Still life, an arrangement of objects completely under the artist's control, was the main vehicle for Picasso's Cubism, although unlike his friend and partner Braque he did also sometimes apply the Cubist fragmentation of reality to portraiture. From 1917 he returned to a more realistic style in paintings such as Portrait of Olga in an Armchair, while simultaneously continuing to produce Cubist works. Here, unusually, he has tackled a still life in a relatively traditional, non-Cubist vein.
But Picasso almost never lets us forget that what we are looking at is man-made, deliberately undermining any 'photographic' aspect of his works by leaving unfinished patches and cross-hatchings. The elegantly severe wall-mouldings may hint at the artist's growing interest in classicism; or perhaps they only reflect the comfortable and respectable life-style that Picasso had adopted after his marriage to Olga.
