Jacqueline

Jacqueline Roque (1927–1986) began working at her aunt’s ceramics factory Madoura in Vallauris in 1952; by then, she was already living apart from her husband with her six-year-old daughter. During this period, Picasso spent a great deal of time at the Madoura, where he experimented with ceramics. The seventy-two-year-old painter’s relationship with Françoise Gilot was in serious crisis when he met Jacqueline at the ceramics factory.

Françoise Gilot soon left Picasso, but Jacqueline was available. According to accounts, she devoted herself entirely to her lover and idol, whom she truly worshipped. Juan Gyenes (1912–1995), a photographer of Hungarian descent living in Spain, described Jacqueline with these words after visiting Picasso: “I’ve never seen such a sweet, strange creature. You can’t hear her when she comes in. She just watches her Pablo work. You can’t notice when she leaves. She is present – without actually being there.” The image of his young lover took on countless forms on Picasso’s canvases. The painter found inexhaustible diversity in Jacqueline’s features.

The couple married in 1961 and settled on the French Riviera, first in Cannes and then in Mougins, where Picasso could paint undisturbed. After the painter’s death, Jacqueline sank into deep depression, and thirteen years later, she took her own life.