Original subtitles

Suzanne Valadon is hands down the most overlooked painter of this era.

She's not only a remarkable artist, but an incredible person.

Her strength and perseverance are only surpassed by her talent as a painter.

She's still revered in France.

Her studio has been recreated in the Musée du Montmartre in Paris,

with a mix of original and replica art and furniture.

However, in most of the art history books, her life and work have been nearly forgotten.

I want to make sure that you know about her and her paintings, and also why she was forgotten.

Despite her success, genius, and vision, Valadon's story is usually overshadowed by the men in her life.

As a model for Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas, Modigliani, and others,

she came of age working with and also dating many of the most important up-and-coming Impressionist painters.

Her son, who she may have had with Renoir, became the famous painter Maurice Eutrillo.

And you can start to see how being so close with many famous male artists of the period

has led to her becoming a footnote in her own story.

But Valadon is fascinating in her own right,

and she was a significant and important painter in the otherwise male-dominated Parisian art scene of the 19th century.

And surprisingly, her accomplishments were better recognized in her own day than they are today.

Her exhibitions were popular and well-attended.

She was greatly respected by her colleagues.

And in 1894, she became the first woman to be admitted to the Société National des Beaux-Arts.

It's incredible that Suzanne rose to the height she did, considering how high the deck was stacked against her.

Unlike most of the artists we have looked at, who had nearly every advantage one could have at this time,

she had none of them.

She had no wealth, no status, no stable home, no father, no training.

And, of course, she was a woman.

For many of these reasons, I would argue her story is more inspiring than any of the men.

She was the ultimate underdog.

Her mother struggled with alcoholism her entire life.

She lived in dire poverty and barely made ends meet doing laundry for wealthy people.

Marie Clementine Valadon is born in the countryside in 1865.

But her mother doesn't know who the father is.

They struggle through the next five years scratching out a living when all her prospects dry up.

When Marie is five years old, they move to Paris,

which unwittingly turns out to be the best thing she could have done for her young daughter.

Though her mother found some meager work, life continued to be difficult living in the city,

particularly due to her mother's alcoholism.

Valadon would later recount how she coped with it.

I hid in the closet and would draw until Mama's fits of rage were over,

and she would take a sip from the flask hidden under her skirt.

We know a lot about Valadon's early life because she wrote extensive journals and memoirs.

Valadon grew up in Montmartre, where all the avant-garde artists of this time worked and hung out.

A very important part of her childhood was going to the park to watch artists painting the sunset.

She would join the other artists and draw on whatever paper or pencils she could get her hands on.

She was an entirely self-taught artist, and it seems she starred at this very young age.

As a young girl, Valadon had to take on various odd jobs like sewing hats to help out her mom and bring in a little extra money.

By around the age of 11 or 12, she was absent from class or getting in trouble so often that it became clear school was not going to work out for her.

She dropped out and got a full-time job as a waitress and dishwasher at a nearby café that was frequented by Degas and Lautrec and other artists,

who would also paint there from time to time.

She tells a story about getting in trouble with her boss for talking to the artists when Degas came to her defense and gave her money,

which she immediately took to the art store so she could buy paint and paper and other art supplies.

Degas later disputed this story, saying he would not have been that nice.

Artists are not the only people who Valadon's talking to, though.

Ernest Mollier had founded an amateur circus in 1880 known as the Cirque Mollier that soon became a sensation in Parisian society.

The late 19th century was the era of big spectacle entertainment,

and the painters of the era were drawn to the circuses, cabarets, and sideshows.

Mollier also seems to have been a patron of her café,

and Valadon convinced him to let her join his troupe and train as a trapeze artist.

The arrangement doesn't last very long, though.

Her excitement and ambition get the best of her, as she starts attempting tricks that were well beyond her training.

After only six months, she falls from the trapeze and injures her back.

She eventually recovered, but this puts an end to her acrobatic career.

So, back to the drawing board, but she's still had her striking good looks,

and soon after returning to work, she starts receiving requests to model for the artists who had frequented her café,

which she starts doing when she's 15.

She's very good at it, and her confidence and love of art make her a favorite among the Impressionists.

Soon, she's a familiar face in the art scene.

People are starting to see her face in paintings around town, and she's a minor celebrity.

She's loving it.

She's in her element, and she wants to immerse herself in this world and learn as much as she possibly can.

She becomes a very regular model for Renoir and is thought to be depicted in some of his more famous works,

like the dance at Bouguival.

And around this time in her young modeling career, she becomes pregnant.

Much as it was frowned upon officially, a lot of artists in this era didn't care.

The identity of the father of Suzanne's child had never been determined, though,

and she was known to have had affairs with several major artists, including Degas, Renoir, and Pouvis de Chavannes.

Valadon did write to Renoir several times, claiming that he was the father, though.

She didn't want anything from him, only if he could at least give the baby, little Maurice, his last name,

so he wouldn't be a legal bastard.

Renoir never accepted her pleas or acknowledged his son.

Renoir eventually married another one of his models named Aline.

She's quite jealous and rubs out Suzanne's face in several paintings and tells Renoir to paint her face instead.

So we don't have as many Renoir paintings of Valadon as he originally painted.

Valadon was also romantically connected with the Catalan artist Miguel Utrillo in this period,

and she eventually convinces him to give her son Maurice his name.

She didn't want to marry Miguel.

She didn't love him.

But he says, if you need me to, I'll legally adopt him and he can have my name.

So they finalized the details in 1891 when Maurice is eight.

Young Maurice, though, is not happy about this and for a time refuses to accept the name.

Another artist Valadon would model for was Toulouse Lautrec, who moved into the same studio building where she had been working.

They quickly become friends and lovers.

Despite Lautrec's extreme self-consciousness over his height, she loved him because he respected her.

Up until this time, she had been going by her given name, Marie or Maria.

But Toulouse Lautrec started calling her Suzanne as a nickname and apparently it stuck.

She thought it sounded more professional.

So she took it on and started going by Suzanne and signing her paintings that way for the rest of her life.

While modeling in various studios, she would closely study the artist's paintings in progress during her breaks.

And she would draw as often as she could, copying the styles and methods she was seeing.

Edgar Degas would take a particular interest in her development as an artist.

He's super impressed by her work and he takes her on as somewhat of an apprentice.

He was a big financial supporter of her work as well and buys many of her paintings and drawings over the years,

and introduces her work to other collectors and curators.

A mentor like Degas was critical because female artists had very little access to art education.

Most art schools would not accept female students.

That doesn't just deny them training.

They also miss out on many of the connections students would make there, both with fellow artists,

but also with art professors, gallery owners, and potential patrons.

As we've seen, several influential cliques like the Nabi emerged out of art school friendships.

Some women, like Mary Cassatt and Burt Morisot, had broken through, training privately

and eventually gaining recognition and respect due to their obvious talent.

Cassatt and Morisot came from affluent families, though, who could help support them until they made it

and pay for private tutors.

Valadon had none of that.

So it's extraordinary that by the mid-1890s she's learned enough to start making a living as an artist rather than a model.

She primarily produces drawings and, through etching and printmaking, is able to sell enough prints of her work to support herself, her son, and her mother.

And in 1894, sponsored by her friends in the art community, she exhibits her work at the salon.

After many years dedicated to honing her craft of drawing and printmaking, she finally starts painting.

And it's not long before her paintings are getting recognized by other legendary artists like Cassatt and Morisot, who are both fans.

She loved to draw and paint other women, particularly in domestic scenes while they are nude or bathing.

She would receive some early commissions to draw a series of women in the bathroom.

She has a brief relationship with the well-known composer Eric Satie.

He falls for her, as many men did, and asked to marry her after one day.

She refuses, but of course doesn't miss the opportunity to paint his portrait.

Here we see her early painting skills beginning to emerge.

While most comfortable drawing, she's been teaching herself to paint and has a natural talent for color.

Painting in oils, though, is much more expensive,

and oil paintings can't be copied and sold like drawings can.

So, her early oils are done for her own development rather than the gallery.

But, like most artists, she yearned for the freedom to pursue art unrestrained by the need to make money.

But unlike many of her single male colleagues, she had a son and a mother to look after.

So, in 1896, she comes to an agreement with a rich businessman named Paul Moussi,

who buys a nice house for her, her mother, and son in the countryside.

And with her mom looking after Maurice, that now gave her the opportunity to focus on developing her work full-time.

Valadon doesn't love Moussi, and it seems pretty clear it was an emotional sacrifice she made for her family's security.

She does have more time and freedom now to develop as a painter, but she's also in the countryside,

isolated from her friends and opportunities to grow and work as an artist in Paris.

Young Maurice hates this new arrangement.

He hated Paul Moussi and hated living in this house.

As Maurice becomes a teenager, he starts partying with the older kids and drinking his grandma's booze.

Paul Moussi would hook him up with various jobs, and he kept getting fired.

He starts cutting up tassels and chairs, laughing like crazy, threatening suicide.

Eventually, Suzanne can't take it anymore.

She commits him to the asylum with alcoholism at age 18.

Upon his discharge from the asylum, the doctor diagnoses him with an Oedipal complex

and says he has an unnatural attachment to his mother.

Ironically, though, Valadon had never had a great relationship with Maurice.

One time, Toulouse-Lautrec found a drawing she made of Maurice, and he commented that she

treated that drawing with greater care than she ever did Maurice himself.

She wants to do something healthy and productive with her son, though.

So, as her first student, she teaches Maurice how to paint.

She's an excellent teacher, and he has great genes.

Maurice gets really good, really fast, and starts painting outside.

He's bold and experimental, and he's into texture and experiments with mixing sand and

plaster in his paint.

Suzanne would try to set him up with women or take him to the brothel.

But this would upset him and send him into another drinking binge.

Then, he would write a poem about Suzanne being a goddess.

He would show her the poem, which she refused to acknowledge.

She was disturbed by this pedestalization from her son, and this would send him into another

drinking binge.

Needless to say, it's a fairly dysfunctional and problematic relationship, but one that

would endure.

This is a painting she did of Maurice when he was a bit older.

Notice the strong, vibrant colors in his hand and those characteristically rosy cheeks

she was known for painting.

The strong crease under his eye connects to the fold in his jacket and leads us down

to his palette.

All the strong angles and contrasting shapes in the back hint at the dark and troubled mind

of Maurice.

Maurice begins hanging out with Imedio Modigliani and seems to fall in love with him, but Modigliani

makes it clear that they are just friends.

Suzanne likes him and models for him several times.

Unfortunately, Modigliani was a bad influence on Maurice, as he was into drinking and smoking

hash, and they would frequently break out in public fights.

Suzanne lived in a maelstrom of artist's egos and temperaments practically her entire

life.

And with all this going on, as well as trying to live up to her end of the bargain with Paul,

we can get a sense of why, in the first couple decades of her career, she was not nearly

as prolific as her colleagues.

Yet, she still managed to stay focused, always working and constantly growing as an artist.

Her paintings are characterized by bold strokes and strong lines, laced with emotion and empathy.

Valadon reinvented the treatment of the female nude with frankness and energy.

Being nearly the only woman working alongside the post-impressionist, she had the lived experience,

the empathy, and the emotional intelligence to understand and paint women in a way that no man could.

In this simple pastel from 1908, we can see how she captures the woman balancing beauty and sensuality,

yet at the same time, vulnerability in an awkward position.

It's a mental space Valadon would be all too familiar with, modeling during her difficult early life.

A year later, in 1909, she moves out of her arrangement with Moussi and goes back to Montmartre to resume the artist's life.

Of course, Maurice and her mom came with her.

But over the past decade, she had been able to focus enough time and energy on developing her skills

that by the time they move out, she was selling enough work to set them up in a modest but comfortable apartment.

This is no easy feat for any artist of any era.

At times, money got so tight they had to all move into her painting studio.

But she kept painting and she kept getting better, and more people are starting to take notice.

Back in Paris, Maurice introduces his friend and model, and perhaps crush, André Uter, to his mother.

In a nice role reversal, he starts modeling for Valadon.

And even though she was 44 and he was 23, they soon become friends and lovers.

That year, she paints them together as Adam and Eve, tacitly commenting on the perceived scandal and sin of their relationship,

and the temptations of the two gave in to.

Interestingly, it was claimed that this was the first painting by a female artist of a nude couple to be publicly exhibited, at least in Europe.

And in the original version of the painting, André was indeed totally nude.

Their relationship was incredibly controversial.

And about a decade later, when it was to hang in this long day's independence,

they asked her to cover up his junk, to censor it, to paint over it.

She really didn't want to, but upon learning that Maurice's painting was going to hang next to hers,

this would be the first time exhibiting with her son, so she relents and adds the leaves.

Suzanne and André Uter eventually marry, and he becomes her manager and stepfather to Maurice.

It's not a very happy family, though, and the three get nicknamed the Cursed Trinity.

Maurice's alcoholism becomes a frequent battle, as he was in and out of the hospital for seven years.

But despite his setbacks and frequent hospitalizations, Maurice's painting career blows up.

With his successful artist mother and André as his manager, doors are opening for him.

He quickly starts making good money selling his own paintings.

This family portrait she painted in 1912 is one of my favorites.

It's brutally honest, beautiful, and haunting.

She sums up Maurice perfectly in this gesture.

Her lover and Maurice's pal André behind her, in a supportive role.

Suzanne's mother is also behind them, years of struggle written on her face.

Suzanne pulls no punches, darkening those thick creases and wrinkles in her skin.

Her placement in the composition shows her detached from the three.

It's a brilliantly subtle composition that reveals a map of the relationship dynamics.

She's the natural focus of the portrait, the only one looking out towards us.

Not out of vanity, but from honesty.

She was the core of this family.

I also like the refined beauty in her face.

No makeup, simple and glowing with a warm light, and her passion for life.

Despite their problems, this new family arrangement finally seems to provide some stability in her life,

and she continues working and painting through each difficulty she faced.

Her work begins to draw less on her influences and more on her own intuition.

And now, in her late 40s, she enters into a more prolific and mature period in her work,

a Post-Impressionist every bit as equal as her colleagues.

For example, Suzanne's painting of bathers called The Joy of Life from 1911

is a fascinating response to Cézanne's bathers.

We have a lush, green landscape and a curious composition.

Four women on the left.

One woman clearly feeling herself.

Rare to see that kind of confidence displayed by a woman in a painting in this era.

And way off to the side is a single, solitary man looking sheepish and embarrassed.

Wow, what a power reversal!

This is a remarkably progressive painting.

Not to mention the stylized way she has painted the man, gaunt and linear,

compared to the full and round women flaunting their curves.

Suzanne loved to paint women of all ages.

She had a unique perspective.

And I often like to paint elaborate interior scenes that use tapestries, patterns, and colors,

in a very crowded composition, somewhat similar to the works of the Les Na Bi artists.

But she's able to balance the chaos with her careful attention, harmonizing color and contrast.

Some of her most interesting works to me are these interior spaces, usually with a seated older woman from her life,

whether it was a friend, or her mother, or her nanny, Lily Walton, as depicted in this one.

These works reveal a strong command of her craft and maturing style, combining bold patterns and fabrics,

with strong contrasts, interweaving them into a beautifully painted scene, with exaggerated colors and angles, and a barrage of patterns.

But they remain cohesive with an interior logic defining peace and serenity to them, as the subject and pose return us to.

She's an expert at combining multiple complex themes.

In 1923, when she's 58 years old, she paints The Blue Room, which, more than any other painting,

solidified her reputation as an important post-impressionist and is hailed as a masterpiece.

This is a fantastic painting for many reasons.

This woman looks contemporary even by today's standards.

Comfy striped pants and a pink tank top, a cigarette in her mouth, the only thing missing is her iPhone.

This shockingly modern portrait of a confident, casual woman in pants was as popular as it was scandalous.

Not to mention the beautiful composition flanked entirely in a blue tapestry with white leaves,

as her pink and green attire contrasts brilliantly with the blue.

Those tones are repeated but in a more muted way in the earth tones behind her,

almost as if she is emerging from the dirt and the dust of the earth.

It's a very direct challenge to a popular trope in Western art that has been around for centuries,

and still persists, of a beautiful woman depicted Venus-like in a reclined position,

with the perfect physique and stunning purity.

Valadon here boldly presents an ordinary middle-aged woman of the era in this vein.

She is Venus just the way she is.

The Blue Room was a massive hit, and the Gallery Bernheim June puts her on retainer for a million francs,

a totally unprecedented contract.

Her paintings were getting widespread acclaim, and she was finally getting recognition in her own right.

The money starts rolling in.

The cursed trinity goes on a spending spree, buying caviar for the cats, throwing fur coats on the floor for the dogs,

hiring a white uniform chauffeur.

She is living life.

She's in her prime now, and success will not deter her focus either.

She's in full command over the composition and color palette,

as you see the confidence and refinement of an artist only with her experience has.

I love the abstract space created here in the bathers, with three very different fabrics colliding together,

and the colors all meet together in the skin tone of the women, showing red from the carpet, green from the drapery,

purples and blue from the back wall.

They all show up again, either as reflected light or the actual skin tone.

She's bold with her marks, even in the face, which is where one usually expects the artist to paint much more softly

and subtly to capture the nuance of a likeness.

Not Suzanne, she was able to identify those key facial features and colors and simplify them

so that a single broad stroke of pink could make up the cheek.

She's using a lot of mint green color that often hovers in between yellow and blue, sometimes gray,

reinforcing the green tones in the skin, a classical academic tradition in which she pushes into bolder and more confident gestures.

We see in this golden age of her life with making another frank and honest self-portrait.

She's recording the change age is having on her appearance.

Notice how the portrait is mediated by various objects placed between her and us.

She is reflected in a framed mirror, almost like a painting of a painting.

It's not a glamorous portrait, but it is expertly composed with a bold pattern fabric and even a bowl of apples.

I appreciate the loose and rough brush strokes on the bottom in blue.

It seems to be a vase reflected in the mirror, but rather than having it crisp and detailed to show it up close,

she goes the other way, makes it blurry and out of focus.

There's much more focus on her face, which is curious because the large patchy colors there look much more carefully constructed compared to the foreground.

I love the depth this creates. Her paintings reveal a clever artist who could play with and manipulate space in new and exciting ways throughout her entire career.

Late in her career, she also does numerous still lives.

I'm a huge fan of these later flower paintings.

While seemingly less complex than her portraits, I think they are striking nonetheless and contain all the beauty and contradictions of her other works.

There is free-spirited chaos and energy moving back and forth between the subject and the background, light bouncing and glowing in many directions.

She throws us off kilter while simultaneously soothing us and bringing us a beautiful moment.

Not a shallow beauty, but one that seems born out of pain, experience, and wisdom.

At one point, the family moves out of Paris into a small village in the country.

Showing up in a limousine, they become instant celebrities.

However, this warm welcome quickly wears off as Marie starts getting drunk in town.

He's breaking things and peeing on things.

And for some reason, the locals don't seem to appreciate this.

And they're forced out of town.

In 1932, a retrospective of her life's work opens at Galerie Georges Petit.

A couple of years later, Utre moves out, but they never officially divorce.

And in 1935, she goes to the hospital for diabetes.

She lives long enough to see museums begin collecting her work, though, fulfilling the last of her lifelong ambitions.

She has a stroke and dies two years later at the age of 72.

She made 475 paintings in total and 275 drawings.

Unfortunately, she soon became better known as the mother of Maurice, which began to erase her identity.

As his fame grew, hers became diminished.

Yet despite her unjust historical treatment, Valadon was an important post-impressionist.

Her relative youth and personal circumstances delayed the climax of her career to the very end of the post-impressionist era and a bit beyond.

Many of the greats had died by the time she produced some of her most accomplished works.

Stylistically and thematically, though, she belongs alongside Cezanne and Toulouse-Lautrec as part of this extraordinary generation of painters.

Stylistically andك