100 Picasso Etchings Recently Donated to British Museum

Picasso's 100 Vollard etchings which document his love affair with Marie-Therese Walter have been donated to the British Museum.

The suite of etchings, which was commissioned by Paris art dealer Ambroise Vollard, often depicts Picasso as a bull-headed minotaur with the young Marie-Therese. This rare complete collection from the 1930s is the only one to be held by a public museum in the UK.

The Hamish Parker Charitable Trust donated the set, valued at about £1m ($1.6 million). The museum already had seven etchings from the Vollard Suite.

A City of London financier, Hamish Parker, made the gift in memory of his father, Major Horace Parker, who was a fan of the museum.

The prints and drawings curator, Stephen Coppel, had once stated that it was his "long-term ambition" to acquire the complete set. In April, Coppel received an email from Parker relaying his desire to gift the set to the museum, which was to be done by the end of the year.

Parker's email read, "Although it might be going too far to suggest that he was a fan of Picasso, he certainly was a fan of the British museum and anything that involves enlightenment... to have this set so close to the Elgin Marbles would be of particular delight to him."

(Report: Alisa Alexander for Artfixdaily)