{"id":955,"date":"2016-03-13T14:07:30","date_gmt":"2016-03-13T14:07:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/delladrees.com\/wordpress\/?p=955"},"modified":"2016-03-14T14:24:31","modified_gmt":"2016-03-14T14:24:31","slug":"the-studio-of-valadon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/delladrees.com\/wordpress\/?p=955","title":{"rendered":"Valadon and her studio in Montmartre"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Suzanne Valadon (1865 \u2013 1938) with her son, Maurice Utrillo.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Suzanne Valadon<\/b>\u00a0(1865\u00a0\u2013 1938) was a French painter and artists’ model. In 1894, Valadon was\u00a0the first woman painter admitted to the\u00a0Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 Nationale des Beaux-Arts, although she never actually attended the academy or had any formal training at all. \u00a0Illegitimate, and brought up in poverty, she lived in Montmartre and started modelling at the age of 15 for artists such as Renoir and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. However, Valadon spent nearly 40 years as an artist in her own right.<\/p>\n

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\"valadon<\/h3>\n

Valadon\u00a0was beautiful, voluptuous\u00a0and\u00a0seductive but also a focused\u00a0and\u00a0ambitious woman who\u00a0showed\u00a0great\u00a0determination throughout\u00a0her life. She\u00a0began to draw obsessively from a very young age, at seven, she\u00a0used\u00a0to draw using charcoal fallen from coal wagons with the sidewalks as\u00a0her paper. She became an artist model\u00a0after a fall from a\u00a0trapeze\u00a0ended her career as a\u00a0circus\u00a0acrobat. Born Marie-Cl\u00e9mentine Valadon, she initially began modelling under the name of\u00a0Maria. A friend who was a model took her to artists\u2019 studios, and she\u00a0joined the other girls\u00a0on Sundays at a sort of unofficial models\u2019 market in the Place Pigalle. There, this striking and curvy girl had what one commentator called \u201cluminous blue eyes that attracted men like flies\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 and she did attract the attention of the very popular painter Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, who became her lover. Eventually\u00a0Renoir, Degas, Modigliani, and many lesser-known artists also employed her.<\/p>\n

She was a popular model. Probably the most recognisable painting\u00a0of her\u00a0would be in Renoir’s\u00a01883\u00a0Dance at Bougival<\/i>, this was the\u00a0same year that she posed for him in\u00a0City Dance <\/i>and\u00a0<\/i>in 1885, she was the model for\u00a0Girl Braiding Her Hair\u00a0<\/i>and\u00a0<\/i>a\u00a0portrait called\u00a0Suzanne Valadon<\/i>. At this time,\u00a0Suzanne and Renoir would stroll through\u00a0Montmartre arm in arm, and nobody was in any doubt that they had become lovers. \u00a0They would go dancing at the Moulin de la Gatte on Sundays and picnic at Argenteuil and Chatou in the summer.\u00a0Suzanne, in turn,\u00a0studied Renoirs technique and paintings, he, however, remained dismissive of her artistic aspirations.<\/p>\n

But it was another of her lovers, Toulouse-Lautrec, who nicknamed her \u201cSuzanne\u201d after the biblical story of\u00a0Susanna and the Elders, as he felt that she especially liked modelling for older artists. It was in early\u00a01887 that she had first met the twenty-two year old Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, who had the\u00a0top floor studio at No.7 rue Tourlaque. This was the same building in which Suzanne, her mother Madeleine and her son Maurice were living. It is also\u00a0the very same studio that today\u00a0Studio Escalier<\/a>, a private art school, use as their Paris base.\u00a0Suzanne came to be considered the unofficial hostess of Lautrec\u2019s studio soir\u00e9es, where he would provide food and drink and lively conversation ensued.\u00a0She was also Toulouse-Lautrec’s subject in his oil painting\u00a0The Hangover, s<\/i>he, in turn, gave Lautrec the very first painting she completed signed\u00a0\u201cSuzanne Valadon\u201d, the name he had given her.<\/p>\n

Suzanne the mother<\/h3>\n

Valadon\u00a0came from a poor background and she herself did not know her father. \u00a0In 1883, when she was 18 and working for Renoir, Valadon gave birth to her\u00a0son,\u00a0Maurice Utrillo. Although his true paternity remains uncertain, Valadon’s friend Miguel Utrillo would eventually\u00a0sign papers recognizing Maurice as his son. The mother and son had\u00a0a ferociously intense relationship. Maurice was a difficult child, desperately jealous of the time his\u00a0mother\u00a0spend painting. He\u00a0fell into alcoholism at a very young age, while still at school he would drink at bars, and for the rest of his life had\u00a0brutal episodes of depression and melancholy.<\/p>\n

Suzanne the\u00a0artist<\/h3>\n
\"Valadon
Valadon in her studio on Rue Cortot<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Valadon\u00a0had an\u00a0unconventional life spent among\u00a0some of the most famous artists, musicians, and writers of the\u00a0time, but she\u00a0was determined\u00a0to succeed on her own terms. She\u00a0eventually rose to become one of the most vibrant individuals ever to thrive in the fertile environment of the village on the\u00a0butte.\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0In the early 1890s, with the encouragement of Toulouse-Lautrec, she befriended the elderly Degas who, impressed with her bold drawings and expressive\u00a0paintings, purchased her work and encouraged her to continue. She remained one of Degas’s closest friends until his death. It was thanks to the support of Degas that she became the first woman ever to exhibit at the Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1894.\u00a0She had worked for thirteen years on her oil paintings before she exhibited them. Valadon\u00a0was\u00a0best known for her honest\u00a0female nudes, it was at\u00a0that time unusual for a woman artist to make female nudes her primary subject matter. Her first large oils for the Salon related mainly to sexual pleasure, and they were also some of the first examples in painting for the man to be an object of desire by a woman.\u00a0Valadon\u2019s work\u00a0feature rich colors and bold, open brushwork often featuring firm black lines to define and outline her figures and\u00a0to emphasize the play of light on curves and muscles. True to her individual nature,\u00a0Valadon\u2019s work is\u00a0not related to the academic art of her\u00a0time. Her\u00a0subjects were\u00a0women at their toilette, reclining nudes, still life and interior scenes many featuring flowers, she painted numerous\u00a0self portraits and studies\u00a0of her family and her lovers, and throughout his life,\u00a0she used her son for portraits.\u00a0Valadon left us\u00a0around 300 drawings and over 450 oil paintings.<\/p>\n