This is the artwork of Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938). Valadon was a French artist who started her career as an artist’s model. In 1894, Valadon became the first woman painter admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts.

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Valadon was born into poverty & never received any formal art training. She was illegitimate & her mother was a laundress in Montmartre, Paris. She left school at 11 & tried a number of jobs - such as working in milliner's workshop, selling vegetables, & waitressing

When she was 15, joined the Mollier circus, where she worked as an acrobat until she injured herself falling from a trapeze. While performing she met a number of artists, such as Toulouse Lautrec, Sescau and Berthe Morisot, who asked to paint her.

She was only just 16 when she started modelling. Over the next ten years, she modelled for the likes of Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes, Théophile Steinlen, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Jean-Jacques Henner, and Toulouse-Lautrec. Here she is in Renoir's ‘Dance at Bougival’, 1883

During this time, she studied the artist’s technique and taught herself how to paint. She became good friends with Edgar Degas, who encouraged her work.

In 1883, aged 18, Valadon gave birth to a son, Maurice Utrillo. Valadon's mother cared for Maurice while she returned to modelling. Valadon's friend Miguel Utrillo would later sign papers recognizing Maurice as his son, although his true paternity is uncertain.

Maurice would grow up to be a very successful artist, specialising in cityscapes. This is his La Rue Norvins à Montmartre, c. 1910

Valadon began painting full-time in 1896. Initially, she painted still life, but she became famous for her paintings of female nudes. She didn’t paint idealised female bodies like other artists. Her work was considered very shocking at the time - but she wasn’t done yet

In 1896, Valadon married Paul Mousis, a very rich banker, which allowed her to paint full time. She started painting male nudes & the work she produced is considered to be the first depictions in art where the man is the woman’s object of desire.

An example of this is her Casting the Net (Lancement du filet) (1914).

After a string of affairs with much younger men, Valadon finally divorced Moussis in 1913. She married the 24 year old painter André Utter the following year. Valadon and Utter regularly exhibited work together until the couple divorced in 1934.

Suzanne Valadon died of a stroke on 7 April 1938, at age 72, and was buried in the Cimetière de Saint-Ouen in Paris. Among those in attendance at her funeral were her friends and colleagues André Derain, Pablo Picasso, and Georges Braque.