This portrait was taken the year after Jane Bown joined the Observer. In 2000 she recalled “This was my first trip to Paris. I did a deal with the paper that if they sent me and a friend, I would come back with four pictures. My friend wore a red hat and I wore a green one.”
Jane couldn’t recall who the other three subjects were but she never forgot Cocteau.
In Paris, Jane, who spoke no French, took seven frames of the artist on her beloved Rolleiflex camera, including two with his cat Madeleine. On her return to London, Jane sent a set of prints to Cocteau, who wrote back shortly after.
A Cocteauesque translation runs: “Rare are they who think of those whose images they carry away. And so I am very grateful to you. All the proofs are magnificent. Madeleine is in ecstasy over the Siamese cat. All the household embraces you.”
It was to be two years until the Observer published the portrait, when the paper ran a profile of Cocteau on 30 November 1952.
