In 1901 a visit to the women’s prison in Saint-Lazare along with Louis Julien led Picasso to address the relationship between maternity, prostitution, and illness in his works; the fact that the female inmates lived with their children shocked him deeply. He produced several portraits of the inmates, some wearing a white coping that distinguished them from others for having contracted a venereal disease.

In 1902, upon his return to Barcelona after an eight year period living in Paris, Picasso came back to subject of the maternity time and time again, affected by what he had seen at the prison-hospital: women with their backs turned toward the viewer in an effort to preserve their intimacy and their pain, and to protect their children. Some appear dressed in tunics and shawls such as those he had seen in Saint-Lazare.

Conversely, in this drawing mother and son appear naked. The mother has her eyes closed, concentrating on her love for the child; isolated from the world. It is symbolic nudity that must be linked to the great works in Picasso’s “blue period”: El abrazo [The Embrace] and La vida [Life], from 1903.