Nude in a Black Armchair (Nu au Fauteuil Noir) is a portrait painted by Pablo Picasso on March, 9, 19321 of his mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter. It is currently owned by Les Wexner, founder of Limited Brands. It was sold for 45.1 million USD in 1999. Wexner donated the piece to the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University. He provided major funding for the center. Former Museum of Modern Art curator William Rubin deemed it a "squishy sexual toy,"2 with other critics describing a theme of fecundity being mutually displayed by both the female figure and the plant.2 The first and the largest of a series of 1932 Marie-Thérèse Walter portraits, Picasso lived outside of Paris, in Boisgeloup, at the time.1 It is important critically as it shows the give and take between Henri Matisse and Picasso, where Picasso "borrowed Matisse's voluptuous curves as a sign for pleasure and his use of black to intensify pink" according to the art critic, Richard Lacayo. 3
