Picasso, Provence and Douglas Cooper
This is a richly entertaining memoir of life with the brilliant but controversial art expert, Douglas Cooper, a fiendish, colourful, Evelyn Waugh-like figure who single-handedly assembled the world's most important private collection of Cubist paintings.
The book tells the story of the author's ill-fated but comical association with Cooper, which began in London in 1949 and moved on to the Chateau de Castille, a colonnaded folly in Provence filled with masterpieces by Picasso, Braque, Leger and Juan Gris. It unfurls an adventure lasting twelve years, encompassing artists and writers, collectors and the famous - Francis Bacon, Jean Cocteau, Dora Maar, Peggy Guggenheim and Anthony Blunt to name but a few.
Central to the book is Richardson's close friendship with Picasso, which coincided with the emergence of the artist's new mistress, Jacqueline Roque, and which gave Richardson an inside view of the repercussions she would have on Picasso's life and work.
