Suzanne Valadon

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the history of Suzanne Valadon as an artist and her personal life. Suzanne Valadon was a well-known Post-Impressionist painter whose paintings of women were especially well-received. It states that she had no specific art training, but became a prolific artist after working as a painter's model.

From the Paper:

"Suzanne Valadon was born in 1865 in Bessines-sur-Gartempe, near Limoges, France. Her mother was not married when Valadon was born, and supported the family by her work as a laundress and taking in occasional sewing. Valadon began working early, and worked in the circus as an acrobat until she was sixteen, when she fell off a trapeze and decided to find a safer occupation. She soon began to model for some of the famous French painters making a name for themselves in Paris, such as Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Edgar Degas, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. "Beautiful, impudent and lively, she attracted attention among the artists -Renoir admired her lustrous skin, Puvis de Chavannes her slender hands, Lautrec her looks, detecting a hint of sadness and depravity beneath her radiant youth" (Lake & Maillard, 1956, p. 303). After modeling for a while, Valadon began to pay attention to the painters around her, and their techniques. She had an illegitimate son, Maurice Utrillo, when she was eighteen, and this caused her to begin to think about another change of careers. She stopped posing for other artists, and began her own art career. She first began with drawings, and then moved on to etchings for a while. Finally, she settled on drawing and painting."

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