Musical accompaniment: Death Letter by Son House, king of the delta blues!

 

Today, I want to talk with you about Eva Gouel. There’s not a lot of information about her, as she’s only known through her relationship with Picasso. I have some mixed feelings about her story and I don’t want to color in my description of it. Instead, I’m going to stick to the facts so you can make up your own minds—though I’m very interested to read what you think!

Eve Gouel was born in 1885 in Vincennes, France. Like many women of this time, she adopted different names to keep her background mysterious. People from the turn of the century highly valued privacy and considered mysteriousness to be a wonderful and alluring quality, if you could achieve it.

She adopted the name Marcelle Humbert, which is how she was known when her boyfriend, a sculptor named Marcoussis, introduced her to Pablo Picasso and his girlfriend, a tall redhead named Fernande Olivier.

Fernande and Picasso together in Paris:

In Paris, she changed her name again, this time to one very similar to her given name: Eva Gouel.

Eva got to know Olivier better as time went on. Fernande was French as well, and she had also changed her name. She was born Amélie Lang.  She married Paul Percheron in 1899, but she left him after meeting and falling madly in love with Picasso. She moved in with the painter in 1905, and worked as an artist and model.

Fernande and Picasso had a fiery relationship. They were jealous and suspicious of each other but, according to Fernande, Picasso was obsessive. “His eyes implore me. He watches, religiously, whatever I do…. When I awake, I find him at the head of the bed, his eyes full of anguish, fixed on me,” she later wrote.

By 1911, Picasso was finding success and simultaneously growing bored with Fernande. Around the same time, Fernande took Eva Gouel into her confidence and told her about an affair she was having with a Futurist painter named Ubaldo Oppi. Eva encouraged her. This may have been because, unbeknownst to Fernande, Eva was having an affair with Picasso.

Fernande eventually ran off with Oppi for a few months, but soon grew bored with him. When she tried to return to Picasso in 1912, she found he was thoroughly wrapped up with Eva Gouel.  Fernande was out in the cold. She had no rights to anything from Picasso, since she never married him. In fact, she was still married to her first husband. Fernande tried hard but Picasso wasn’t interested in her anymore.

But who was Eva Gouel?

Picasso’s friends described Eva as calculating. The painter Gino Severini described her as a “small spicy girl who looked like a Chinese doll.” Norman Mailer in his Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man, described her as “small, sweet, superficially submissive, orderly, thrifty and devoted to Picasso.”

Eva was the inspiration for many Picasso paintings, including Ma Jolie, a name he often used for her. It translates roughly to “my lovely one.” Eva contracted tuberculosis in 1915. She hid the illness from Picasso as long as possible, until she was hospitalized in the fall of that year.

Picasso was an incorrigible womanizer who was unable to be alone. Though he visited Eva in the hospital daily, he went home each night to a new girlfriend, Gaby Lespinasse. Eva passed away in December 1915. She was 30 years old.

According to the footnotes of history that mention Eva, Picasso was devastated by her death and his 1915 painting, Harlequin, was said to be a reflection of his sorrow.