Suzanne Valadon

SUZANNE VALADON (Bessines-sur-Gartempe, 1865 - Paris, 1938)
"Woman", 1905.
Red chalk on paper.
Signed and dated in the lower right corner.
Provenance: -Private collection, Luxembourg. -Millon et Associés, Art Moderne, Paris, April 26, 2014, lot 50.
With certificate issued by Gilbert Petrides, no. 26,546, dated May 17, 1999.
Measurements: 26 x 29 cm; 40 x 42.5 cm (with frame).

Executed in 1905, this sanguine is a remarkable example of the graphic maturity of Suzanne Valadon, an essential figure of artistic Paris at the beginning of the 20th century. A former model of Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Puvis de Chavannes and Degas -who especially encouraged her facet as a draftsman-, Valadon developed her own view of the human figure, far from the decorative idealization common to many of her contemporaries.

The figure appears seated and captured in profile, in an attitude of recollection that avoids any theatrical artifice. The artist uses the sanguine with extraordinary economy of means, alternating fine and precise lines in the contour of the face and body with denser and more vibrant strokes in the hair, shoes and some areas of the clothing. Despite the lightness of the medium, he manages to endow the model with a remarkable body consistency, wrapping her in wide synthetic folds that reinforce the sensation of domestic intimacy.

The composition possesses the naturalness of an observed instant, almost a stolen moment, in which the woman does not offer herself to the viewer, but remains absorbed in her own space. This visual frankness defines much of Valadon's modernity, whose work focused on the human figure, the nude, portraiture, still life and interior scenes, always with a direct language of firm contours and great psychological intensity.

In 1894 she was the first woman admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, a key recognition in a career marked by her independence. Her work is preserved in important collections and museums, including the Centre Pompidou, the Musée d'Orsay and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The documented provenance and the certificate issued by Gilbert Petrides reinforce the interest of this piece within her production on paper and the School of Paris.