page_title: Suzanne Valadon
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Suzanne Valadon / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: Renoir's 1883 painting
context_page_description: Suzanne Valadon was a French painter and artists' model who was born Marie-Clémentine Valadon at Bessines-sur-Gartempe, Haute-Vienne, France. In 1894, Valadon became the first woman painter admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. She was also the mother of painter Maurice Utrillo.
  Valadon spent nearly 40 years of her life as an artist. The subjects of her drawings and paintings, such as Joy of Life, included mostly female nudes, female portraits, still lifes, and landscapes. She never attended the academy and was never confined within a tradition.
  As a model Valadon appeared in such paintings as Pierre-Auguste Renoir's 1883 Dance at Bougival and Dance in the City, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's 1885 portrait.
context_section_description: Valadon grew up in poverty with her mother, an unmarried laundress in Montmartre; she did not know her father. Known to be quite independent and rebellious, she attended primary school until age 11.
  She began working at age 11 in a variety of areas including a milliner's workshop, a factory making funeral wreaths, a market selling vegetables, a waitress, and then finally in the circus. At the age of 15 Valadon met Count Antoine de la Rochefoucauld and Thèo Wagner, two symbolist painters who were involved in decorating a circus belonging to Medrano.  Through this connection she began work at the Mollier circus as an acrobat until she fell from a trapeze after a year of work. The circus was frequented by artists such as Lautrec, Sescau and Berthe Morisot and this may be where Morisot did her painting of Valadon.
  It is commonly believed that Valadon taught herself how to draw at the age of nine. In the Montmartre quarter of Paris, she pursued her interest in art, first working as a model for artists, observing and learning their techniques, before becoming a noted painter herself.
caption: Valadon is depicted dancing in Pierre-Auguste Renoir's 1883 painting, Dance at Bougival
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