Descripción
In May 1947, at the request of his friend Jean Cassou, Picasso donated ten important paintings to the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris. That same month, on 15 May, Claude, his first child with Françoise, was born. It was a happy event and of singular importance in Picasso’s life.
The drawing reflects the serenity and happiness of Picasso’s spirit: it is like an anticipated celebration of his expected fatherhood. He also made a series of eight delicate drawings in his “picture diary”: idyllic works reminiscent of his maternity paintings in the 1920s, when his first child, Paul, was born by Olga Koklova.
All the drawings contain a scene with two characters: a sleeping woman and another person watching or observing her. The main character is a beautiful sleeping woman, a nymph. The guardian of the vigil, in the earlier works, is another beautiful crouching maiden. In later drawings, this character would become a winged being who could be a cunning or proclaiming cherub, or a watcher. In the later drawings, the guardian of the vigil would again be a woman.
