Olivier, Fernande (1884–1966)

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Olivier, Fernande (1884–1966)

French artist's model who was also the mistress of Pablo Picasso. Name variations: Madame de la Baume. Born Amélie Lang out of wedlock in 1884; died in 1966; raised by her mother's half-sister; married Paul Percheron, around 1899.

A tall, provocative redhead, Fernande Olivier was Pablo Picasso's first mistress of note, living with the artist between 1905 and 1912. The two initially met in the summer of 1904, but after a brief passionate interlude parted ways; almost a year later, they took up residence at Picasso's studio in Paris' Bateau Lavoir. Their seven-year relationship spanned one of Picasso's most creative periods, culminating with his experimentation in Cubism which, according to Norman Mailer, in his interpretive biography Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man, ultimately drove the lovers apart. In the latter of two memoirs about her years with the artist, Picasso and His Friends (1933) and Souvenirs Intimes (1955), Olivier expresses the concern she had as early as 1906, over Picasso's refusal to conform: "A great ambition excites him. He has always refused to show in exhibitions, to become part of the artistic movement of his time. He wants to create a new form, be an innovator rather than a follower of great traditions…. [H]e wishes to subject his art to new laws. So, he struggled against all his human sentiments." While she was eventually repelled by Picasso's darker visions, Olivier, in retrospect, called her years with the artist the happiest of her life.

Fernande Olivier herself was no stranger to darkness. Born out of wedlock in 1884, she was raised in the middle-class household of her aunt and uncle who had a daughter of their own whom they favored. "There were never caresses for me and that induced me to live very much within myself," she recalled. At an early age, she married Paul Percheron, an older man (the brother of the housemaid's fiancé); during the marriage, he alternately doted on her and beat her. After about a year of this and a miscarriage that left her barren, Olivier abandoned her husband and moved to Paris. (She would remain so terrified of Percheron, however, that she never made the effort to divorce him.) She was in dire straits when she met Laurent Debienne, a young sculptor for whom she agreed to pose and grant sexual favors in return for room and board. Debienne introduced her to other artists for whom she also posed, and she soon began earning a respectable living as a model, calling herself Madame de la Baume. Coming home from work one day in the rain, she encountered the 22-year-old Picasso, who lived nearby. Obviously smitten, he was holding a tiny kitten out to her and blocking her path.

Olivier accompanied him to his studio, where she was impressed with his work, but somewhat put off with the squalid conditions of his living space and his lack of personal hygiene. She thought him a gentle, caring lover, however, the first she had encountered, and so returned on several occasions over the next ten days. Even so, she remained ambivalent about Picasso's growing obsession with her. "His eyes implore me. He watches, religiously, whatever I do…. [W]hen I awake, I find him at the head of the bed, his eyes full of anguish, fixed on me." Concluding that she was not yet ready for a serious commitment, Olivier returned to Debienne, then after a short time left him again and moved in with Ricard Canals and his wife Benedetta Canals , finally returning to Picasso in September 1905. Her awakening passion for the artist may have been related to their discovery of opium, which they smoked two or three times a week. "We can wonder if they would ever have begun to live together without the opium," writes Mailer. "Once the bridge was crossed, however, once she knew she could have extraordinary experiences in bed with him, then many a need and many a mutual social advantage would keep them together for years."

During those early days, Olivier, who once described herself as indolent, spent a good deal of time in bed, while Picasso waited on her by day and worked throughout the night. For a while, she dabbled in painting herself, asking for Picasso's advice, which he refused. "Amuse yourself," he told her. "What you do is more interesting than what you would do under the instruction of another." Olivier soon resorted to passing her time reading. Their first years together coincided with Picasso's burgeoning friendships with Max Jacob and Guillaume Apollinaire, and his obsession with Gertrude Stein , whom he had met in 1905, and who sat for him on as many as 90 occasions (culminating in the classic portrait of her in 1906). The couple often attended Stein's lively Saturday night salons and also partook of the night life in Montmartre, although Picasso was possessive and never let Olivier out of his sight. In 1906, after selling some of his works, Picasso had enough money to take Olivier to Spain, her first extended journey. In Barcelona, they visited his friends and family and then traveled to Gósol, a small village in the Pyrenees where Picasso, unusually calm and relaxed, was able to focus on his work. It was perhaps their happiest time together.

When they returned to Paris, Picasso began the experimentation that would result in his early Cubist masterpiece, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Coinciding with the new direction of Picasso's work was Olivier's impulsive decision to adopt a child, an event that probably took place in the spring of 1907. John Richardson suggests that Picasso, despite his ambivalence toward children, may have agreed to the adoption out of guilt, having persuaded an earlier mistress to have an abortion. Whatever the case, Olivier visited a Montmartre orphanage and was attracted to an adolescent girl named Raymonde, the daughter of a French prostitute. Raymonde had been rescued by a Dutch couple, Apollinaire writes. The couple had tried to teach Raymonde to play the violin; when she displayed no musical talent, they abandoned her once more. Accounts differ as to the amount of time the child remained with Olivier and Picasso, although there is agreement that she was quite spoiled by her adoptive parents as well as by their friends. Olivier was particularly indulgent, writes Richardson, "forever brushing Raymonde's hair, tying it up in ribbons, and seeing that she went off to school prettily dressed." Richardson maintains that Raymonde was at the studio for four months, during which time Picasso amused her with drawings of his dog Frika and her puppies, and of castellers, tumblers that had performed at the folk festivals of his youth. Mailer suggests that Olivier grew tired of Raymonde after only a week, theorizing that the bitterness and lack of compassion in her own childhood made it impossible for her to raise someone else's child. Richardson, however, believes that Olivier may have had different concerns, suggesting that some of Picasso's sketches of the child in the Demoiselles sketchbooks depict her sitting naked with her legs wide apart, washing her feet. "Young girls excited Picasso," he writes. "They also disturbed him; they put him in mind of his dead sister, Conchita . Fernande

would have had cause for alarm. The decision in late July to return Raymonde to the orphanage would have gone against her warmth of heart but not her better judgment. The girl was de trop—in the way." Whatever the time frame, the child was given to Max Jacob with instructions to return her to the orphanage, but Jacob was unable to do so and in the end left her with a local concierge instead. Mailer speculates that the unfortunate outcome of the whole affair may have caused Picasso and Olivier to separate temporarily a few months later.

Although the details go unrecorded, Olivier and Picasso reunited in November 1907, taking up residence again in Picasso's studio. In the spring of 1908, a young drug-addicted German painter of their acquaintance committed suicide in the Bateau Lavoir, an event that had great impact upon the couple. They were, first of all, put off by opium. "Sick in spirit," recorded Olivier, "our own nerves deranged, we decided to no longer touch the drug." The tragedy also spurred a move out of Paris, to a farm in Ruedes-Bois, near Griel, although this turned out to be a mistake. Uninspired by country living, Picasso was depressed and unable to work ("Everything smells like mushrooms," he complained), and they soon returned to Paris.

In the summer of 1909, Picasso once again took Olivier to Barcelona, then up to Horta de Ebro, where he began a particularly productive period, although Olivier was hardly pleased with his new Cubist renditions of her. "It may seem trifling to speak of a somewhat vain young woman's reaction to Cubism, but [her] face was her fortune, and she could scarcely watch with philosophic detachment while it was carved into ridges," writes Patrick O'Brian in Pablo Ruiz Picasso, "especially as the ridges and the corresponding hollows … belonged to a woman of sixty or more." The relationship was further strained by their recent separation, and by the fact that Olivier was ill, either with a kidney ailment or a venereal disease. "Life is sad. Pablo is in a bad mood, and I have received nothing from him in the way of moral or physical comfort," she wrote to Gertrude Stein. She recovered her health, but as Mailer remarks, "something had hardened in the relationship." In a photograph from Horta de Ebro, Olivier is curiously holding the hand of a disgruntled child. "One more buried anger between Picasso and herself," writes Mailer, "the children she will never give birth to, and the recollection of the sad fiasco of the child they adopted for a week."

Upon their return to Paris, the couple moved out of Bateau Lavoir and into an apartment on the boulevard de Clichy, an upgrade that Olivier had probably wanted for years. Although she adored Picasso's energy and talent, she remained, as Mailer points out, a product of her middle-class upbringing, and therefore was frequently embarrassed by her lover's crudeness. Picasso was also ambivalent about their new middle-class amenities and became moody and given to bouts of hypochondria. Despite their problems, the couple made an effort to improve their social standing, seeing friends, and entertaining at home, although life had little of the spirit and excitement of their earlier days together.

A new woman, Eva Gouel , entered Picasso's life as early as November 1911, although his affair with her was kept secret for six months. Actually, Gouel, who was the mistress of a sculptor named Marcoussis, was introduced to Picasso by Olivier, who at the time may have also been ready for a new lover. In May 1912, she ran off with an Italian painter named Ubaldo Oppi. "Fernande ditched me for a Futurist," Picasso wrote to his friend and collaborator Georges Braque. "What am I going to do with the dog?" The relationship did not end quite so neatly, however. Olivier soon tired of Oppi and went looking for Picasso, who was hiding in Céret with his new love. There were several confrontations there, and upon their return to Paris, before they went their separate ways.

On her own once again, Olivier eked out a small sum of money by selling the few drawings Picasso had given her, then began the scramble to earn a living. She was employed by a friend of Max Jacob's, then went to work for an antique dealer. For three years after that, she appeared at the Lapin Agile, where, displaying a deep, resonant voice, she recited Baudelaire and Duvigny. She then resorted to anything that came her way: she was a tutor, a secretary, a cashier, and even read horoscopes for a time. From 1918 to 1938, she lived with Roger Karl, an actor who had worked with Sarah Bernhardt , but in 20 years he apparently never really made her happy. Perhaps, as Mailer contends, she always remained in love with Picasso.