Hidden Portraits: The untold stories of six women who loved Picasso

Sue Roe

A reappraising history of the remarkable women who Pablo Picasso shared his life with – whose individual stories and influence on the artist have been overlooked until now

Format
Ebook
ISBN
9780571386000
Date Published
25.03.2025
Delivery
All orders are sent via Royal Mail and are tracked: choose from standard or premium delivery.

Summary

‘Insightful and original’ – Lisa Hilton

Roe has a deep knowledge of the period and the milieu.’ – Sue Prideaux

‘Long overdue . . . [Roe] brings Picasso’s lovers and muses from the shadows into the limelight.’ – Herald

‘A compelling tale . . . Brilliantly insightful and well-written.’ –
Times

Fernande Olivier, Olga Khokhlova, Marie-Therese Walter, Dora Maar, Francoise Gilot, and Jacqueline Roque. These six extraordinary women shared Pablo Picasso’s life and were instrumental in his career, yet they have long been dismissed as simply passive models or muses.

Hidden Portraits reveals that their lives were – without exception – remarkable. All six were unconventional, independent and talented. All six were tested, both by Picasso’s subterfuges and betrayals, and the wider social turbulence they lived through. The extent to which each influenced Picasso’s art in major new directions has never been fully acknowledged.

Sue Roe delves deeply into the truth of the women’s experiences for the first time, to tell the story of Picasso’s women from their point of view. Her enthralling book spans seventy years, from Bohemian early twentieth century Montmartre to the glittering Riviera in the 1920s, through Paris under Nazi occupation and beyond Picasso’s final years of seclusion.

The result is a riveting, atmospheric read about six fascinating and charismatic women, outstanding in their own time, whose individual stories have up to now been glossed over or hidden from view.

Critic Reviews

A compelling tale . . . What sets Roe apart is her carefully considered, collective approach to repositioning these women who for too long have been sidelined as silent muses . . . In replaying one character’s life, and then another’s, Roe effectively and empathetically draws us into their worlds and enables us to the same events from different perspectives . . . Brilliantly insightful and well-written.

Chloe Ashby, The Times
Critic Reviews

Sue Roe’s group biography of [Picasso’s] six most significant partners does not seek to defend him. Instead it gracefully assembles the facts surrounding their shared experience of being loved by a genius . . . The author’s discussion of Picasso’s work is insightful and original, but it is the lives beyond the canvas that principally concern her . . . Roe does not neglect the emotional catastrophes he wrought yet to see these six women as victims is dismissive and reductive. Deftly, discreetly and convincingly, this book dismantles the myth of Picasso the monster.

Lisa Hilton, TLS
Critic Reviews

‘Long overdue, Sue Roe’s biography brings Picasso’s lovers and muses from the shadows into the
limelight.’

Herald
Critic Reviews

A compelling tale . . . What sets Roe apart is her carefully considered, collective approach
to repositioning these women who for too long have been sidelined as silent muses . . . [A]
brilliantly insightful and well-written book.

Times
Critic Reviews

[Roe’s] voice lends itself to beautiful descriptions of Picasso’s work . . . and her lively prose evokes Paris,
and Europe, in the early 20th century.

Telegraph
Critic Reviews

Insightful and original . . . Deftly, discreetly and convincingly, this book dismantles the myth of Picasso the monster.

Lisa Hilton, TLS

SueRoe

Dr Sue Roe is a Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author, whose four previous narrative non-fiction books on art history have received wide acclaim. She has also taught at universities, including from 2017-2020 at the University of Sussex as a Royal Literary Fund fellow. She lives in Brighton.

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Sue Roe