Suzanne Valadon

Suzanne Valadon (23 September 18657 April 1938) was a French painter who was born Marie-Clémentine Valadon at Bessines-sur-Gartempe, Haute-Vienne, France. In 1894, Valadon became the first woman painter admitted to the . 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'' (1911), included mostly female nudes, portraits of women, still lifes, and landscapes. She never attended the academy and was never confined within a set tradition or style of art. Despite not being confined to any tradition, she shocked the artistic world as the first woman painter to depict a male nude as well as less idealized images of women in comparison to those of her male counterparts.

She was a model for many renowned artists. Among them, Valadon appeared in such paintings as ''Dance at Bougival'' (1883) and ''Dance in the City'' by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1883), and ''Suzanne Valadon'' (1885) and ''The Hangover (Suzanne Valadon)'' (1887 - 1889) by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Provided by Wikipedia