Lithograph; Marais parchment paper; 36 x 27 cm (inside the mat), which measures 47 x 38 cm
Publisher: Henri Paul Jonquières
Produced by: Atelier Duval; printed by: Priester Feres.
This lithograph comes from the only-ever publication of these 40 drawings by Picasso in 1957, with the permission of Dora Maar and thanks to the publisher (Henri Paul Jonquières) making available the sole piece of the portfolio containing these drawings. The subsequent history of the original portfolio after Dora Maar’s death in 1997 is unknown.
After the 1942 publication of the series of 31 engravings accompanying Buffon’s texts, Picasso brought a piece of *Histoire naturelle* to his beloved, the surrealist photographer and painter Dora Maar, in 1943. While in her studio, he decorated the margins of this series of prints with human heads, animals, and fantastical creatures, featuring Dora Maar herself as a bird-woman sphinx on the title page. When he gave her this piece, he wrote the dedication: “per Dora Maar tan rebufona!” (for Dora Maar, so pretty!), which is a play on words referencing the surname Buffon and the Catalan word “pretty—bufo.”
On the last page of the portfolio, Picasso wrote a statement in watercolor (see photo) that reads:
“All the drawings in this book were made on the afternoon of Sunday, January 24, 1943, in Paris at 6 rue de Savoie.”
