A powerful and vivid composition, Portrait de Geneviève avec un collier de colombes depicts Françoise Gilot’s best friend and lifelong muse Geneviève Aliquot. One of Gilot’s most beloved and celebrated subjects, she is captured here in a richly detailed portrayal that is a test.mes nt to their friendship and a rare example of Gilot’s work from this key period of her career.
The attachment I felt for my relatives and intimate friends allowed me to select from amongst their distinct physical features, the ones that best reflected their character and, therefore, I could aim at a likeness that was more than skin deep.
Whether painting the women who formed part of her inner circle or reflecting on her own life through self-portraits, Gilot’s powerful body of portraiture stands in stark contrast to the countless depictions of women as seen through the gaze of her male peers and offers a distinct, female perspective on the subject (figs. 2-4).
This is particularly true of the present work, which depicts one of Gilot's closer friends. Having known each other since the age of twelve, when they attended boarding school in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Françoise and Geneviève both went on to pursue artistic careers. It was Geneviève who witnessed Gilot’s momentous encounter with Picasso in May 1943 when she came to stay with her in preparation for their first joint exhibition at Madeleine Decre’s gallery. Reminiscing on the details of that fateful evening in her autobiography Life with Picasso, Gilot described her best friend: “Geneviève was a very beautiful girl, of French Catalan ancestry but a Grecian type, with a nose that was a direct prolongation of her forehead. It was a head, Picasso later told me, that he felt he had already painted in his work of the Ingresque or Roman period. She often accentuated that Grecian quality, as she did that evening, by wearing a flowing, pleated dress” (F. Gilot and Carlton Lake, Life with Picasso, 1990, pp. 14-15).
In the present work, Gilot brilliantly captures her friend’s striking beauty and elegance. Yet, when one considers its date of execution in 1944, it becomes clear that this particular portrait is also deeply symbolic. Here, Geneviève comes to personify a kind of modern-age Athena; strong and defiant in her poise and grace. All the compositional elements, including her chiselled facial features, dramatic coiffure, even the armour-like 'spikes' of wool on the surface of her structured jumper, are employed here to convey a strong feminine energy. The viewer’s eye, however, is immediately drawn to the dove necklace that adorns Geneviève’s neck. Positioned against the sky-blue of her jumper, it serves as a powerful symbol of peace, which the inhabitants of Nazi-occupied France were increasingly hopeful about. It is worth noting that the motif of the dove entered Gilot's artistic practice prior to it becoming an important symbol within Picasso's œuvre, highlighting the distinct nature of Gilot’s talent and underscoring the mutual influence the two artists had on one another.
The necklace and jumper can be seen again in a full-length portrait of Geneviève executed the same year with her captured sitting outside the famous Café de Flore (fig. 6). The two paintings share a nuanced colour palette, which seems to capture the stern atmosphere that preceded France’s liberation while highlighting Gilot’s masterful command of colour.
Appearing on the market for the first t.mes , the present work comes from the collects ion of Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post and Thrive Global, and author of several publications, including Picasso: Creator and Destroyer (1988) and The Gods of Greece (1993), which was illustrated by Gilot. Arianna Huffington worked closely with Gilot whilst writing her biography of Picasso, and Gilot introduced her to Geneviève during a trip to Paris together.
Given to Arianna Huffington by Gilot as a present in the late 1980s, the history of this work reflects this wider narrative of female friendship, talent and unity. A rare example of her portraiture, Portrait de Geneviève avec un collier de colombes highlights the uniquely powerful talent of Françoise Gilot, so much of whose legacy and contribution to twentieth century history of art remains to be discovered.
