Video: "Scary Marie": the incredible fate of the scandalous muse Renoir
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
No one knew when she was telling the truth and when she was lying. No one knew where she disappeared for several days. Nobody asked who the father of her child was. She was called "the terrible Marie" and was accused of prudence, eccentricity and heartlessness. Suzanne Valadon was one of the most popular models of Montmartre, she posed Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec … No one knew that she also paints and could become a successful artist.
Marie-Clementine Valadon was the daughter of a laundress, and she knew nothing about her father. From the age of 11 she had to work: she nursed children, served drinks in a bistro, traded vegetables in the market. At the age of 15, she entered the service of an amateur circus and became an acrobat. Her circus career ended after she fell off the trapeze and fell into the arena. Due to the injury, the girl could no longer perform acrobatic stunts.
Her mother opened a laundry room and Marie-Clementine helped her deliver laundry to customers. Among them were artists, and one of them - Puvis de Chavannes - drew attention to an attractive girl, offering her a job as a model. In each character of the painting "The Sacred Grove" traits of Marie-Clementine are guessed.
Later, the girl also became a model for F. Zandomeneghi and O. Renoir. In 1883, Valadon gave birth to a son, whose father was named each of the artists with whom she worked. The girl did not differ in puritanical views and led a free lifestyle. In the same year, the model posed for two paintings from Renoir's dance series. "Scary Marie" in his performance is the very charm, softness and femininity.
Toulouse-Lautrec sees her quite differently. In his works, the artist does not flatter the girl, focusing on those features that betray her absurd character. A researcher of the life and work of Toulouse-Lautrec A. Perrusho wrote: “In Lautrec's portraits, Marie has sharp, hard facial features, such as they will become when she loses the charm of her twenty years. She has a sad face, not for her age, compressed lips, a gloomy, absent gaze directed into space”.
On the advice of Toulouse-Lautrec, Marie-Clementine took the pseudonym Suzanne, and it was under this name that the whole world later recognized her. At that time, the model and the artist began a whirlwind romance, in which A. Perrusho sees not only a passion for each other, but also a creative union of two talented people: “Marie liked love. She occupied a large place in her life. The sight of Lautrec, his ugly appearance, his passionate nature did not scare her away, but rather, on the contrary, attracted her. She became Lautrec's mistress. They both seemed to be made for each other. And this plebeian and a descendant of the Counts de Toulouse were absolutely free from any prejudice. Both he and she looked at reality soberly. Taking advantage of any opportunity to learn their craft from artists, Valadon appreciated Lautrec's talent, his sharp psychologist's eyes, the sobriety of his views, his inability to write "beautifully", his often scourging pencil and brush."
Suzanne Valadon liked to tell stories about herself, which was confirmed by Toulouse-Lautrec: “She has plenty of imagination, she doesn't need to lie”. But she never spoke about one thing - about her serious passion for painting. Toulouse-Lautrec once accidentally saw her work and was struck by the outstanding talent of the artist. He showed her paintings to Edgar Degas, and he exclaimed: "You are ours!"
"Terrible Marie" forced Toulouse-Lautrec to fulfill all her whims, tormented him with hysterics, disappeared for a long time without explanation, constantly lied. After she played a play with suicide, the artist's patience came to an end, and they never met again. Later she got married, and at 44 she left her husband for a 23-year-old lover, with whom she lived for almost 30 years.
Valadon took her works much more seriously than men: she could work on one painting for more than 10 years. In 1894, Valadon became the first artist to be admitted to the National Society of Fine Arts and one of the few to achieve recognition and financial well-being during her lifetime. Suzanne Valadon gave her son Maurice Utrillo neither maternal care nor love, but she conveyed her love for painting - he also became an artist. They were called the last heirs of Impressionism.
And Renoir soon after Valadon had a model, whose portraits he painted until the end of his days: Renoir's muse, or a hymn to female beauty
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