Marie-Thérèse and Pablo Picasso |
In a March 2018 piece in The Guardian, "Muse, lover, lifeblood: how my grandmother woke the genius in Picasso", Olivier Widmaier Picasso wrote about his grandmother, Marie-Thérèse Walter, and her "secret life" with Picasso.
Olivier shared how his grandparents met:
On Saturday 8 January 1927, in the late afternoon, my [married 45-year-old] grandfather noticed a young woman [17-year-old Thérèse Walter] through the window of the Galeries Lafayette in Paris. He waited until she came out, then greeted her with a big smile.“Mademoiselle, you have an interesting face. I would like to paint your portrait.” He added: “I’m sure we shall do great things together. I’m Picasso.”"[...] I found him charming.” [Consequently] Marie-Thérèse kept the appointment [...] They started a conversation which was renewed every day [...] Meanwhile, he drew Marie-Thérèse frenziedly.
[17-year-old] Marie-Thérèse coiffée d'un béret, 1927 |
“[Due to Picasso's marriage to Olga] [m]y life with him was always secret,” Marie-Thérèse said. “Calm and peaceful. We said nothing to anyone. We were happy like that, and we did not ask anything more.”This “Marie-Thérèse period” generated drawings and engravings of exceptional force [...] This would give rise to busts, imposing heads of women and a series of portraits that Marie-Thérèse illuminates with her blond hair – it includes The Dream
Pablo Picasso The Dream (Le Rêve) 1932 |
In the summer of 1933, the family went to Cannes, and then to Barcelona. But the storm was brewing. Pablo got Marie-Thérèse to come in secret and installed her in a nearby hotel. And once back in Paris, he started, for the first time, to investigate the possibility of divorce [...] as divorce was now permitted by the recently established Spanish Republic. “And then one day I found I was pregnant,” Marie-Thérèse would later recount.
(The divorce never happened due to Olga's objection and after the Spanish civil war, Franco re-abolished of divorce.)
[...] in September 1939, Marie-Thérèse and [her daughter] Maya were on holiday in Royan, north of Bordeaux, and stayed there until the spring of 1941. Picasso concealed from Marie-Thérèse the existence of Dora Maar, a photographer and his mistress since the summer of 1936. He arranged for my grandmother and their daughter to return to Paris, to a flat on Île Saint-Louis. My grandparents’ relationship had now lasted 14 years.
Hannah Furness wrote in The Telegraph piece "Picasso's muses: artist's own collection starring six women he loved on sale for the first time" that Marie-Thérèse hung herself four years after Picasso's death.
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