From the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City:
After celebrating New Year's Eve of 1901 in Barcelona, Picasso moved to Madrid, where he intended to stay for at least one year to work on two new publications: "Arte joven" and "Notas d'arte". While there, he created more than a dozen pictures depicting women dressed to the nines in cheap confections that announce the wearer as a performer-theatrical, sexual, or both. Related paintings shown at Picasso's first exhibition in Paris, at the Galerie Vollard, such as the "Woman in Profile" (199.363.58), may have been made in Madrid as well. Picasso sent this work to a small exhibition at the Sala Parés in June 1901, where it was likely purchased by Delmiro de Caralt, the Barcelona textile magnate.