Femme Aux Cheveux Flous: Picasso’s Last Muse

Pablo Picasso had two wives, four children by three women and many mistresses. He painted them all, but it was his last muse, Jacqueline Roque, whom he painted the most. Picasso created over 400 portraits of Roque, seventy of them done in a single year.

Roque was born in Paris in 1927. Following a failed marriage, that produced one daughter, Roque moved to Vallauris, on the French Riviera, where she took a job as a salesperson at her cousin’s shop, the Madoura Pottery. He was given full access to the pottery and, in exchange, his work was displayed and sold in the Madoura Pottery shop. The arrangement lasted for 25 years.

Picasso and Roque met at the pottery in 1953. She was 26 and he was 72. He courted her by drawing a chalk dove on her house and bringing her a rose a day. It took six months, but Picasso’s persistence paid off and Roque finally agreed to date him. Picasso had married Olga Khokhlova, a ballerina, in 1918. They had one son and separated in 1927. Khokhlova refused to divorce Picasso, and it wasn’t until she died, in 1955, that Picasso became free to marry.

Picasso and Roque married in 1961. Art historian Barbara Rose said, “She thought he was God and he thought he was God. The two of them were in love with him.” Roque began to appear in his paintings in 1954. Her elegant features and classic profile became easily recognizable in his later works, even though the paintings were often abstract and distorted.

Picasso and Roque were together for twenty years, until his death in 1973.

Pablo Picasso at Surovek

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