A laundress's daughter and circus acrobat who modelled for Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec, taught herself to draw between poses, and was bought and championed by Degas. The dancer in the red bonnet of Dance at Bougival became the first woman admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts.
Suzanne Valadon is the answer to a question nobody at the easels thought to ask: what was the model seeing? Born Marie-Clémentine Valadon in 1865 to an unmarried laundress, raised on the Butte Montmartre, she joined the circus at fifteen and left it when a fall from the trapeze ended acrobatics. From 1880 she modelled — for Puvis de Chavannes, for Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who put her in the red bonnet of Dance at Bougival, and for Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, her lover, who renamed her Suzanne after the biblical bathing scene's watched woman.
Between poses she drew — she had drawn since childhood, on pavements and scraps — and it was Toulouse-Lautrec who put her drawings in front of Edgar Degas. Degas bought them, taught her soft-ground etching, and paid her the compliment she quoted for the rest of her life: she was 'one of us'. She became the first woman admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1894, painted nudes with a bluntness the Salon had never permitted a woman, and raised, in the apartment at 12 rue Cortot, a son who painted too: Maurice Utrillo.
Valadon was born on 23 September 1865 at Bessines-sur-Gartempe in the Limousin, and grew up on the Butte in her mother's single room; the father is unrecorded. At fifteen she joined the Cirque Fernando as an acrobat; a fall from the trapeze within the year ended it. Modelling was the Butte's other trade for a strong, striking teenager, and from 1880 she sat for the painters of the hill.
The résumé of her poses reads like a museum wing: Puvis de Chavannes's classical processions, Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Dance at Bougival and Dance in the City, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's The Hangover — the drinker slumped at her table is Valadon. Lautrec, her neighbour and for a time her lover, gave her the working name that stuck: Suzanne, for the biblical Susanna watched by the elders. She was watching back, and drawing what she saw.
In 1883, at seventeen, she had a son, Maurice — the painter Miquel Utrillo signed an acknowledgement of paternity years later, though she never confirmed the fact of it — and kept drawing through motherhood and sittings. Toulouse-Lautrec showed her drawings to Edgar Degas; Degas bought them on the spot, hung them with his collection, taught her soft-ground etching at his own press, and told her she was 'one of us'. He remained her buyer and advocate until his death.
In 1894 she became the first woman admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. The line she drew was Degas's kind — contour first, no flattery — and her subjects were the ones she knew from the other side of the easel: women bathing, dressing, resting, drawn as bodies that work and age rather than perform. When she turned seriously to oils after 1900, the bluntness scaled up with the canvases.
A marriage to the banker Paul Mousis bought a decade of comfort and ended in 1909, when Valadon — forty-four — took up with André Utter, a twenty-three-year-old painter friend of her son's. She, Utter and Maurice Utrillo — by then an alcoholic in and out of clinics, painting the white walls of Montmartre between crises — set up in the apartment-studio at 12 rue Cortot, a household the Butte called the trio infernal. The building is now the Musée de Montmartre, with her studio restored.
The Utter years were her strongest: the life-size Adam and Eve of 1909, herself and Utter nude — she painted in the fig leaf later to get it hung; The Joy of Life; the 1923 Blue Room, a woman in striped trousers sprawled on a bed with cigarette and paperbacks where an odalisque should be. The 1920s made her prosperous — dealers took Utrillo and Valadon as a pair — and she spent it as fast as it came, on a château, on cars, on the legend of herself.
She died in Paris on 7 April 1938, days after collapsing at her easel, aged seventy-two; Picasso was among those at the funeral. She left about 478 paintings, 273 drawings and 31 etchings — the visible fraction of a career that began as other people's pictures.
Born Marie-Clémentine Valadon on 23 September at Bessines-sur-Gartempe, to an unmarried laundress; raised on the Butte Montmartre.
A trapeze fall ends her circus year at the Cirque Fernando; modelling begins at fifteen.
Renoir paints her into Dance at Bougival; her son Maurice Utrillo is born in December.
Toulouse-Lautrec shows her drawings to Degas, who buys them, teaches her etching, and calls her 'one of us'.
First woman admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts.
Leaves the banker Paul Mousis for André Utter, her son's twenty-three-year-old friend; paints the life-size Adam and Eve of the two of them.
Marries Utter; the household at 12 rue Cortot — Valadon, Utter, Utrillo — becomes the Butte's trio infernal.
The Blue Room: trousers, cigarette and paperbacks where the odalisque used to lie.
Dies in Paris on 7 April, days after collapsing at her easel, aged seventy-two; Picasso attends the funeral.
Met · 1883
Renoir painted the Montmartre model's portrait around 1885 — the canvas is in the National Gallery of Art's Chester Dale Collection — and she is traditionally identified as the dancer in the red bonnet of Dance at Bougival and the woman of Dance in the City. She later became a major painter herself.
Partner of · 1885–1888
Valadon modelled for him from 1885 and the two were lovers; the relationship ended around her 1888 suicide attempt. He was among the first to take her own drawings seriously.
A Montmartre model who became a major painter — the only person in the story of French art to cross that line completely. Born poor in 1865, she posed for Puvis de Chavannes, Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec, taught herself to draw between sittings, was bought and mentored by Degas, and in 1894 became the first woman admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. Her son was the painter Maurice Utrillo.
Traditionally, yes — the dancer in the red bonnet of Renoir's 1883 Dance at Bougival, now in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, is identified as the eighteen-year-old Valadon, who also posed for his Dance in the City the same year. The identification rests on her own account and long acceptance rather than a signed document, which is how model identities usually survive.
Everything short of teaching her to paint, which she had already taught herself. Shown her drawings by Toulouse-Lautrec around 1890, Edgar Degas bought them immediately, kept buying for the rest of his life, taught her soft-ground etching on his own press, and pronounced her 'one of us' — the sentence that turned a model's sideline into a career. She called him her master; he never corrected her.
Her son, born in December 1883 when she was eighteen; the Catalan painter Miquel Utrillo later signed an acknowledgement of paternity, though Valadon never settled the question. She set him to painting partly as therapy for his alcoholism, and he became famous for his white-walled Montmartre streetscapes — for a stretch of the 1920s, mother and son were the best-selling painters on the Butte, sold by the same dealers.
The Centre Pompidou holds The Blue Room and the major nudes, the Musée de Montmartre occupies the very building at 12 rue Cortot where she, Utter and Utrillo lived — her studio-apartment is restored and visitable — and the Barcelona and Albi museums keep strong groups. Boston has Dance at Bougival, the painting she is inside rather than behind.
Met · 1883
Renoir painted the Montmartre model's portrait around 1885 — the canvas is in the National Gallery of Art's Chester Dale Collection — and she is traditionally identified as the dancer in the red bonnet of Dance at Bougival and the woman of Dance in the City. She later became a major painter herself.
Partner of · 1885–1888
Valadon modelled for him from 1885 and the two were lovers; the relationship ended around her 1888 suicide attempt. He was among the first to take her own drawings seriously.
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