by Tom Gurney
Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000
Introduction
Picasso drew a nude woman and a fish on a card small enough to hold in one hand. The woman's arms rise behind her head, making a wide shape across the top of the composition. Below, a fish stands almost vertically between her legs. A few touches of colour interrupt the dark ink and wash. This is Le Maquereau, usually translated as The Mackerel: an explicit, compact drawing in which a joke in French and the physical shape of the card matter as much as the startling subject. [1] [4]
The original belongs to the Museu Picasso Barcelona[1], inventory MPB 50.497. Its current catalogue dates it 1902, gives Barcelona as its place of execution, and describes pen and ink, wash and coloured pencils on a printed advertising postcard. It measures 13.3 × 9.1 centimetres. Some exhibition catalogues have used the broader date 1902–03, but the holding museum's present object record is the clearest anchor for the page. It is a drawing on a particular reused commercial card—not an oil painting, a 1934 sequel or a generic image of a fish. [1] [2]
At a Glance
- French title: Le Maquereau
- Date: 1902 in the holding museum's catalogue; 1902–03 in an Orsay checklist
- Medium and support: Pen and ink, wash and coloured pencil on a printed advertising postcard
- Collection: Museu Picasso Barcelona, MPB 50.497
The Mackerel in Picasso's career
First Communion
1896The Mackerel
1902; sometimes catalogued 1902–03Three Musicians
1921Las Meninas series
1957The highlighted work is dated with the qualifications explained in the sources on this page. The other works are selective points of comparison, not the start or end of a style.
Contents
- What is on the card?
- The French title's second meaning
- An erotic drawing made during the Blue Period
- Why the date varies in catalogues
What is on the card?
The woman faces the viewer. Her head tilts only slightly, with dark hair surrounding a pale face. Each upper arm bends outward; her hands appear behind or near the head rather than reaching towards the fish. Brown wash fills loose shapes around the shoulders and sides of the upper body, while the torso is largely left as the light ground of the card. Small coloured marks draw attention to hair, breasts, pubic area and fish. Picasso uses just enough detail to make the encounter unambiguous without building a room or landscape around the figures. [1]
The fish is not laid out on a table or swimming across water. It is turned upright beneath the woman. Its round eye and pointed body make it legible as an animal, while its position and red tongue-like contact make it part of an erotic scene. There is no separate male figure. The visual action depends on the oddity of a fish occupying a place where a body, hand or sexual partner might be expected. The picture is playful and graphic, but its subject is also deliberately sexual; disguising it in vague language would leave the viewer unable to understand what Picasso drew. [1]
The scale is easy to miss online. At a little over 13 centimetres high, the original has none of the physical presence of a large Blue Period canvas. Its lines are quick in appearance, and its reused support may have made experimentation easy, but small format should not be confused with carelessness. The figure fills much of the card. The spread legs, raised arms and upright fish create a vertical axis, while the dark hair and wash give the upper half weight. A sparse image can still be tightly organised. [1]
The underlying support matters too. Barcelona's museum identifies it as an advertising card printed for Juñer Hnos., successors to Suari y Juñer. Picasso did not begin with an untouched, specially prepared sheet. He drew over a piece of commercial print. The object record does not say why he chose that card, whether it was made for a particular recipient, or whether it was ever sent through the post. Calling it a “postcard” in the medium description does not answer those questions. What we know is the material on which he worked, not the circumstances of a private exchange. [1]
This distinction between original and reproduction is important for another reason. Many online pictures crop the card closely or enlarge it to the size of a poster. An enlargement can make the drawing look like a major finished painting. The museum's medium and dimensions restore its actual scale and texture: pen, wash and coloured-pencil marks on an already printed surface. The apparent spontaneity is easier to understand when the support is not erased from the story. [1]
The French title's second meaning
In ordinary French, maquereau means mackerel. It is also a familiar word for a pimp or procurer, as both Larousse[4] and the Académie française[4] document. The English title preserves the fish but loses the slang sense. In a sexual drawing, the double meaning is difficult to ignore. The title can make the animal seem like more than an absurd substitute for a human partner. [4]
That does not settle every question about the scene. A pun is a way of looking at the title and image together; it is not a surviving statement from Picasso explaining his intentions. Nor does the word prove that the woman represented was a sex worker, let alone identify a real model. The risk in treating a visual joke as a biography is especially high with an anonymous nude. We can describe the contact Picasso drew and the French words available to a viewer without inventing the subject's identity or circumstances. [4]
The fish's eye, blue touches and small red accent give the creature an expressive presence, but no elaborate symbolism is needed to make sense of the sheet. Its impact comes from placing two recognisable kinds of body in a relation that breaks ordinary scale and propriety. The title provides a verbal turn that an English-only reading might miss. The image then pushes that turn into a literal encounter between woman and fish. [1] [4]
There is also a difference between an image being explicit and an interpretation being certain. Picasso could combine humour, provocation, desire and wordplay without leaving a single key to the drawing. The fish and woman are visible; the exact private joke, audience and intended reaction are not documented in the museum's public record. The most reliable art history starts with that boundary rather than filling it with a later writer's preferred allegory. [1] [4]
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Watch on YouTubeAn erotic drawing made during the Blue Period
The date can surprise readers who associate Picasso's Blue Period only with melancholy paintings of poverty, blindness or isolation. Those pictures are important, but they do not represent everything he made at the time. The Musée d'Orsay's Picasso Blue and Rose exhibition[2] sets erotic drawings and caricatural sheets alongside the more sombre works of 1901–03. Le Maquereau belongs to that broader early practice. It does not need to be reclassified as a different movement simply because its tone is irreverent. The Blue Period guide places this coexistence in the wider 1901–04 work. [2]
In 1902 Picasso was working between Paris and Barcelona; the holding museum locates this drawing specifically in Barcelona. It records other drawings of people, animals, caricatures and erotic subjects from these years. The fact that Le Maquereau is on a business card helps place it in a world of rapid, portable mark-making rather than in a studio commission or public Salon picture. The card may suggest informality, but the museum's exhibition history shows that later institutions regarded the small work as worth sustained attention. [1] [2]
The same medium also links it to a group of Picasso drawings made on printed cards associated with the Junyer business. A separate erotic drawing of a woman and a cephalopod, discussed by Ricard Bru in the Barcelona Picasso museum's Secret Images scholarship[3], was made on a related card in 1903. Bru compares the aquatic erotic imagery with Le Maquereau. The comparison is useful because it shows Picasso revisiting unlikely combinations of sea creature and female body. It does not make the octopus sheet another version of this fish drawing, nor prove that the two were made together. [3]
The Barcelona museum's Secret Images: Picasso and Japanese Erotic Prints exhibition[3] placed Picasso's erotic work in conversation with Japanese prints, some of which he owned. It also explored European interest in such images. Le Maquereau is listed in the drawing's exhibition history for that 2009–10 show. This supplies a carefully framed comparison, not a documented chain in which one particular Japanese print was in front of Picasso when he drew the card in 1902. A later curator can illuminate an image without making every visual similarity into proof of direct borrowing. [1] [3]
The animal's role is thus more specific than a general claim that Picasso liked fish or that he later mixed human and animal forms. Here an actual fish and a human figure share a deliberately sexual arrangement on a small card. The work's humour is tied to the French word, its form to the card and marks, and its broader setting to early drawings that were not confined to the public mood of the Blue Period paintings. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Why the date varies in catalogues
The current Barcelona catalogue[1] gives 1902 and 13.3 × 9.1 centimetres. The Musée d'Orsay's French checklist for Picasso bleu et rose[2] lists the same museum inventory number, MPB 50.497, but dates it 1902–03. These records refer to the same drawing. The broader range is a cataloguing caution, not evidence for a second Mackerel made in 1903. [1] [2]
For a reader trying to identify the artwork, the inventory number and material are more useful than treating one year as an absolute boundary. The work has no day-and-month date in the public object record used here. This page follows the holding museum's current date while making the historical range visible. It does not attach the 1934 drawing mentioned on the old website to MPB 50.497. A later erotic image may invite comparison, but its own title, date, medium, collection and evidence would need to be established separately. [1] [2]
The museum records that Le Maquereau entered its collection through the Garriga Roig legacy in 1953. It has subsequently appeared in exhibitions on early Picasso drawing, erotic work and the Blue-to-Rose years, including the Musée d'Orsay's 2018–19 exhibition[2] and a 2023–24 Paris drawing exhibition[1]. Those appearances do not change its status as a small Barcelona museum drawing; they show how often an apparently minor card has been reconsidered. [1] [2]
Its strongest invitation is to look at how little Picasso needed. The lifted arms frame the face; wash gathers the upper body; fine lines describe the torso and legs; the fish's vertical form completes the sexual joke. The French title adds a second meaning that “The Mackerel” alone cannot carry. The work is neither a famous Blue Period tableau nor a cryptic preview of every later erotic drawing. It is a concise 1902 image whose material, wordplay and explicit visual arrangement deserve to be understood on their own terms. [1] [4]
Discussion
Use the evidence and your own close looking to explain your view. These are editorial prompts, not reader comments.
Reader Insights
How do the card’s small scale and printed support affect the drawing?
What does the French double meaning of maquereau add, and what does it not prove?
Which museum details distinguish this sheet from a later work with a similar subject?
Join the Conversation
Which reading best fits the evidence?
References
- Museu Picasso Barcelona, Le Maquereau object record, with Catalan and Spanish versions.
- Musée d'Orsay, Picasso bleu et rose French checklist and exhibition account.
- Museu Picasso Barcelona, Secret Images: Picasso and Japanese Erotic Prints (Catalan exhibition account); Ricard Bru's Spanish catalogue essay.
- Larousse, maquereau and Académie française on the word's two meanings.
Image Credits
- H. L. Todd. Public domain. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Resized to 1024px; no crop. Source record. Licence.
