Lola, the Artist's Sister, in the Studio in Riera de Sant Joan

Dolores Ruiz Picasso, familiarly known as Lola, alongside other members of Picasso’s family, was one of his most frequent sitters during his apprenticeship. In the portraits of his sister Lola, however, Picasso went one step further, setting psychological studies to one side and concentrating instead on experimenting and innovating in his treatment of the figure.
Barcelona and the Quatre Gats tavern brought the artist into contact with Catalan and international modernism. Ramon Casas was then the Catalan portrait painter par excellence and Picasso didn’t only intend to emulate him but went on to appropriate his style and even eclipse it. Art journals such as Pèl & Ploma and Joventut reproduced works by foreign artists, heightening the young artist’s interest in Paris and painters such as Edvard Munch (whose influence on this work and others that evoke Tenebrism executed in the spring of 1899 was more than likely) and the heirs of Romanticism (who sought to render the mysteries of landscape on canvas).
While in previous compositions the window took centre stage, in this case it shares prominence with the figure (Lola). The window marks the transition from interior to exterior landscape and is the element that divides the canvas into two distinct areas thanks to the treatment of light and the colours applied. The atmosphere that reigns in the interior evokes that of contemporary works of more sombre subject matter set in equally gloomy and blurred scenes. For the exterior, Picasso turns again to the yellow shades he employed in some of the landscapes painted in Horta de Sant Joan in 1898, although here they are intensified in search of the impression of an unreal blinding light.
Although other portraits of Lola show Picasso’s intention of becoming a true modernista, this picture reveals his desire to follow European modernists, in particular the Expressionist painter Edvard Munch. While the portrait contains some of the typical features of Catalan Art Nouveau, such as the character’s hairstyle and clothing, it paves the way for a new compositional style in which space would be characterised by colour and line actually disappears, as we see in the figure of Lola, especially in her featureless face.