What was the name of the American writer who sat for a Picasso portrait?

“What was the name of the American writer who sat for a Picasso portrait?” — The writer was Gertrude Stein.

Picasso began Portrait of Gertrude Stein in 1905 and completed it in 1906. Stein and her brother Leo were important collectors of modern art in Paris, and their support mattered to Picasso while he was still establishing himself. Stein also hosted influential salons that brought together writers, artists, and intellectuals.

The portrait is associated with Picasso’s Rose Period, but its mask-like face and geometric treatment point toward the radical experiments that soon helped lead him to Cubism. Stein recalled sitting for the portrait dozens of times—often summarized as roughly 80 or 90 sittings—before Picasso painted out the head and later completed it after returning from Spain, without another sitting.

Stein kept the portrait for the rest of her life. After her death in 1946, it was bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it remains. The answer is sometimes confused with Alice B. Toklas, Stein’s partner, or with Hemingway, another figure from Paris’s literary world; neither sat for this famous portrait.