David Henty | Dora Maar in a Yellow Shirt (after Pablo Picasso)

David Henty (b. 1958) — Dora Maar in a Yellow Shirt, 1939 (after Pablo Picasso)

Picasso's portraits of the late 1930s, painted during his years with photographer Dora Maar, are defined by fractured, multi-angled faces rendered in bold, flat colour, the sitter's features pulled apart and reassembled across the picture plane. Maar herself was his most frequent subject of this period — a brilliant artist in her own right whose intensity and intellect Picasso rendered with a particular ferocity, his portraits of her often charged with the emotional volatility of their relationship. Henty's homage recreates that period style closely, down to the handwritten date in the upper corner — a Picasso convention the artist used throughout his life to record exactly when a work was completed.

The seated figure, in a wide plumed hat and striped yellow bodice against a mustard ground, channels the angular distortion and saturated palette of Picasso's portraits of Maar from this period — the fractured plane of the face, the saturated mustard and yellow palette, and the theatrical hat all characteristic of the sitter's recurring presence in his work of the late 1930s. As with all of Henty's output, this is offered as a David Henty original in homage to Picasso, dated in the style of the source period, not as an autograph Picasso work.

Available through Creed Gallery, Ascot, for collectors across Berkshire, Surrey, and London.

Oil on canvas, by David Henty, in homage to Pablo Picasso
Unframed 76 x 65 - Framed 84 x 94
Not an original work by Pablo Picasso