Life as a Muse

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Arts and culture

Summary

Author, historian and curator Ruth Millington celebrates the people who have inspired great art, determined to reset the reputation of these men and women who influence and enable much-loved works of art. She meets Celia Birtwell, who is the figure in David Hockney's Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy, and Lydia Corbett, aka Sylvette, was the inspiration for Picasso's Ponytail Period

Review

Simon O'Hagan

In the era of #MeToo, the idea of the “muse” — typically a young, beautiful woman “inspiring” a much older man — has become thoroughly discredited. For “muse”, read “victim”. But here comes the author and curator Ruth Millington — herself identifying as a muse — to try to reclaim the role, and in her hands the muse-artist relationship through the ages emerges as much more complex than current thinking might allow.

Millington’s most remarkable interviewee is 90-year-old Lydia Corbett, or Sylvette as she was known, who is described as Picasso’s last muse. She looks back on the time she spent as a subject for Picasso’s art with equanimity, believing those portraits showed his love for her. Celia Birtwell’s claims to have been a muse to David Hockney seem less well founded, but this is an intriguing exploration, nonetheless.

Life as a Muse

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