Suzanne Valadon

Suzanne Valadon Born Marie-Clémentine Valadon 23 September 1865 Bessines-sur-Gartempe, France Died 7 April 1938 (aged 72) Paris, France Nationality French Known for Painter and artist's model Movement Postimpressionism, Symbolism Partner(s) Erik Satie, Paul Mousis, André Utter Suzanne Valadon (23 September 1865 – 7 April 1938) was a French painter and artists' model who was born Marie-Clémentine Valadon at Bessines-sur-Gartempe, Haute-Vienne, France. In 1894, Valadon became the first woman painter admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. She was also the mother of painter Maurice Utrillo. Valadon spent nearly 40 years of her life as an artist. The subjects of her drawings and paintings, such as Joy of Life (1911), included mostly female nudes, female portraits, still lifes, and landscapes. She never attended the academy and was never confined within a tradition. As a model Valadon appeared in such paintings as Pierre-Auguste Renoir's 1883 Dance at Bougival and Dance in the City, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's 1885 portrait. Early life Valadon is depicted dancing in Pierre-Auguste Renoir's 1883 painting, Dance at Bougival Valadon grew up in poverty with her mother, an unmarried laundress in Montmartre; she did not know her father. Known to be quite independent and rebellious, she attended primary school until age 11. She began working at age 11 in a variety of areas including a milliner's workshop, a factory making funeral wreaths, a market selling vegetables, a waitress, and then finally in the circus. At the age of 15 Valadon met Count Antoine de la Rochefoucauld and Thèo Wagner, two symbolist painters who were involved in decorating a circus belonging to Medrano. Through this connection she began work at the Mollier circus as an acrobat until she fell from a trapeze after a year of work. The circus was frequented by artists such as Lautrec, Sescau and Berthe Morisot and this may be where Morisot did her painting of Valadon. It is commonly believed that Valadon taught herself how to draw at the age of nine. In the Montmartre quarter of Paris, she pursued her interest in art, first working as a model for artists, observing and learning their techniques, before becoming a noted painter herself. Model Valadon debuted as a model in 1880 in Montmartre at age 15. She modeled for over 10 years for many different artists including Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes, Théophile Steinlen, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Jean-Jacques Henner, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. She modeled under the name "Maria" before being nicknamed "Suzanne" by Toulouse-Lautrec, after the biblical story of Susanna and the Elders as he felt that she especially liked modeling for older artists. For two years, she was Toulouse-Lautrec's lover until her attempted suicide in 1888. Valadon helped to educate herself in art by observing the artists at work for whom she posed. She was considered a very focused, ambitious, rebellious, determined, self-confident, and passionate woman. In the early 1890s, she befriended Edgar Degas who, impressed with her bold line drawings and fine paintings, purchased her work and encouraged her; she remained one of his closest friends until his death. Art historian Heather Dawkins believed that Valadon's experience as a model added depth to her own images of nude women, which tended to be less idealized than that of the male post impressionists representations. The most recognizable image of Valadon would be in Renoir's Dance at Bougival from 1883, the same year that she posed for Dance in the City. In 1885, Renoir painted her portrait again as Girl Braiding Her Hair. Another of his portraits of her in 1885, Suzanne Valadon, is of her head and shoulders in profile. Valadon frequented the bars and taverns of Paris with her fellow painters, and she was Toulouse-Lautrec's subject in his oil painting The Hangover.