This is quite a good book, but perhaps not a very necessary one. For over a decade now, works of Picasso scholarship have been scurrying like white mice round the feet of a periodically awakening lion, in the shape of the slowly issuing volumes of John Richardson's magisterial biography of the artist. The first volume came out in 1991; the second, which takes the story up to 1917, in 1996; and the third volume is eagerly awaited.
The quality, depth and novelty of the two volumes of Richardson's work are such that it is a brave scholar who embarks on any study of Picasso now. In a year or two, your elegant monograph may be completely eclipsed by a volume of 'Richardson's Picasso', a book everyone will read and which will be much more informative than anything you have to say. In its command of a social and artistic milieu, its depth of research, its worldliness and entertainment value, the biography is practically unprecedented among works of art history, and, to be blunt, nobody is going to make his reputation as a Picasso scholar for at least a generation apart from those who have directly contributed to Richardson's work.
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