WHO WAS HER MUSE? SUZANNE VALADON

Who Was her Muse?

SUZANNE VALADON: WHO WAS HER MUSE?

Painter Suzanne Valadon had bad luck.  She was born fatherless.  Her mother was a struggling washerwoman.  She had start working at age 11.  She got pregnant at 18, not knowing the father. 

Painter Berth Morisot, however, had good luck.  She was born into privilege, was educated in art and married Manet’s brother, having a child within the support of good marriage.

It could be argued that it was not fair.

But it is said, in the book of Job, that god ‘shows no partiality to princes and does not favour the rich over the poor, for they are all the work of his hands’

Looking further at Valadon’s life, she had a distinct lack of privilege.  

She was born Marie-Clémentine in 1865 to an unknown father. She worked and earned her own money at age 11 and then worked in a circus, training as an acrobat.  She was even painted by Berth Morisot herself while on the tightrope, but an accident caused an injury to her back, so she couldn’t work there any more.

Tightrope walker by Berthe Morisot

However she managed to get work as an artist’s model at age 15. 

But like so many models of the time, the job title was synonymous with ‘prostitution’  Many of the elderly painters found the nudes a temptation.  At age 18 she was already pregnant with child, and like her own mother’s situation, she did not know the father.

Already the odds seem to be against her.  She was a single mother, now with less time and money for the practice of her own art.

However three possible fathers of her child were Pierre Auguste Renoir, Puvis de Chavanne and a local painter called Boissy.  

All these men, it could be argued were also her saviour.  And her muse.

The word muse originates from Greek 

mythology. The Greek gods Zeus and Mnemosyne had nine daughters called the Muses. The nine daughters were of one being in heart, spirit and thought. If the muses loved a man, then the man's worries instantly disappeared. The man who was loved by the muses was considered to be more sacred than a holy man.

We can see the work of artists working in Montmartre at that time were inspired by her:

Lautrec, Degas, Renoir, Mogdiliani and even her own son Utrillo.

Renoir's Suzanne Valadon

Degas's Suzanne Valadon

Modigliani's Suzanne Valadon

                           

                  Maurice Utrillo's Suzanne Valadon

                        
                          Toulouse Lautrec's Suzanne Valadon

                              

Although these men painted her, it was during these years of being model that she was also watching them and inspired by their work.

In fact everything she knew she had learned by closely observing the painters she had posed for.  She became self-taught, with the help of the artists she modelled for.

She began sketching, ink, dry point and soft-ground etching and for ten years intensely worked on her drawing skills.

“I drew feverishly so that, when I could no longer see, it would still be at the tips of my fingers,” she said.

Degas was stuck by her draughtsmanship and introduced her to the technique of soft-ground etching. Becoming Degas’s protégé, he adopted her when he discovered her drawings in 1887 and exclaimed 

“You are indeed one of us”

He encouraged her to present her work at the newly established Societé Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1894 where she was the only female exhibitor.  For ten years Valadon focused mainly on drawing, finding her inspiration in scenes of everyday life and intimate moments.

She did many sketches in pencil preceding her paintings. She mastered line, inspired by Ingres, who put colour subservient to line.

She also became muse to Eric Satie, with whom she had a short affair in 1893.  Satie, who lived at number 6 rue Cortot, smothered her with letters and passionate poems and called her his ‘biqui’  When Satie posed for her he was 26 and Suzanne Valadon 27.  Suzanne’s portraits are defined by their directness and sobriety; she painted her subjects as she saw them, without flattery.

Portrait of Satie by Suzanne Valadon

She began to paint saying “I paint people to get to know them”

For a self portrait she said :

“You have to be hard on yourself, be honest and look yourself in the face”

Lautrec introduced her to the work of Neitzsche, Baudelaire and the cabaret poets.  She studied the Japanese prints in his collection and met Vincent Van Gogh.

It was Lautrec who persuaded her to change her name to Suzanne, ironically after the a the bible story ‘Suzanne and the elders’  In this story two elders attempt to blackmail the female bather, Suzanne, into sleeping with them.  When she refuses they threaten to say they saw her with a lover committing adultery.  Suzanne’s honesty and steadfastness is rewarded for the men are unable to describe the tree on the scene of the adultery and it becomes clear that they lie.

Vollard published her engravings in 1897

 She married a banker, and the bond helped her financially so that she could do less modelling and more painting. Her husband, Paul Mousis, gave her a house to paint in, to fulfil her desire to paint.  She would arrive in the morning from Montmagny accompanied by a mule and savouring her independence, develop her talents in drawing, painting and engraving.

However she grew tired of her bourgeois life at Pierrefitte so she moved into her studio at rue Cortot.

At the same time she began to have problems with her son, Maurice, who had taken a liking to alcohol. The alcoholic bouts and outburst of her son Maurice soon led to his internment at Sainte-Anne’s Hospital where he remained fro several months in 1901

Utrillo was haunted by doubt whether his mother was a saint or a whore, saying

“My mother, a saint of a woman from whom the bottom of my soul I worshiped and blessed as a goddess, a sublime creature made of generosity, righteousness, charity, intelligence courage and devotion; an elite woman, perhaps the greatest pictorial light of the century and of the world”  

One night another young painter brought her drunken son home.  His name was André Utter.  The first thing Valadon said to Utter was 

“One doesn’t paint the sky as one paints the ground”

Utter was an apprentice electrician and son of a plumber and zinc worker in rue Ramey.  He was passionate about painting.  She asked him to pose as Adam in her work Adam and Eve.  He was twenty four and though she was double his age he was enchanted by her, 

He said of her: “Suzanne Valadon had amazing light eyes, and black hair parted down the middle, and she seemed to dance rather than walk.  She had something of both an Amazon and a fairy”  

He began to model for her. The first paintings of nude men to be produced by a woman were those of Suzanne Valadon. He posed for the paintings ‘Adam and Eve’ and ‘Casting the net’ Her Adam and Eve seems to encourage her Adam to enter her paradise rather than face a punitive expulsion.

André Utter posed naked for Valadon

These paintings celebrate sensuality and love.  They became a space for celebrating married life. The figures have a similar joy to the 1906 ‘the Joy of Life’ by Matisse, Derain’s  The golden Age of 1905 and “Love is the only raison d’être”

In 1912 she painted the fortune teller in The Future Unveiled, who is seated on the floor, is holding an ambiguous card in her hand – the queen of diamonds, a card associated with wealth and carnal pleasures.   The woman lying on the sofa seems herself to be a sort of river goddess who has calmly come down to earth to see what is going on. The fortune teller in the foreground appears to be almost tiny in comparison.  

This painting seems to represent the feeling of sensual pleasure and love and wealth.

She said: “I believe that the true theory is that nature decides: first of all the nature of the painter, then that which he represents.  Each person paints as he sees, means that each paints as he can”

Despite this harmony, Valadon, Utter and Utrillo all lived together in rue Cortot but they were known as the ‘infernal trio’ or the ‘unholy trinity’

Utter sold his paintings and brought home the bread that kept all three of them economically safe but in 1926 the art dealer Bernheim took Utrillo and Valadon under his wing. Utter bought a chateau with their wealth but Utrillo nicknamed it ‘Chateau de la Pomp”

Later Valadon encouraged her son to go out with Lucie Valore.  But she was simultaneously upset by his departure.  Also her and Utter separated too, leaving her alone.

However she kept paintings and the Petit Palais was among the venues of her last exhibition, dying in 1938 of a stroke.

From rags to riches, Suzanne Valadon’s life certainly was an example of luck, a luck which she made herself, especially being muse to great artists but also with the blessed help of them being her own muses.  Her path was indeed the heeding of love, creativity and she readily received all the helpful muses, guidance and inspiration that came to her despite her unlucky beginnings.


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