Suzanne Valadon

Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938) was a French painter 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 as an artist. The subjects of her drawings and paintings included mostly female nudes, portraits of women, still lifes and landscapes. She never attended the academy and was never confined within a set tradition or style of art. Despite not being confined to any tradition, she shocked the art world as the first woman painter to depict a male nude, as well as less idealised images of women in comparison to those of her male counterparts.

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 eleven when she began working. It is commonly believed that Valadon taught herself how to draw at the age of nine. She had a series of jobs that included working in a milliner's workshop, at a factory making funeral wreaths, selling vegetables, and as a waitress. At the age of 15, she obtained a job in her most desired field: performing in the circus as an acrobat. The circus was frequently visited by artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec and Berthe Morisot. A fall from a trapeze that injured her back is what ultimately ended her circus career after one year.

Valadon began working as a model in 1880 in Montmartre at age 15. She modelled for more than ten years for many different artists including Berthe Morisot, Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes, Théophile Steinlen, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Jean-Jacques Henner, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. She modelled 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 preferred modelling for older artists. She was Toulouse-Lautrec's lover for two years, which ended when she attempted suicide in 1888.

After her 1895 marriage to the well-to-do banker Paul Mousis, Valadon became a full-time painter the following year. She made a shift from drawing to painting in 1909. Her first large oils for the Salon related to sexual pleasures and they were some of the first examples in modern painting with a man being an object of desire by a woman similar to that idealised treatment of women by male artists. 

Valadon was not confined to a specific style, yet both Symbolist and Post-Impressionist aesthetics are clearly demonstrated within her work. She worked primarily with oil paint, oil pencils, pastels, and red chalk; she did not use ink or watercolour because these mediums were too fluid for her preference. Valadon's paintings feature rich colours and bold, open brushwork often featuring firm black lines to define and outline her figures.

In 1883, aged 18, Valadon gave birth to a son, Maurice Utrillo. Valadon's mother cared for Maurice while she returned to modelling. Later, Valadon's friend Miquel Utrillo signed papers recognising Maurice as his son, although the true paternity was never disclosed.

In 1893, Valadon began a short-lived affair with composer Erik Satie, moving to a room next to his on the Rue Cortot. Satie became obsessed with her, calling her his Biqui, writing impassioned notes about "her whole being, lovely eyes, gentle hands, and tiny feet". After six months she left, leaving him devastated.

Valadon married the stockbroker Paul Mousis in 1895. For 13 years, she lived with him in an apartment in Paris and in a house in the outlying region. In 1909, Valadon began an affair with the painter André Utter, a 23-year-old friend of her son. He became a model for her and appears as Adam in Adam et Eve, which was painted that year. She divorced Mousis in 1913. Valadon then married Utter in 1914. Utter managed her career as well as that of her son. Valadon and Utter regularly exhibited work together until the couple divorced in 1934, when Valadon was almost seventy. They continued a relationship until her death, nonetheless, and are buried together in the Saint Ouen cemetery in Paris.

Suzanne Valadon died of a stroke in 1938, at the age of 72, and was buried in Division 13 of the Cimetière de Saint-Ouen, Paris. Among those in attendance at the funeral were her friends and colleagues André Derain, Pablo Picasso, and Georges Braque.