These Never-Before-Seen Photos of Brigitte Bardot Capture Her Breezy, Beachy Style

“These photographs, drawn by a painter friend, are the most beautiful tribute an actress can ever receive while alive,” a 90-year-old Brigitte Bardot tells Vogue of Ghislain “Jicky” Dussart’s portraits of her, now published for the first time in the new Assouline book, Brigitte Bardot: Intimate. Indeed, these rare, recently discovered negatives from Dussart’s collection evoke a softer side of the woman who, after her 1956 role in And God Created Woman, was often referred to as a “sex kitten” by the world’s press.

Bardot and Dussart first met in Paris, all the way back in 1953. A fast friendship grew between the on-the-rise model and the artist, and remained in place until Dussart’s death in 1996. “He served as her friend, her protector, her respectful confidant,” French author Fabrice Gaignault writes in the book’s foreword. “He was also her self-appointed bodyguard when intruders and paparazzi crossed boundaries.” In turn, she served as his muse: first, for his Cubist paintings, and later, for his photography.

While they collaborated on several fashion editorials together, it was Dussart’s fly-on-the-wall photos of Bardot that hold the greatest emotional—and artistic—value: of the actor sunbathing at la Madrague, waking up in the morning at home in Saint-Tropez, or playing with her dogs. (Or, indeed, her duck: as these portraits reveal, Bardot adopted a duckling she found in Mexico.) He’d also often visit her on film sets, capturing her alongside now-legendary directors like Jean-Luc Godard. “The photos he took of me are true, because I had total trust in Jicky,” Bardot tells Gaignault. “I knew that he would never let me down.”

Below, eight never-before-seen photographs of Brigitte Bardot.