French painter, illustrator, and stage designer, born in Paris. Apart from evening classes in drawing, she was self-taught as an artist. In 1907 she was introduced by the picture dealer Clovis Sagot to *Apollinaire, *Picasso and their circle (she painted a group portrait of several of her famous friends in 1908: The Guests, Baltimore Museum of Art). For several years she lived with Apollinaire, and she exhibited with the *Cubists. Her work, however, was entirely peripheral to the Cubist movement. She specialized in portraits of oval-faced, almond-eyed young girls painted in pastel colours, and although she borrowed a few tricks of stylization from her Cubist friends, her style remained essentially unaffected by them. Her work was lyrically charming and rather repetitive.
Text source: A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art (Oxford University Press)