Never had an artist been so preoccupied with her own image as Lempicka: she herself did many self-portraits, and, more especially, spent hours to sitting for photographers, where she would take on the attitude of a professional model. Her long stay in Hollywood, and all her efforts to penetrate the movie world, suggest that she longed to be in the "spotlight". Her "screen test" - with the newsreel producers Pathé in 1932 - shows a supremely self-assured image of her coming down the staircase of her rue Méchain studio, flourishing a seemingly endless cigarette-holder.

Tamara and Tadeusz were divorced (against the artist's wishes) and the portrait she had begun to paint of her husband (cat.38) was never finished. She made the acquaintance of Dr Pierre Boucard, who commissioned several portraits. Working increasingly hard, she began to enjoy financial success, spending long periods in Cannes.

Lempicka gave birth to her daughter at a very young age. Quite early on, she used Kizette as a model, painting her through a marvelling eye. The five large-scale portraits she did of Kizette, between 1923 and 1933, remain among the most noteworthy of her artistic accomplishments. Baroness de Lempicka-Foxhall, as Kizette has now become, gathered together her recollections and, with the help of Charles Phillips, published them in the form of a biography in 1987: Passion by Design, The Art and Times of Tamara de Lempicka, op.cit.