PICASSO

First English edition, first printing. Publisher's original red cloth with titles in navy to the spine and upper board, in dustwrapper. Top edge navy. Illustrated throughout with black and white and colour plates. A near fine copy, the binding firm with a slight lean to the spine, the cloth clean and bright, very lightly rubbed to the extremities. The contents are clean throughout and without previous owners' stamps or inscriptions. Complete with the rubbed and nicked dustwrapper that has small chips and short closed tears to the tips of the mildly toned spine (archivally strengthened to the underside) Not price-clipped (7s. 6d to the front flap).

An examination of Pablo Picasso and his work by his own close friend and supporter, Gertrude Stein, whose portrait he painted from 1905 to 1906, a peice which is considered an important bridge between his more representational 'rose period' and the Cubism that he was moving towards. Stein was an American writer and art collector living in Paris whose early patronage of Picasso came at a vital time when he had not yet emerged as a commercially successful artist. Stein famously held a weekly salon which was frequented by visionary artists and writers of the era such as Henri Matisse, Paul Cezanne, Ezra Pound and Ernest Hemingway.