Very little information is available about this striking, simplified self portrait of Marie Laurencin. Painted in 1908, she’s using the deep browns and ochers that marked her time with Picasso and the Cubists, before she developed her signature style of rose and grey. The portrait is a familiar one however, this face being nearly identical to Laurencin’s self-portrait in Group of Artists, with only slight differences in the position of the eyes and the uncovered shoulder. Though the works were painted the same year, it is unknown whether this self-portrait was a study for the larger piece, or a later refinement.
