Gertrude Stein’s Mutual Portraiture Society

Portraits of Gertrude Stein by Picabia, Picasso, and Valleton.

Between 1908 and her death, in 1946, Gertrude Stein created over a hundred prose portraits, which she called “word paintings.” Most of her portraits were of her friends: Alice B. Toklas, Matisse, Picasso, Sherwood Anderson, Erik Satie, Hemingway, Man Ray, Jean Cocteau, Jane Heap, Carl Van Vechten, Virgil Thomson, Alfred Stieglitz, Francis Picabia, Guillaume Apollinaire, and others.

In some cases, she was returning the favor of a friend having made a portrait of her in another medium. Picasso’s was followed by Stein’s “Pablo Picasso,” which appeared in a special issue of , edited by Alfred Stieglitz. (The issue also featured Stein’s and reproductions of works by Picasso and Matisse.) Stein would then write a prose portrait of Stieglitz, too.