A WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEAR
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.
ISBN 9780571385997
*Winner of the Elizabeth Longford Prize and the Franco-British Society Literary Award*
*Shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize*
A magnificent biography of the founder of Impressionism.
In the course of a long and exceptionally creative life, Claude Monet revolutionized painting and made some of the most iconic images in western art. Behind this great and famous artist is a volatile, voracious, nervous yet reckless man, largely unknown.
Jackie Wullschläger's enthralling biography, based on thousands of never-before translated letters and unpublished sources, is the first account of Monet's turbulent private life and how it determined his expressive, sensuous, sensational painting.
Monet said he was driven 'wild with the need to put down what I experience'. This rich and moving biography immerses us in that passionate experience, transforming our understanding of the man, his paintings and the fullness of his achievement.
ISBN 9780141980621