Deux autres natures mortes par Suzanne Valadon

I have finished my week-long tribute to the undeservedly neglected art of Suzanne Valadon but found two more images in my collection which I couldn’t resist sharing. These are excellent still lifes and the second painting could almost be mistaken for Braque.

L’avenir dévoilé, 1912

Catherine nue allongée sur une peau de panthère, 1923

Cinq Natures Mortes par Suzanne Valadon, 1922-33

Erik and Suzanne

One of Suzanne Valadon’s first oil paintings, the charmingly naive portrait of Erik Satie commemorates a brief, intense love affair between the two. In return Satie composed the song “Bonjour, Biqui, Bonjour!” and adorned the autograph score with a cartoon portrait of her. It is unlikely that Valadon ever heard the song or saw the manuscript, which was found in Satie’s effects at his death. The affair lasted six months, though he continued to send her love letters for some thirty years and is not known to have had another love. Valadon’s self-portrait below dates from the same époque.

La Tresse (Suzanne Valadon), 1886

In her youth Suzanne Valadon posed for several iconic paintings by Renoir including this beautiful portrait of the twenty-one-year-old muse.

Femme à la Contrebasse, 1908

The Hangover, c. 1888

As painter and lover, model, muse and confidante Suzanne Valadon was a key figure in the fabled, febrile Parisian art-world of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The 150th anniversary of her birth seems to me to deserve far more attention and commemoration than it seems to be receiving today. I shall try, in my small way, to do something to amend that over the next days and weeks.

Marie-Clémentine Valadon, known as Suzanne Valadon
23 September 1865 – 7 April 1938