Tapestry after “Femme sur L’echelle” (Woman on a Ladder)
This tapestry was based on Pablo Picasso’s 1930 pastel drawing “Femme sur L’echelle” (Woman on a Ladder) and is signed by Picasso himself. The work is also known as Woman with Doves, and it depicts a woman sitting on a ladder and nurturing two birds.
Throughout his life Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973) painted many doves. Birds held personal significance to him, as symbols of both peace and family. At the 1950 Peace Conference in Sheffield, England, Picasso said: “My father, who lived in Barcelona, … was very fond of painting birds and, in particular, of painting doves. When his sight began to fail he handed his paintbrushes over to me and asked me to paint the delicate legs of the doves … I was succeeding fairly well he gave up his paintbrushes and I took his place in the family of painters.”
In 1925, art collector Marie Cuttoli (1879 – 1973) began commissioning tapestries in collaboration with Cubist painters and Pablo Picasso was one of the first artists to collaborate.
She set up a workshop in Algeria where artisan women wove her commissioned tapestries and sold them in her Paris gallery, Maison Myrbor. When the Great Depression struck weavers were affected and she commissioned tapestries woven by the Beauvais Tapestry Factory, which has been operating in France since the 1600s.
In 1958, the tapestry was displayed at the United Nations Headquarters. It was originally loaned to the United Nations by the Sidney Janis Gallery and later in 1959 was purchased by the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation as a gift to the United Nations.