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Estimate: $ 1,200 - $ 1,800
SUZANNE VALADON Catherine nue se coiffant.
Etching, 1895. 218x239 mm; 8 1/2x9 1/2 inches, wide margins. Signed in pencil, lower right. A very good impression of this scarce etching.
Valadon (1865-1938) was a French painter born into poverty and raised by her single mother, an unmarried laundress in Montmartre, Paris. Valadon began working as a model in 1880 in Montmartre at age 15. She modeled for more than ten years for many different artists including Berthe Morisot, Puvis de Chavannes, Théophile Steinlen, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. She modeled under the name "Maria" before being nicknamed "Suzanne" by Toulouse-Lautrec, after the biblical story of Susanna and the Elders, as he felt that she preferred modeling for older artists. Valadon was Toulouse-Lautrec's lover for two years, which ended when she attempted suicide in 1888.
Valadon taught herself by observing the techniques of the artists for whom she posed; she was also encouraged by the artist Edgar Degas, who purchased some of her work. Valadon spent some four decades of her life as an artist. Her subjects included mostly female nudes, portraits of women, still lifes and landscapes. She never attended the academy and was never confined within a tradition. In 1894, Valadon became the first female artist admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris. She was also the mother of painter Maurice Utrillo.
