Jacqueline with flowers

Pablo Picasso and Jacqueline Roque had been living together for almost 20 years until his death, and during that time he painted about 400 portraits of her. The artist painted his beloved women in individual ways, each time creating a new style for a certain woman. Jacqueline Roque was no exception. Most of her portraits were painted in the easily recognizable style of late Picasso, and Jacqueline with Flowers is one of the most striking works of this period. Most often, the artist depicted his second wife like this: in profile, with huge almond-shaped eyes, an unnaturally long neck and a triangular feline face (1, 2). By the way, it was Jacqueline’s favourite pose for sitting. In particular, it is the pose she is depicted in the famous Odalisque series. Thanks to this pose, Antonina Vallentin, who wrote the biography of Picasso, nicknamed Jacqueline “the modern sphinx”.

Picasso met Jacqueline in 1953 at the Madura ceramic factory in Vallauris, he was 72 years old and she was 27. The artist painted a white dove with chalk on the wall of her house, and then he presented her a rose every day for six months to win her favour. Only in 1961, after the death of Picasso’s first wife Olga Khokhlova, they quietly got married in the same Vallauris.

Jacqueline with Flowers is the first portrait of Picasso’s future wife, the starting point of a new stage in his personal life and a new period in his work. When they met, the artist had just started working on the Algerian Women series after the famous painting by Eugène Delacroix. It is not surprising that Picasso’s new passion endowed all the female subjects of these 15 canvases with the features of his beloved. In Jacqueline’s charming dark eyes, her black eyebrows and high cheekbones, he saw the classic Mediterranean type that fit his Algerian Women. He also saw her features on the canvas that inspired him, saying that “Delacroix had already known Jacqueline before”.

Written by Yevgheniia Sidelnikova