PROVENANCE Estate of Nina Marguerite Leclercq

For many decades, Dora Maar was remembered primarily for her romantic relationship with Pablo Picasso, which lasted from late 1935 to the early 1940s. As a model and muse, she inspired the figure known as the Weeping Woman in studies Picasso produced in response to the devastating impact of the Spanish Civil War.

These were made in tandem with his monumental canvas, Guernica, the completion of which Maar meticulously and invaluably documented as a kind of photographic collaborator. Picasso's Head of a Woman No. 1, Portrait of Dora Maar, from 1939, depicts Maar with large, melancholy eyes and pursed lips, her lustrous black hair rendered in layers of azure, crimson and mustard.

After the end of their often-tumultuous relationship, Maar rejected these portrayals: All his portraits of me are lies. They're all Picassos, not one is Dora Maar. The true Maar was not only an incisive observer of the modern city through her camera lens but also an extremely talented artist: producer of experimental collages, poet, printmaker and painter.

Nina Marguerite Leclercq met and befriended Dora Maar and Picasso in Paris in the 1930's while she was working at Paris Vogue. Leclercq relocated to London in the 1950's where she worked for the Queen's dressmaker at the time, Hardy Amies.