Daily Mail - 05.03.2020

Daily Mail, Thursday, March 5, 2020^ Page 57

femail IntervIew

at the very least a father figure.’

Albeit not, perhaps, in his head. (Of

his lovers, many had been young

and vulnerable. He cheated on his

p a r t n e r s , b e a t a t l e a s t o n e

unconscious and once said: ‘There

are only two kinds of women —

goddesses and doormats.’)

These calm weeks were not to

last. In June, he met^ Jacqueline

Roque, 26, and she became his new

inspiration and second wife.

But not before news of Picasso’s

beautiful blonde muse had leaked

out to the world, and she became

briefly famous in her own right.

The Sylvette series was exhibited

in Paris to critical acclaim with

Time magazine announcing a new

epoch in Picasso’s creativity — his

‘ponytail period’.

Brigitte Bardot copied the pony-

tail and soon everyone was doing

‘a Sylvette’. Journalists and fashion

writers turned up from all over.

‘I used to hide in the cupboard at

home when they came, and shout:

“Send them away, mummy!” ’

There were also love letters from

all over the world — ‘most of them

were asking me to marry them.’

There was no big, dramatic fare-

well with Picasso. ‘I thanked him

for giving me so much — he gave

m e i m m o r t a l i t y, c o n f i d e n c e ,

memories and love.’

She gave him a rather lovely

handmade clay sculpture of a

woman, which is still in the family

archive, and he gave her the pick

of his paintings of her, and she

chose a beautiful, lifelike study.

And that was that. He moved to

C a n n e s w i t h J a c q u e l i n e a n d

Sylvette to England with Toby.

T

HREE years later, when

Toby was in hospital,

she sold the painting for

£11,000 to an^ American.

‘He was very nice and said he’d

maybe leave it to me when he died,’

she says. ‘But he went senile.’ Still,

she has no regrets.

Sadly, things didn’t last with

Toby. When she was 27, he fell in

love with her best friend. Her heart

broken, she found solace in God

and changed her name to Lydia.

She saw Picasso once more, in

1965. She was 31 and he was 85, was
      still smoking like a chimney and

now deaf. ‘He had aged well and

was pleased to see me,’ she says.

She didn’t see him again, though

she thought of him often. When he

died, aged 91, in 1973, and more

and more stories emerged about

his bullying, his drinking, his

horrible behaviour towards women

— people started looking for

Sylvette to tell her story.

But she was now Lydia, a mother

of two, living in Devon. A second

husband, Rawdon Corbett, cheated

on her, but she pulled herself up

and, aged 45, took up painting.

Now she has exhibited at the

Tate and has two more coming up

over the next few months.

‘We touched each other’s lives in

a lovely way,’ she says. There was

no doubt he was touched by her.

When later Bardot — by then a

huge star — begged him to paint

her, Picasso retorted sharply: ‘No.

I’ve done Sylvette now!’

But what does she think of the

others — the women who were

beaten and cheated on?

‘I don’t know. I don’t understand

it,’ she says. ‘I remember Francoise

was a bit upset — she didn’t come

and say hello. Jacqueline was very

nice to me — she wasn’t even

jealous. But of course she started

drinking and killed herself.. .’

Despite producing at least 60

works during that heady summer,

Picasso’s grey period has been all

but wiped from his biographies. ‘I

don’t know why people don’t talk

about my period,’ she says. ‘Maybe

they don’t think it’s interesting

because there was no sex.’

Or perhaps that is exactly what

makes it so very poignant.

n Iwassylvette.com

Father figure: Lydia with Picasso in 1954 and, above, in her studio

Today she’s an artist who lives quietly

in Devon. But for one glorious summer

when she was 19, Lydia became a muse

who captivated the mercurial painter

My

Ponytail

Picasso’s

Girl

golden

weeks

as

with the

Pictures: To

M wren/ swns