Having worked as a producer on a PBS documentary on Picasso in conjunction with the grand Bill Rubin curated MoMA retrospective after his death I thought I had seen so many of the early Picassos. But this beautiful one of 1901 of his younger sister Lola was new to me. It's provenance shows that it was first owned by Olivier Sainsere, one of Picasso's earliest collectors and later, by Paul Mellon. Her glance, which is both sober and haunting, is but one view of this very beautiful woman but Picasso was still suffering from the death of his best friend Casagemas and was gradually working his way into his full-on blue period. Here the background is more muted and her left eye is almost drifting, looking towards something she too is possibly concerned about. Auctions sometimes give us the chance for a glimpse of things we would never get to see otherwise and this jewel of a painting is a prime example of that.