso told the Chicago Sun-Times in 2004 that Sylvette was also the subject of the monumental “Chicago Picasso” which had been a matter of curiosity since it was unveiled. She was said to have been an inspiration for actress Brigitte Bardot and the Roger Vadim film “And God Created Woman”. In 1998 Barron’s published “Picasso and the Girl With a Ponytail” by Laurence Anholt – a children’s book in which a shy teenager named Sylvette meets Picasso in Vallauris and becomes his model.

Lydia Corbett is now an artist in her own right. Galleries exhibiting her work include Fosse Gallery Fine Art, with one exhibition being aptly named ‘The Girl With the Ponytail’, and the Francis Kyle Gallery.