Born September 23, 1865, Suzanne Valadon grew up in the Montmartre neighborhood of Paris. Her single mother was preoccupied and distant, and lack of money forced Suzanne to look for work by the age of ten. She waited tables, made dresses, cared for children and even sailed through the air as a circus trapeze artist. A bad fall ended that career, and Suzanne then began posing for a notable group of painters: Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Theophile Steinlen and Puvis des Chavannes. Suzanne was beautiful, bright and had an excellent figure, and therefore she was generally in demand.
Model to Artist
Though she had a fling with Renoir, Suzanne was apparently not too fond of him, complaining that the painter was “all brushes and no heart.” While she was posing, Suzanne observed different artists’ habits and methods and began to produce her own drawings soon after. She became good friends with Impressionist Edgar Degas in particular, not working with him as a model but gratefully accepting his guidance on technique and his offers to purchase her early sketches.
By the time she reached her forties, Valadon was able to fully pursue an artistic career -- in between love affairs, marriages and divorces. One notable involvement was with composer Erik Satie, of whom Suzanne did a portrait. Suzanne also had a son named Maurice in 1883, with a certain element of doubt always remaining as to just who Maurice’s father really was. Speculation and timing favored Renoir, but neither Suzanne nor Renoir seemed to have followed through on that possibility. Montmartre nightclub owner, artist and writer Miguel Utrillo, however, did eventually legally give the child his last name.
Raising Maurice
Maurice was a heavy drinker even by the age of twenty, taking up painting at his mother’s advice to channel his energies into better outlets. Both Suzanne and Maurice’s talents would soon be recognized, Suzanne having her first successful solo exhibition in 1911. While she was adept at landscapes and still-life paintings, Suzanne’s nude studies of women were especially praised for their use of color and for the pride in the female form that she projected into her work.
As Maurice grew older, he kept struggling with alcoholism and had psychiatric episodes that resulted in occasional mental hospital stays. A fellow painter and friend of Maurice’s, André Utter, became Suzanne’s lover, even though Utter was considerably younger than she was. Beyond the age difference, Suzanne was giving up financial security to pursue this relationship by divorcing her stockbroker husband. Utter proved to be a source of both happiness and stress for Suzanne, while Maurice’s behavior was continually erratic. Furthermore, Maurice’s paintings of city scenes and cathedrals would begin to eclipse Suzanne’s own work -- not so much due to sheer talent, but possibly due to his eccentric reputation and his gender.
Legacy
Suzanne Valadon died in April of 1938. Her art continues to generate interest as time passes and is significantly represented in collections of The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, The National Museum of Women in the Arts and Paris’ Centre Pompidou. The intensity of Suzanne’s palette matched the passion of her actions and emotions, just like her ability to go from model to peer among painters reflected her self-determination and resilience. Her free-spirited ways have inspired novels, biographies and films, and she was even the likely basis for the character of Suzanne Rouvier in Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge. Suzanne is buried in Paris, where she spent nearly all of her colorful and eventful life.
