Pablo Picasso Portrait of Olga in an Armchair, 1917 Oil on canvas, Musee Picasso, Paris Olga Khokhlova (1891-1955) was a Ukrainian-Russia ballet dancer who met Picasso in Rome whilst he had designed the costumes and set for the ballet “Parade”. A year later they married in Paris, and in 1921 they had a son, Paulo. From then on Olga and Picasso lived a life of conflict, which ended in separation and ultimately in Olga’s death from cancer in 1955.

The outbreak of World War I in August 1914 ended Picasso's partnership with Braque, who was called up to serve in the army. Although Picasso, as a Spanish citizen, did not have to become a combatant, he was affected by the changed atmosphere in Paris, and then devastated by the death of his companion, Eva, who succumbed to tuberculosis.

His spirits revived when the writer Jean Cocteau recruited him to design the decor and costumes of Parade, a daring modernist production by Serge Diaghilev's celebrated Russian ballet. Working on the project in Rome, Picasso found himself exhilarated by the city and its classic tradition, and by the physical beauty of the dancers. He fell in love with one of them, Olga Koklova, who became his wife in July 1918.

This exquisite portrait, combining meticulous detail with a cursorily finished background, gives the measure of Picasso's mastery of conventional techniques, which were about to assume a new importance in his work.