Suzanne Valadon
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Suzanne Valadon (September 23, 1865 – April 7, 1938) was a French painter who worked first as an artist's model, before becoming a noted painter herself.
Born Marie-Clémentine Valadon at Bessines-sur-Gartempe, Haute-Vienne, France, the daughter of an unmarried laundress, Suzanne Valadon became a circus acrobat at the age of 15; at 16 a fall from a trapeze ended her career. In the Montmartre quarter of Paris she pursued her interest in art.
Said to be a strikingly beautiful woman, she worked as an artists' model, and observed and learned the artists' techniques. She modeled for artists Edgar Degas, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, and had affairs with at least the latter two. The most recognizable image of Valadon would be in Renoir's Dance at Bougival from 1883, the same year that she posed for City Dance. In 1885 Renoir painted her portrait again as Girl Braiding Her Hair. Valadon haunted the sleazy bars of Paris and in 1889 Toulouse-Lautrec painted her as the world-weary subject of The Hangover.
Degas, impressed with her bold line drawings and fine paintings, purchased her work and encouraged her efforts. Unlike many of her peers, Valadon received acclaim and some financial success during her lifetime.
Despite her achievements, she lived in the shadows of her artist son born in 1883, whose paternity she never divulged. Named Maurice Valadon at birth, her son later took the family name of a close friend and as Maurice Utrillo, he became one of Montmartre's well known artists.
Suzanne Valadon painted still lifes, floral art, and landscapes that are noted for their strong composition and vibrant colors. She was, however, best known for her candid female nudes.
Her first exhibitions in the early 1890s consisted mainly of portraits, among them one of the composer Erik Satie, with whom she had a 6-month affair in 1893. A smitten Satie proposed marriage after their first night together. For Satie, the intimacy of his relationship with Valadon would be the only one of its kind in his life, leaving him, he said, with "nothing but an icy loneliness that fills the head with emptiness and the heart with sadness."
In 1894 Valadon was the first woman admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. A perfectionist, Valadon worked for up to 13 years on her oil paintings before showing them.
A free spirit, she would wear a corsage of carrots, kept a goat in her studio to "eat up her bad drawings", and fed caviar to her "good Catholic" cats on Fridays.
Her marriage to stockbroker Paul Mousis in 1896 failed, when in 1909 the then 44-year old Valadon left Mousis for 23-year-old painter André Utter. She married Utter in 1914, but the marriage also did not last.
Suzanne Valadon died on April 7, 1938 and was interred in the Cimetière de Saint-Ouen in Paris. Amongst those in attendance at her funeral were her artist friends Andre Derain, Pablo Picasso, and Georges Braque.
Today, some of her works can be seen at the Centre Georges Pompidou, in Paris and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.
In 1998, a book by author June Rose titled, Suzanne Valadon - Mistress of Montmartre was published and another book by Elaine Todd Koren was published in 2001 titled: Suzanne: of Love and Art.
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A biographical novel on Suzanne Valadon's life
