From sculptures of Greek goddesses in ancient temples to high-fashion models on Vogue covers, we can see women everywhere in art; rich or poor, young or old, impeccably dressed or completely naked. However, less common are the females behind the canvas: history provides us with a dearth of well-known female names. I’ve talked about this in previous posts – I actually highlighted issues of representation on the canvas without representation in the industry in a post I made on female nudes. Sometimes, however, some muses become artists themselves, using these industry connections to start their own careers. One of these artists is the model-turned-painter Suzanne Valadon, a French Post-Impressionist.
Suzanne Valadon, Self-Portrait (1898). 
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Portrait of Suzanne Valadon (1885).
Starting out as a model to several big Impressionist names, she soon became an artist herself. Valadon, though often overshadowed by her male contemporaries and even her son, another artist, was an incredibly important Post-Impressionist and woman artist. Her gender role defying nudes, vibrantly individualistic portraits, and bold, unique style are renowned today, and she has gained recent interest in the wake of feminist art theory.
Early Life and Modelling Career
Suzanne Valadon (née Marie-Clémentine Valadon) was born in 1865 in Bessines, France. Her family was poor; her mother was a washerwoman and she never met her father. When she was five, she and her mother and half-sister moved to Montmartre in Paris, where she grew up. Valadon gained interest in art from a young age, and learned to draw at age eight. She began working at age eleven, and at age 15, while working as a circus acrobat, she met and was painted by Berthe Morisot. She sustained injuries in this line of work, and had to leave, which was when she became a model.
Valadon could not afford art lessons, so becoming a model was her door into the art world. At this point, she became model to Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Auguste Renoir, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. In the early 1880s, Valadon completed her first known works. Her early art was often pastels and drawings of street scenes, self-portraits, and people she knew. She befriended Edgar Degas, and with his encouragement, she became the first woman to show at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1894.
Valadon likely had affairs with some of the artists she modelled for, as author June Rose expressed that these artists “assumed the right to make love to their girls”. While of course we shouldn’t ignore the implications of consent and lack thereof in this statement, Valadon was certainly confident in her sexuality and (hopefully) voluntarily took part in these exchanges. In fact, she had many affairs, and even had an illegitimate son, Maurice Utrillo, when she was eighteen. Maurice became an artist himself, inspired by his mother’s work. Valadon married twice, the first relationship failing due to her affair with André Utter, a man twenty-one years her junior and a friend of her son’s. The two later married.
Valadon’s Ground-Breaking Nudes
Perhaps because of this open approach to sexuality, nudes were one of the primary subjects of Valadon’s work. She is known for her unidealized female nudes, but interestingly, her male nudes are also subversive. While female nudes were an uncommon subject for women artists, he idea of a woman artist depicting a man in the nude was practically unheard of at the time. In the interest of propriety, upper-class women were not permitted to study naked male models in art academies. Valadon’s lower-class upbringing and rebellious nature enabled her to surpass many societal restraints. She instead practiced male anatomy by drawing her son when he was a child, and later found inspiration in her muse, Utter.
Her painting Adam and Eve (which you might have seen a few weeks ago on my Instagram) depicts the well-known biblical scene with Valadon and Utter as Adam and Eve. It was also the first work by a woman that showed a nude man and woman together. In a further act of indecency, the couple are intertwined, reaching for the apple together, equal in sin.
Another painting, Le Lancement du filet, presents unabashedly erotic male figures. Once again modelled after Utter, these idealized, objectified young men are placed in nature, a realm reserved for female nudes. It has been compared to homoerotic paintings by male artists assumed to be homosexual. Disrupting age-old conventions of gender, here the male body is an object of pleasure, delighting its female viewer and painter.
Later Life
Another painting of hers that I find fascinating is Joie de vivre, which I feel relates closely to her larger oeuvre. The work is evocative of many of Valadon’s predecessors and contemporaries, such as Cezanne, Matisse, and Renoir – it is one of many works exploring the theme of “woman as nature”. In an essay, art historian Patricia Mathews points out interestingly that this painting presents five very different figures – each relating to common characters in Valadon’s other paintings.
The only male figure in the picture, modelled after Utter, watches the woman, but he is not accepted into their world – these women are unconscious of his gaze. The four women are also characteristic of Valadon. All individualized, unidealized figures, typical of her nudes. The one facing away, a robust, disinterested figure, is characteristic of Valadon, seen in works like The Blue Room. The next, a more traditional, eroticised nude, is less common to Valadon but inescapable in other artworks from this period. The third, picking up a cloth, is akin to many of her bather sketches, and finally, the woman with dark hair, might represent Valadon herself.
I’ll end this with two paintings of cats, a very common theme in her later work. Valadon’s career continued well into the 1920s and 30s, and she was elected to the Salon d’Automne in 1920. She had several retrospectives in her lifetime, and created many works. In fact, she never really stopped making art, and in 1938, she passed away, suffering a stroke while painting.
Valadon’s legacy lives on, and her innovative style and active rebellion of gender norms inspires many artists that followed her. I suggest checking out more of her works, since I could only fit so many. And as always, feel free to comment any thoughts, questions, or fun Valadon facts I might have missed!
