The Artist's Sister Lola

The Artist's Sister Lola — Pablo Picasso. 1899–1900.

Medium: oil on canvas. Dimensions: Framed: 62.5 x 54 x 8 cm (24 5/8 x 21 1/4 x 3 1/8 in.); Unframed: 46.7 x 37.5 cm (18 3/8 x 14 3/4 in.).

Collection record: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland. Museum connection according to this source; current display unverified.

Pablo Picasso painted this portrait when he was 18 years old and sharing ideas with artists and writers in Barcelona who were dubbed modernists in the press. During this period, his younger sister, Maria Dolores Ruiz Picasso (1884–1958), known as Lola, was a favorite model. Picasso’s bold handling of paint, the intense palette, and the way in which the figure’s hands are merely suggested reveal the artist’s early embrace of modernism. Lola’s mantilla (a lace or silk scarf worn over the head and shoulders especially by Spanish and Latin American women) may allude to the family’s Andalusian roots in southern Spain and their Catholic faith.

Source: official collection record. Metadata selected and normalized by Artline from the source export, accessed 10 September 2026; no museum endorsement. Reproduction rights are separate.