Christie’s to Auction 31 Pablo Picasso Prints, Including Three Rare Portraits of Wife Jacqueline Roque

More than 30 prints by Pablo Picasso have gone on display at Christie’s in London through September 23, as part of the auction house’s “Prints & Multiples” sale and exhibition. The total 31-piece lot is estimated to fetch between £2.8 million and £4.1 million ($3.8 million and $5.53 million).

Include in the print collection are three portraits of Jacqueline Roque, who was Picasso’s second wife and last lover, until his death in 1973. This October marks 40 years since Roque’s untimely death.

The earliest work is Profil de Jacqueline au foulard (1955) estimated between £30,000 to £40,000 ($40,500 to $54,000), which Murray Macaulay, head of prints at Christie’s Europe called “very rare.” In the linocut, Roque is seen to be wearing a scarf and looking almost skeletal. “It was never sort of formally published and William Rubin of MoMA described it as the most penetrating image of Jacqueline,” Macaulay said about the linocut, which was printed at the Imprimerie Arnéra workshop in Vallauris, France.

The second print Portrait de Jacqueline I, II, III & IV (1956) is estimated at £20,000 to £30,000 ($27,000 to $40,500), where Picasso illustrates Roque’s portrait on four different blocks, which again wasn’t published and remains exceptionally rare, as there were only three made. The print was supposed to accompany an unrealized book of poetry.

The final work is Portrait de Jacqueline accoudée (1959) and what Macaulay calls Picasso’s most “sophisticated” work, as the artist had started developing his own linocut style, dubbed the reductive technique, where an artist can work from the same block of linocuts by creating layers that expose the color underneath. “In this particular instance, he started by printing the block in one color – in black without cutting it then he carved the image onto the block and then he printed that block in white on top of the black. Picasso was so experimental in the way he approached linocuts,” Macaulay added.

Prints at Christie’s remain an important category, even if a collection doesn’t bring in the same sum as a marquee evening sale. In 2025, Christie’s totaled $70 million in print sales globally and also sold the most expensive Old Masters print to date with Rembrandt’s Arnout Tholinx, Inspector (1656) totaling £3.1 million ($4.18 million) on December 3.