Conor McGregor brazenly shares snaps from 'jocks' holiday' where he was spotted kissing a mystery woman - as Azealia Banks doubles down on claims he sent her 'nudes'
The MMA fighter, 37, was photographed kissing a mystery brunette woman on the beach during his sun-soaked holiday over the weekend.
However, his fiancée Dee Devlin, who has been engaged to him since 2020, brushed off the scandal as she posted a birthday tribute to her partner on Monday despite the pictures.
And, Conor also batted away the drama as he re-shared messages from his friends on his 37th birthday, posted a photograph of himself from the day of the PDA drama and made a telling comment about 'loyalty' - brazenly ignoring the scandal.
His string of posts came hours before rapper Azealia Banks then took to X - formerly known as Twitter - to double down after accusing Conor of sexual harassment.
On Monday, Azealia, 34, shared alleged nude photos of Conor, which she claimed he sent to her unprompted, as the disgraced fighter was already caught up in a cheating scandal.
Amid the cheating scandal, Conor took to his Instagram Stories to document his 37th birthday, remaining silent on the pictures of him kissing a woman in Florida.
In one photograph, seemingly taken during a recent trip to Ibiza, Conor beamed from ear-to-ear and fist-pumped the air as he threw his arm around his friend's shoulders.
Re-sharing the birthday tribute, the Irish star added his own caption, simply writing: 'Jocks,' not referencing the allegations he punched a man in a nightclub during that trip - before his most recent scandal.
Conor also made a telling comment about there being 'no one more loyal' as one of his female friends shared a snap of them together to mark his birthday.
'No cooler than us! No more loyal than us. Family,' Conor added alongside the picture.
Conor also posted a photograph taken of him at the beach in Florida, going shirtless in green board shorts, which was taken on the same day as the shock PDA pictures, but failed to mention the scandal.
Amongst the string of posts, he also shared a picture with heavyweight boxer Tommy Welch as they posed from inside a very lavish private jet.
The Irish star made no reference to the fresh scandal after he was caught sharing a kiss and a cuddle with a bikini-clad mystery woman over the weekend.
The Irish star made no reference to the fresh scandal after he was caught sharing a kiss and a cuddle with a bikini-clad mystery woman over the weekend
After accusing him of sending her unsolicited nude photographs, Azealia doubled down as she responded to backlash following her claims
They were spotted smooching in full view of other beachgoers during his Fort Lauderdale holiday, before he was seen Facetiming his sons.
His partner Dee - who he shares children, daughter Croia, five, and sons Conor Jr, eight, Rian, three and Mack, 19 months, with - was nowhere in sight.
However, his partner Dee brushed off the scandal as she simply posted a loving tribute to Conor to her Instagram page on Monday.
Dee shared a post from a fan account on her Instagram story which read: 'Happy Birthday to the person who always keeps Dee entertained and makes her smile.'
Just hours later, Azealia also set the internet ablaze after sharing alleged nude photos of Conor that she claims the disgraced UFC legend sent unprompted.
She then doubled down on her claims with further wild posts as she questioned 'where' Conor was amid the scandal and responded to mocking videos.
In one post, shared to X, Azealia questioned: 'Where's Conor a' (sic) before she posted a series of tongue-in-cheek posts about her original allegations.
She responded to one person who accused her of 'committing revenge pornography', writing: 'White ppl r so dry.' (sic)
Azealia also quipped: 'No me and Conor McGregor have been sending each other unsolicited nudes since 2016. LOL,' in response to backlash from users.
Posting on Conor's birthday, she went on: 'I have never met the leprechaun but today is his birthday and he wants everyone to make a wish and blow out the candle ….
'Funny how big of closet maga bait that was… Men are so h*** and obsessed with d*** it's not even funny.'
Re-sharing another video mocking her allegations, she added: 'They loved it.'
Her string of posts came after Azealia accused Conor of sexual harassment when she shared nude photographs purporting to show the MMA star.
'How you gonna send a b**** a some crooked d*** pics then threaten her not to tell,' she wrote alongside the screenshots.
'@TheNotoriousMMA n**** do you know who the f*** I am? This is HARAM.'
Azealia continued: 'Like how are you really going to sexually harrass me with the potato farmer d*** then threaten me not to tell???? Honey…… ain't u trying to be the president of Ireland what is it giving fam? Use some f***ing sunscreen damn.'
As well as the alleged nude selfies, the screenshots also showed a message from what purported to be Conor's account reading: 'Don't be a rat cos all rats get caught.'
Alongside one image which seemingly shows his manhood strapped to a dumbbell, the Irish fighter apparently wrote: 'Lifting weights.'
Azealia then shared another screenshot of the alleged pictures suddenly being 'hidden' on X because she does not follow Conor's account.
Although it is unclear if he had anything to do with that alleged change, she commented: 'The motherf***er woke up early LOL.'
DailyMail.com has reached out to the last-known attorneys on record for Conor, his agent and Azealia's agent for comment.
It is the latest embarrassment to hit the sportsman's relationship with his partner Dee, who was ever-present by his side throughout his sexual assault court case last year.
The pair have been together for 15 years and got engaged in August 2020 after Conor proposed while they were celebrating his birthday.
The couple met as teenagers at a nightclub in 2008 and Dee has been a key player in the MMA star's story, supporting him when he was jobless and focused on making it as a professional fighter.
Conor previously told VIP magazine: 'I asked her to come over and we just started chatting. She seemed like a nice girl, and I like good girls.'
While Dee added: 'He was already training when I met him, so I really admired his dedication to that.'
Speaking to MMA Fighting, Conor gushed: 'I love to spoil her. She does not work anymore, I hired her to the business. She works for me now and collects the cheques.
'Dee worked very hard throughout the years and stuck by me when I had essentially absolutely nothing. I only had a dream that I was telling her.
'For me to be able to take her out of work, give her everything she's ever wanted and to travel the world with her fills me with pride.
'It keeps me going. We've been together a long time. She's been through it all with me.'
The couple live in a £2.5million home in Kildare, a 40-minute drive from Dublin with their four children.
In 2024, Conor lost a civil case as jurors at the High Court in Dublin found him liable of raping Nikita Hand, 35, in a Dublin hotel on December 9, 2018, with the judge awarding Hand €250,000 in damages.
But despite the verdict, Dee has emphatically made clear that she intends to back Conor - attacking Nikita in a series of posts on Instagram at the time.
In the posts, she wrote: 'Conor and I dealt with these issues privately many years ago, as should be done in a relationship and we have come out stronger than ever.
'We have four beautiful children now whose smiling faces and happy hearts are a testament to who he is and who we are!'
In recent weeks, Conor has claimed that he will make his long-awaited return to the UFC at their White House event next year.
He said: 'It's looking like I'm headed to the Oval Office again. That's where I'm headed next,' and his statement was met by a round of applause from fans in attendance.
He has not stepped foot inside the octagon since July 2021, where he suffered a horror leg break against American fighter Dustin Poirier.
He was set to face rival Michael Chandler last summer but, after months of fight build-up, was forced to pull out bout due to a toe injury.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
‘There's a thug in all of us': James Norton on privacy, playing villains and pushing himself to the limit
Two days before we meet, James Norton turned 40. To celebrate, he threw a massive party at his home in north-east London – and he's still feeling the effects. 'I didn't get any sleep,' he admits, 'and yesterday was just a huge clear-up, so if I struggle for a word or an anecdote, please forgive me.' To be fair, I've seen Norton in worse shape. The last time I encountered him in person he was naked, crawling around on all fours while being spat at. 'Oh, yeah,' he smiles, realising I'm talking about his performance as Jude in the 2023 stage version of A Little Life. In that play, an adaptation of Hanya Yanagihara's cult tragic novel, he remained on stage at the Savoy theatre in London for its whopping three-and-a-half-hour length, fully immersed in a character who suffers an immense, seemingly never-ending ordeal of sexual abuse and self-harm. 'That was a proper … ' He trails off and exhales. 'That was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.' Norton has talked in the past about how playing Jude took it out of him – he would find himself unable to stop crying, or rendered catatonic. Despite all this, the moment the play ended he thought, 'What if that's it? What if it's never as challenging again? It's like those people who run a marathon, it nearly kills them, and then two weeks later they want to sign up for another.' This is what we're here to talk about today: the career equivalent of that second marathon. For Norton, it's two huge TV projects, the kind that could turn him from one of Britain's most admired actors – known for playing complex men in shows such as Happy Valley and films such as Mr Jones – into a global name (not for nothing have rumours persisted that he could be the next Bond). First is King & Conqueror, the new BBC drama he has been working on with his production company, Rabbit Track, for seven years. It tells the epic story of 1066 and the battle between Harold Godwinson (Norton) and William, Duke of Normandy (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) for the English crown. Then there's House of Guinness, a glossy Netflix drama about the Irish stout dynasty, written by Steven Knight who made Peaky Blinders. They are landing at a moment that feels transformative for the actor – and not only because of any just-turned-40 jitters. A few years ago, Norton had been worried that acting was frivolous – 'dressing up and fucking around' as he puts it. But A Little Life made him realise that, no, it has a purpose. He would meet real-life abuse survivors at the stage door every night and learn how important the show had been for them. It made him think about his own past, as a victim of bullies while a young teen at boarding school. And by literally baring all on stage, he became more open, even if said openness – such as spilling his feelings about his 2023 split with former fiancee and fellow actor Imogen Poots, during a panel at this year's Glastonbury festival, which went viral on TikTok – sometimes leaves him feeling exposed. 'If I'd known there was a journalist in the audience I probably wouldn't have been so honest,' he says with a smile. 'I'm realising more and more everyone has a fucking phone.' We meet in Ham Yard, fittingly the same Soho hotel where Norton celebrated A Little Life's closing party. He cycled here alone and I spot him wandering around the bar, looking for someone who might feasibly be a journalist. In his baggy trousers and T-shirt, he makes for cheerful, relaxed company, though he assures me he often turns up to interviews dripping in sweat from having pedalled frantically to make it on time. He has a puppyish enthusiasm for his work and when he smiles – which is often – his eyes crinkle up and close. When a passing woman interrupts us to tell him, 'I think you're an amazing actor,' he bashfully thanks her before turning to me and pretending he's writing this piece: 'And at this point, the actor's mum turns up.' Norton orders tea – Earl Grey with a spot of oat milk – and tells me about King & Conqueror. 'I put my hands up and admit I didn't know the story at all,' he says. 'I just had a vague gloss of it from school. I wasn't aware of the relationship Harold and William had before the battle, that they were friends and allies for many years before they realised that, because of the way Europe was being carved up, they would both inevitably end up on a battlefield – and one of them would have to die.' The Rest Is History podcast once compared the events leading up to 1066 to Game of Thrones, and Norton agrees. 'It's mad to think nobody has really done it before,' he says. 'And that's one of the reasons we spent so long developing it.' Producing is clearly new territory for Norton. King & Conqueror was shot in Iceland, and he found himself struggling with concepts that don't normally intrude on an actor's consciousness, such as budget. 'It's the closest I've ever come to feeling like I'd bitten off too much,' Norton says. 'I started using the word 'burnout', which is just, like, oh God.' He likes to play down any struggles he talks about, hyper aware people may be thinking, 'Oh, give it a rest, you're making television.' But he's also keen to point out that being under pressure is really his ideal performance state: 'I just do better. Too much time and space makes me slightly inert.' Far less stressful, he says, is his forthcoming role – purely as an actor – in House of Guinness. No budget worries here: he plays Sean Rafferty, a whip-cracking hardman who keeps the stout company's workers in line while the Guinness siblings fall into a Succession-style squabble over inheritance, sparked by their father Sir Benjamin's devilishly crafted will. Norton – who used a special accent coach to nail not only the area (Dublin) but also the period (mid-19th century) – says an awful lot of Guinness 0.0 was consumed on set. And off set? 'We shot it in Liverpool, which is full of good Irish pubs. So, yeah, we were splitting the Gs and all that.' He's referring to the art of making sure your first gulp of Guinness leaves the pint settled at the 'G' on the branded glass. Did he perfect it? 'I think I did,' he says, sounding very unsure. 'It usually happened later in the night. I mean … I've got vague memories of jumping around a pub.' Whether on or off camera, Norton feels comfortable at the centre of the action these days, which hasn't always been the case. Back when he was starting out as an actor, he auditioned for Fifty Shades of Grey. 'And I remember the director saying, 'Can you be a bit more charismatic?'' He laughs. 'That's the hardest thing to just try and do! Especially since I was too young and self-conscious to even really know what she meant.' These days, he thinks he has acquired the age and experience to perform a darkly magnetic character such as Rafferty. 'And it felt great,' he says. 'Because it taps into that alter ego of who you'd love to be. He's violent, but he's romantic, too. There's a thug in all of us.' Norton portrayed one of the great villains of British television in Happy Valley's Tommy Lee Royce. The character he helped create – charming, psychopathic, but in glimpses vulnerable, too – is what he does perfectly. His roles often strike a nerve because they wrestle with the pressures and flaws of modern masculinity. The secret to playing a character like Royce, he says, is that you have to like them on some level. 'In the early stages, someone like Tommy was defined only by cruelty and violence, when in fact he's defined by damage, trauma and fear. So the way in is trying to separate acts that are inherently abhorrent and unforgivable from the context. And the context is that, nearly always, anyone capable of that type of cruelty has been subjected to cruelty. So he's just a deeply sad, damaged man. Maybe 'like' is the wrong word, but empathy for sure.' Happy Valley made Norton a household name, but he says he has been lucky that his career has involved big next steps rather than giant leaps that might have left him out of his depth. He started in theatre, and did some guest days on TV and film, before Happy Valley was followed by shows such as Grantchester, in which he played sleuthing vicar Sidney Chambers, and McMafia, as the son of a Russian mafia boss living in London. Then came the chance to do A Little Life. The thought of playing the lead terrified Norton – which was the reason Poots and his agent told him he had to do it. If playing Jude was gruelling, there were other factors that made it even harder for Norton. At 22 he was diagnosed with diabetes and, as a result, is constantly hooked up via Bluetooth to a glucose monitor (he has to self-inject up to 15 times a day). For A Little Life he carefully stashed sugar gels around the stage to help him stay on top of things. If the Bluetooth failed, a stage manager would be on alert to get the message to him. 'Someone might be doing an intimate scene with me, or something violent, and when they were close up they'd whisper 'three point two', then carry on. It was intense.' On only one occasion did Norton fail to respond in time. 'One horrible thing about having a hypoglycemic moment is you get a kind of clarity at first, which makes you think you don't need sugar. Then what happens next is like a sort of terrible psychedelic trip, where you're so confused you don't know where you are.' It happened during a scene where he was required to run around the stage. 'It was terrifying. I was dripping with sweat, dropping my lines, confused. The actors could all tell something wasn't right.' When the play first opened, some audience members disobeyed the strict no-cameras rule and snapped Norton during his naked scenes – photos even ended up appearing on MailOnline. He must have felt violated? 'Yeah … I mean, violated is probably too strong. My strongest memory is that it was just a bit sad, a bit gross, this idea that it would be framed in a kind of titillating way when the subject matter was so clearly vicious and upsetting. But I think the reaction, generally, was that it was misjudged, which was gratifying.' The naked scenes caused a lot of noise around the show. Norton said at the time he thought 'as a culture', we are 'scared of the penis', though he thinks we have since become a lot better at accepting male nudity on screen. Have we, though, I wonder? The biggest (excuse the pun) example of male nudity I can think of is The White Lotus, which involved the use of giant prosthetic ones. If those are what we're all looking at, no wonder society is scared of the penis. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion 'Yeah, that is a bit weird,' Norton muses. 'But I think it's deliberate – they want it to be big, right? It's like in Pam & Tommy, where there's an animatronic penis that talks.' He laughs while considering his position on all of this. 'I can say that I have never had a prosthetic or an animatronic penis. All my penis work is my own.' He falls silent. 'Oh shit, that's going to be the headline, isn't it? Do I need to call my publicist?' Norton was born in south London but grew up in Malton, North Yorkshire. He has described his childhood as 'idyllic' but that's not exactly true. He was sent to boarding school and found himself being tormented by bullies there. 'It's that thing where a lot of boys are having separation anxiety, feelings of fear and confusion as to why they've been taken out of their home at the age of 11,' he says. 'A lot of people retreat into themselves, and others deal with that same confusion by doing that Lord of the Flies thing and becoming the bully. I was young for my year and I became an exciting target because I would react to things that were thrown my way. I didn't have the self-awareness to just go: whatever.' Norton has a tendency to play it down, but he acknowledges that the scars have stayed with him. 'Oh, for sure. It's something that is part of the jigsaw puzzle of my 40-now years.' In fact, part of the reason he took on the role of Jude was that he thought it might somehow rid him of the bullied child within. Did it go deeper than that: did he see fame as an act of revenge on the bullies? 'There's a sort of byproduct to the acting thing, which is that the barometer of your success is the public reaction,' he says. 'That can get hijacked by parts of your personality which are needing affirmation, which we all have. That part of me is gratified by the feeling of being on a billboard or whatever. Then you step away from that and realise it's not going to really get rid of that need for affirmation, because nothing will.' Norton thought he had a decent gauge when it came to not letting work intrude on his personal life. 'I've always been clear about it taking up too much space at the expense of relationships and friendships,' he says. 'But A Little Life, more than any other job, was where that didn't happen. It took everything out of me.' As an outside observer, it's hard not to wonder if the pressure he put himself under contributed to his split with Poots after six years. But he says no. 'That happened naturally and amicably. Two actors going out is always challenging because of scheduling. We were travelling a lot. And that was one of many factors that brought a very happy relationship to an end.' Norton has given a decent impression of a man pretty comfortable with all aspects of fame – but since the split he has found the attention on his love life oppressive. 'I've always tried to balance authenticity with privacy,' he says. 'I want to be honest but I don't want to talk about my relationships at all and I don't like it when I get photographed with a friend walking down the street and it's then told the next day like it's a romance. Another romance!' The week before we meet there has indeed been tabloid speculation about various women in Norton's life. He was photographed with the socialite Flora Huddart; before that he was hanging out at the Lido festival in London with Lily Allen. 'Snogging', one tabloid reported, although if you actually looked at the pictures … 'I'm not snogging them! Funny that, isn't it?' he says. Norton is laughing while we discuss this, but there's a subtle vibe shift in the room. Five minutes ago it felt as if he would have happily sat here chatting away for hours. Now, maybe he has an eye on the clock. 'Look,' he says, 'I'm a man in London going on occasional dates, meeting people, living my life, and it's kind of no one's business really.' Which is, of course, fair enough. The only reason he talked about his romantic life at Glastonbury, he says, was because Annie Mac asked him if he had experienced any big life changes, and he always tries to answer things honestly. 'I was like, well, I had a breakup and that was a massive change.' He says he has been fortunate to go through life without having to deal with any major grief, but that he came to realise the split was a kind of grief in itself. 'I lost the person,' he told the crowd, 'but I also lost the life I was about to lead, the kids we had named, all that kind of stuff.' It probably didn't help matters that, as he approached 40, Norton was starting to pick up roles as dads in shows such as Playing Nice (he calls it his 'sad dad era'). 'If you'd asked me at 25, I probably thought I might have a kid by 40,' he says. 'But equally, I had a fucking great 30s, and hopefully kids might still be in my life at some point. That's the privilege of being a man and not having to worry about my biological clock.' In a way, he says, he's more relaxed now than he was a decade ago when everyone around him started having kids. 'I think I did feel that pressure to get on the train, do the same thing.' If Norton sounds Zen about it all now, there are good reasons why. After the split from Poots he went to Plum Village, a Buddhist retreat in France set up by the Vietnamese monk and activist Thích Nhat Hanh. Norton actually studied theology at Cambridge before he trained at Rada, specialising in Buddhist and Hindu faith, and as a teenager he had a period where he became 'very committed' to Catholicism. But this is different, he says. 'With Buddhism, you don't really talk about faith. The teaching isn't about worship. It's about the self. It's about one's own journey and experience of the world. And it's been amazing for me. It's an incredible community and it's given me an opportunity to just stop and recognise the value of quiet, peaceful space, which I don't often give myself in life. Even just to rest and sleep. I think for a lot of my younger years I thought inaction and stasis was just a waste of time.' There's certainly not too much sleep or rest going on. Norton's new producing gig is almost a full-time job, and a different one. 'I sit at a desk, discuss ideas and read scripts. It's broader and more empowering than just turning up very late in the development process as an actor.' He will be appearing in about half of the shows Rabbit Track produce, and there are other gigs, too – he has been filming Sunny Dancer, a British comedy about a teenage cancer survivor going to 'chemo camp', and will appear as Ormund Hightower, leading a march on King's Landing, in season three of House of the Dragon. Norton has been generous with his time, but it's the moment to wrap things up. I sense a hint of relief that there will be no more prying questions. 'Was that OK?' I ask. 'Or was it a bit … ' 'Yeah, you went close,' he says, laughing. It's only later that I start to wonder what he meant by that. I went close … to what, exactly? Him storming out? Throwing me a Tommy Lee Royce-style punch before drenching me in Earl Grey and oat milk? It's all rather hard to imagine. The James Norton of today seems to be able to smile gracefully, suck up any negativity and take it all in his stride. He seems extremely content; secure in his own skin while restlessly creative. And all of that with a whopping hangover. King & Conqueror airs on BBC One and iPlayer from 24 August. House of Guinness is on Netflix in September.
Times
3 hours ago
- Times
Inside Picasso's studios: the secrets of the places where he lived and loved
Life is art. There are few artists for whom that's more true than for Picasso. You can chart the ups and downs of his romances through his canvases — and establish overlapping timelines; you can assess his emotional state; you can estimate his affluence (consistently increasing) or the size of the space he's working in (ditto). Even his interior scenes function as a kind of self-portrait. It's interior spaces that form the backbone of the forthcoming exhibition at the National Gallery of Ireland (NGI), Picasso: From the Studio. Curated with the Musée Picasso in Paris, with a large number of loans from that elegant institution, it takes a chronological journey through the Spanish artist's career, via the key locations in France in which he worked. It will look at how the artist's environment influenced his output, from soon after his arrival in Paris from Barcelona at the start of the 20th century to his last home and studio at Mougins, through paintings, sculptures, ceramics and works on paper, photography and rarely seen film. There are more than 150 recorded places that Picasso made art throughout his life, but the exhibition begins around 1912, as Picasso and Georges Braque were egging each other on to develop cubism. Small assemblages and collages from this time, including the gallery's own 1913 collage Bottle and Newspaper, will feature alongside works made of scavenged materials: paper scraps, stencilled letters, canvas, wood, pliable tin, nails, sand and paint. These experiments show how the studio was 'the laboratory of his work', the exhibition's co-curator Joanne Snrech says, but their modest size reflects the ad hoc spaces in which he worked — easier to lug around Paris to the next ramshackle spot. By the Twenties Picasso was a success. He was collaborating with Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, and having married the dancer Olga Khokhlova in 1918 was a darling of society. • Picasso or Goya: who created Spain's most important painting? As he holidayed on the newly fashionable Côte d'Azur, the sea, sunlight and the company of glam pals imbued Picasso's work with a sunny exuberance. These paintings (because Picasso worked everywhere, even on holiday) exude the heat of the Riviera — a rare landscape made at his summer studio in Juan-les-Pins, where he and Olga stayed in 1920, or the jolly Still Life with a Mandolin from 1924, both in the show. During the Thirties, though, all sorts of shifts happened. In 1927 Picasso, aged 45, had met 17-year-old Marie-Thérèse Walter outside a Paris department store, and started a relationship with her. In 1930 he bought a manor house at Boisgeloup in Normandy, about 45 miles from his Paris home, establishing a studio on the light-filled second floor, and began dividing his time between it and Paris. Olga stayed in the city with their son, Paolo, during the week, so the painter was free to have his young mistress visit him often in Boisgeloup. They kept the relationship secret for eight years — goodness knows how, since Walter haunts his work throughout this period, her golden hair and almond-shaped eyes unmistakable even when distorted by cubism. Nearly all the show's works from this studio depict her, including a serene portrait from 1937, two years after the birth of their daughter, Maya, at which time Picasso tried to divorce Olga (she refused; they stayed married until her death in 1955) — and around the time that he met the photographer Dora Maar, of whom, inevitably, more later. Boisgeloup didn't just enable the indulgence of a new muse. A large outbuilding allowed him to more intensely explore sculpture, especially monumental heads and busts. You can guess the dominant subject. His next studio was on the Rue des Grands-Augustins in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés district of Paris. Picasso liked it because the shabby 17th-century townhouse had a connection to Balzac as the residence for the painter Frenhofer, the main character in his novel The Unknown Masterpiece. It is where Picasso painted probably his second most famous work (the first being his 1907 masterpiece Les Demoiselles d'Avignon). Guernica was a commission from the Republican government for the Spanish pavilion at the 1937 Exposition Internationale in Paris. • Read more art reviews, guides and interviews Maar found the vast attic studio for him — partly thanks to it being a meeting place for the resistance group Contre-attaque, of which she had been a member — and secured exclusive rights to document the painting's creation for the magazine Cahiers d'art. Quite different from Walter, whom the co-curator Janet McLean describes as 'dreamy and romantic', Maar was fiery and passionately left-wing, and as she documented his work, 'they were bouncing off each other … it was a meeting of minds for sure,' her political zeal influencing the direction of the painting. Sadly, Guernica doesn't travel, but several works from the period give a sense of the tension and confinement of those difficult years. 'I'm glad we're able to show these quite frugal paintings made in 1938, when there were a lot of refugees coming to France due to the Spanish Civil War,' McLean says. One such is Child with a Lollipop Sitting Under a Chair, donated by Maya to the Musée Picasso a few years ago. Painted in sombre monochrome, 'it's not a pretty picture of a child', McLean says; instead it has a huddled, claustrophobic feel. 'It's interesting to show Picasso connected to the world, because he really was.' It's not known why Picasso elected to remain in Paris as the Second World War intensified — he was unable to exhibit, the Nazi regime considered his work 'degenerate' — but he kept working away in his attic, photographed there in 1944 by Brassaï. A shot from this series will be in the exhibition, alongside Bust of a Woman with a Blue Hat, a portrait of Maar made the same year, just after their not-quite-definitive break-up (they continued to see each other intermittently until 1946). One of the aims of the exhibition, McLean says, is to show 'Picasso's versatility as an artist. While he considered himself primarily a painter, he was exceptional in his ability to turn his hand to any medium.' A wonderful example of this is his playful ceramics, influenced by the studio he took from 1948-55 at Vallauris, a small town on the Côte d'Azur. It was home to a number of ceramic factories, depicted in Picasso's 1951 canvas Smoke in Vallauris, where thick black puffs pump urgently into the sky from the wood-burning kilns. Inspired by Georges and Suzanne Ramié, the owners of the Madoura Pottery, he bought a villa nearby and set about learning from Suzanne, saying: 'I don't think I'm a ceramicist, next to ceramicists who are real ceramicists, I'm just […] an unfortunate amateur and an ignoramus. I try, I listen, I look, I try to pass my time.' He produced more than 3,600 pieces in just a few years, several of which will be on display, including a dove modelled ingeniously out of a few flops of folded clay. He got so into it that an American newspaper referred to him as 'left-wing ceramicist artist Picasso'. He was, at the time, active as part of the Movement for Peace and the French Communist Party. He enjoyed collaborating with his fellow artisans, and was active in the community, attending local bullfights and openings of pottery exhibitions, for which he designed the posters (free of charge), and portrayed his family life in pictures as part of a simple creative ideal. • My journey through the French region most famous for its artists A touching example of this is the 1954 canvas Claude drawing, Françoise and Paloma, a harmonious image depicting his two youngest children with their mother, the painter Françoise Gilot, whom he had met in 1943 (he 61, she 21) — except that Gilot is shown oddly only as an outline, curved protectively around her children. She had left him and returned to Paris with them the year before. Still, his time in Vallauris was transformative for his output and for the town. In 1949 he donated his sculpture L'Homme au mouton (Man with a sheep) — it's still on the market square — and in 1951 he created the War and Peace cycle in a local chapel. His presence, McLean says, 'revitalised the ceramics industry in that region'. Man of the people he may have been, but he was also very rich, and in 1955 he acquired La Californie, a des res in Cannes, where for the first time he lived and worked in the same space, which must have been inconvenient for his family (he had met his new partner, Jacqueline Roque, in 1952, when she was 26 and he was 70), given the rapid accumulation of artworks that filled every inch. The three adjoining rooms on the ground floor served as studio and living area, with rounded windows that opened onto a lush garden into which his sculpture spilled (the show features a great 1960-61 photograph of him there by André Sonine). He seems to have seen La Californie as a sort of extension of himself, judging by the vigour with which he depicts it in his art. 'This was the first time he had paid so much attention to his studio,' Snrech writes in the catalogue, 'to the extent that these works can be seen almost as self-portraits.' Several will be on display, including a magnificent 1956 canvas made in homage to Henri Matisse, who had died in 1954. The room is empty of people, but the painter's presence is suggested by paintings and objects, and in the centre a blank canvas sits expectantly on an easel. Picasso called these paintings 'interior landscapes'. Eventually the lack of privacy in fast-developing Cannes drove him out. In 1961 — the year that he married Jacqueline at the town hall in Vallauris — he moved to his final studio, the Notre Dame de Vie farmhouse in the nearby town of Mougins. Surrounded by work from across his life (an entire wing was dedicated to the display of his sculptures), this was the scene of a final flowering, a period of insane productivity. He produced about 200 paintings between September 1970 and June 1972, and he created more portraits of Jacqueline than of any of his other partners. In contrast to the hurly-burly of La Californie, he worked in relative solitude, assailed by memory — in a series of etchings, La Suite 347, created when he was 86, he returns to motifs such as bullfighters, circus performers, artists and models, mythology and literature, musketeers and animals — and by an urgent need to innovate, seen in the free, gestural brushstrokes of paintings such as Reclining Nude, 1967. It was here that he died, in April 1973, probably from a heart attack. According to Paris Match, Jacqueline called his doctor in the early hours of the morning; he died a few hours later, at 11.45am, at the age of 91. There was no will, of course (not his problem), and more than 45,000 unsold works strewn across his various studios. An artist, first, foremost and only, to the last. Picasso: From the Studio is at the National Gallery of Ireland, October 9 to February 22,
Daily Mail
5 hours ago
- Daily Mail
The best Queen we never had: On eve of her 75th birthday, secrets of Princess Anne's life - from why she never sunbathes to who really does her hair, revealed by REBECCA ENGLISH
Few will be surprised to hear that Princess Anne is not prone to public displays of sentiment. But after turning down endless requests to shoot a new portrait to mark her 75th birthday next week, she finally agreed to pose for a picture at Windsor Castle last month, shortly before the French state banquet.
