Modernism

Le Rêve (The Dream)

Pablo Picasso, 1932

Le Rêve (The Dream) is Pablo Picasso's 1932 painting of his lover Marie-Thérèse Walter asleep in a red armchair, reportedly painted in one afternoon on 24 January. It is in a private collection.

Artist: Pablo Picasso
Date: 1932
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 130 × 97 cm
Collection: Private collection
Movement: Modernism

Le Rêve (The Dream) is a 1932 portrait by Pablo Picasso of Marie-Thérèse Walter, the young woman who was his secret lover. According to the painting's documented history, he painted it in a single afternoon, on 24 January 1932, when he was 50 and she was 22. The canvas, about 130 by 97 centimeters, is in a private collection and is one of the most expensive paintings ever sold.

What you are looking at

Marie-Thérèse sits asleep in a red armchair, her head tipped back against its high back and her eyes closed. Her blond hair falls to the left. Her arms curve down into her lap, and her hands, painted as long, simplified fingers, rest loosely there. Her pale, lilac-white body is drawn with flowing black contour lines; her blouse has slipped to reveal one breast, and she wears a necklace of red and yellow beads.

Her face is split in two. The upper part, with the closed eye, is tilted up and outlined separately from the lower half, as if seen from a different angle. Many critics have noted that this upper form also reads as an erect penis, a double image that makes the painting's erotic charge explicit.

The background is divided: green vertical bands on the left, like a striped wall or the bars of a window, and on the right a red wallpaper of diamond shapes, each holding a four-petaled motif. The colors are flat and saturated, with no modeling except a few strokes of shadow.

Context

Picasso met Marie-Thérèse in Paris in 1927, when she was 17, and kept the relationship hidden from his wife, Olga Khokhlova. The paintings of her made in early 1932, including Girl before a Mirror, are among the most sensual of his career, all curves and soft color. They were shown in his retrospective at the Galerie Georges Petit in Paris that summer.

A famous sale history

In 1941 the New York collectors Victor and Sally Ganz bought the painting for $7,000. After their deaths it was sold at Christie's in 1997 for $48.4 million. The casino owner Steve Wynn later owned it, and in 2006, while agreeing to sell it, he accidentally put his elbow through the canvas. After restoration, it was sold in 2013 to the collector Steven A. Cohen for a reported $155 million.

Where to see it

The painting is privately owned and is rarely exhibited. See also Picasso's Weeping Woman, The Old Guitarist and the Pablo Picasso page.

Questions & answers

Who owns Picasso's Le Rêve?

Le Rêve is privately owned. It was sold in 2013 to the American collector Steven A. Cohen for a reported $155 million, after an earlier owner, Steve Wynn, accidentally damaged the canvas with his elbow in 2006. The painting was restored before the sale.

Who is the woman in Le Rêve?

She is Marie-Thérèse Walter, Picasso's young lover, whom he met in Paris in 1927. She was 22 when he painted Le Rêve in January 1932. She appears in many of his works of the early 1930s, often asleep or dreaming, painted in soft curving lines.

What is hidden in the face in Le Rêve?

The upper half of the sleeping woman's face, tilted and outlined separately, has often been read as a phallic shape. Critics see it as a deliberate double image that makes the painting's erotic meaning explicit, referring to Picasso's desire for his model.

More by the artist

Pablo Picasso

All works →

A woman in a red hat with a blue flower holds a white handkerchief to her face, which is broken into yellow, green and white planes, with black tears — Pablo Picasso, The Weeping Woman, 1937 — The Weeping Woman
Pablo Picasso · 1937

A gaunt, blind old man in ragged blue clothes sits hunched cross-legged over a brown guitar against a blue background — Pablo Picasso, The Old Guitarist, 1903–04 — The Old Guitarist
Pablo Picasso · 1903–04

A woman with a double lilac-and-yellow face reaches toward a tall oval mirror holding a darker, distorted reflection, against diamond-patterned wallpaper — Pablo Picasso, Girl before a Mirror, 1932 — Girl before a Mirror
Pablo Picasso · 1932

A black ink drawing of a tall thin knight on a bony horse with a lance, a squat squire on a donkey, windmills and a spiky sun — Pablo Picasso, Don Quixote, 1955 — Don Quixote
Pablo Picasso · 1955

A large snarling striped cat with glaring eyes holds a struggling, wounded black bird in its jaws against a grey sky — Pablo Picasso, Cat Catching a Bird, 1939 — Cat Catching a Bird
Pablo Picasso · 1939

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