Hidden Portraits

'Insightful and original' - Lisa Hilton
'Roe has a deep knowledge of the period and the milieu.' - Sue Prideaux
'Long overdue . . . [Roe] brings Picasso's lovers and muses from the shadows into the limelight.' - Herald
'A compelling tale . . . Brilliantly insightful and well-written.' - Times
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.

Dr Sue Roe is a Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author, whose four previous narrative non-fiction books on art history have received wide acclaim. Most recently she published In Montparnasse: The Emergence of Surrealism in Paris, from Duchamp to Dali, published in 2018 (by Fig Tree [UK], and Penguin Press [US]). She has also taught at universities, including from 2017-2020 at the University of Sussex as a Royal Literary Fund fellow. She lives in Brighton.