Suzanne Valadon
Wonderful Female Painters
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Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938)
Woman Reclining on a Sofa (1917-18)
Suzanne Valadon modeled for artists who marked a whole era of Parisian Bohemia, such as Degas, Renoir, Lautrec, Puvis de Chavannes. She also was the lover of several of them (Toulouse-Lautrec was really in love with her). Later, by observing the techniques of the masters for whom she modeled, she started to paint, and then became a very recognized artist (not only by the critics, she also was financially successful during her lifetime). She also had a son, named Maurice Utrillo, one of les maudits (the cursed) painters of the School of Paris.
A wonderful woman who had to overcome her own beauty to become an artist. She had to stop being a muse to test her own talent.
Her work is abundant in nudes and portraits, characterized by the use of strong, bright, expressive colors, and by the drawing with well-drawn contours (influenced by the Cloisonnist technique that so fascinated the Post-impressionists).
Although she apparently became a great painter in a “natural” way, because she was surrounded by geniuses, she had other necessary virtues to become an artist: patience, constancy, perseverance. And once she was convinced that she could paint, supported by Degas and Lautrec, she worked for thirteen years on her oil paintings before showing them publicly.
An interesting fact: Can you imagine why she had the artistic name Suzanne? Because of the biblical story that has inspired painters of all times. In the story, Susanna was spied naked by old men who desired her and wanted to abuse her. Lautrec proposed her this artistic name because she “had posed naked for all the old men of Paris.”
Recommended links:
Wonderful Female Painters: Frida Kahlo.
Tamara de Lempicka and her Portraits.
Wonderful Female Painters: Leonora Carrington.
Wonderful Female Painters: Remedios Varo.
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