Valentine Penrose
French writer and artist (1898–1978)
Valentine Penrose (née Boué; 1 January 1898 – 7 August 1978) was a French surrealist poet, author, and collagist.
Life and career
Valentine Boué was born in 1898 to a military family in Mont-de-Marsan, Landes, France. The family moved to Paris when she was very young.
In 1925, she married the English artist, historian and poet Roland Penrose (1900–1984) and joined the community of surrealists based in Paris, Mougins and England. The marriage was never consummated. Boué and her husband moved to Spain in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War. In the same year she joined the workers militia in Spain to defend the revolution. Valentine and Roland had different viewpoints on traditions in India, Eastern thought, and philosophy, which all led to a growing distance between the two. They were divorced in 1937, but met again in London during the war, after which she lived half her time with her ex-husband and his second wife, the American photojournalist Lee Miller. This arrangement continued for the rest of her life.
The public source identifies “Valentine Penrose” as french writer and artist (1898–1978). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Valentine, Penrose and French.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3553654. VIAF identifies the subject as 100256676. The Library of Congress control number is n88636288. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1898, 1978, 1925 and 1900.
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This entry incorporates text from “Valentine Penrose” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.