During the summer of 1910, while in Cadaqués, Pablo Picasso worked on a series of drawings that revealed the increasingly conceptual step by step development of Cubism. Upon his return to Paris, Picasso moved from Le Bateau-Lavoir to Boulevard de Clichy, at the foot of Montmartre, where he had a wider space to work in. He then began to frequent the Taverne de l’Ermitage, which was in front of his new house and often included among its regulars characters from the world of show business, such as clowns, acrobats, and trapeze artists. As noted by critic John Richardson, these encounters “rekindled Picasso’s love for the circus. One member of the troupe—an acrobat, possibly named Léonie—agreed to pose for Picasso. Her playful gaze and small and flexible body inspired a series of canvases that have little to no resemblance with Fernande”. For historians it is unclear if the homonymous oil painting—Mademoiselle Léonie (1919)—refers to the name of this model or to one of the characters in Max Jacob’s work Saint Matorel, published in 1911. Said painting had this drawing as its sketch and was undoubtedly inspired by the etchings found in Jacob’s work—a poet and Picasso’s friend—in which the protagonist’s love interest was coincidentally named Mademoiselle Léonie.

Produced in 1910, in this study Picasso used flat elements and straight lines to fragment the depicted subject. In turn, along with Georges Braque, this gave way to what is known as analytic cubism, a current that was more intellectual and pure than what had been conceived in 1907. The “elimination” of the traditional perspective, the decomposition of reality into planes, and the use of increasingly neutral colors entailed a revolution that has lasted to this day.