The publication coincides with a period of particular commercial success for Ms. Gilot. “In the last 10 years, there’s been a tremendous snowball of interest in her work,” Ms. McGaughey said. “Pieces that sold for $10,000 10 to 15 years ago are twice that or more now. The market can’t get enough of her.”

A few weeks after I met with Ms. Gilot, I visited the Elkon Gallery on the Upper East Side where several of her works are held. Two of those works had been viewed by a potential buyer that week: a painting of herself with Paloma, “Protection,” from 1954, and a drawing, “Self-Portrait by the Sea,” from 1946, which she completed when she was 25 — the year she began living with Picasso.

In the 1946 drawing, she’s looking upward and there’s a man in the background walking toward her. It reminded me of something she said about her art when we met: “In the work of all the generations of painters who were like Picasso, the figure is so huge, it’s all over the painting,” she explained. “Whereas me, I have turned it the other way around. The figure is lost in a universe that is very much bigger.” One could say the same about her personal outlook on life, too.