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TITLE:
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Jeune Fille au Chat
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WORK DATE:
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1919
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CATEGORY:
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Paintings
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MATERIALS:
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Oil on canvas
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MARKINGS:
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Signed and dated lower left: Suzanne Valadon 1919
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SIZE:
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25.625 x 21.25 inches (64.7 x 54 cm)
Framed: 35.5 x 31 inches (90 x 78.7 cm)
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STYLE:
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Modern
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PRICE*:
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Contact Gallery for Price
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DESCRIPTION:
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Jeune Fillau Chat is one of Valadon’s finest canvases of a single figure. It is visually stunning and can be advantageously compared to single figure masterworks by Cezanne, Gauguin, Modigliani, Van Gogh and Lautrec. Critical study and evaluation of Valadon’s work has not been done even to this date. It is commonly known that Degas, Renoir, and all the Post–Impressionists revered her brute talent. A keen eye would see that this work is a great synthesis and understanding of the above artists’ works but curiously– completely and recognizably by Valadon. On page two we illustrate comparable works by the Post–Impressionists, and each one relates to what we see in this piece. The fascinating and original conclusion is that Valadon, perhaps because she was an underdog and a woman, had the freedom to borrow from her male counterparts with unabashed acknowledgement and then the luck of having a strong style of her own that permeated the work. Based on archival photographs the sitter in our work could potentially be Suzanne Valadon herself. The balance and solidity of this composition is remarkable. The tilt to the head is really the characteristic that makes the canvas special, and the fact that the facial features are slightly askew of the angle of the face. The other standout is the acidity of color she has used which was a trademark of her friend Toulouse – Lautrec. She manages to counterbalance the acidity of the greens with the right tones to make the picture pleasing yet charmingly strident. Valadon was not always known for drawing an “attractive” face, but here the sitter is appealing in a strong and candid manner. This work is dated 1919 and pre-dates some of the great strong work she produced in the 1920’s.
She was known to have posed for the great artists Toulouse-Lautrec and Renoir, the latter becoming her lover and one of her greatest admirers. Valadon reveled in the bohemian artistic scene of Montmartre in the 1880’s and 1890’s before coming into her own as an artist during the early years of the 20th century when our With Cat was executed. She became the first woman to be granted entrance to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. The boldness of her line and the unstoppable sexuality of her candid and powerfully conceived nudes as in our With Cat continued to scandalize many of the art patrons of the day. Still she persevered and being the ultimate perfectionist, often worked on a picture for thirteen years before pronouncing it done. In With Cat her vibrant and powerful colors in the best Fauvist tradition are applied within a strong compositional framework and combine with a sense of directness and lack of any guile to place her as a peer of the great Post Impressionists. However, tales of her free-wheeling lifestyle often took precedence over any admiration for or careful study of her art until recently.
During her life Suzanne Valadon was seen as an outcast and an extreme individual. She was born as the illegitimate child of a laundress and took all sorts of odd jobs in her early life in order to survive. She worked as a circus performer until the age of 16 at which time she fell off a trapeze. Because she desired a profession that was less prone to injury, Valadon decided to become an artist’s model. She posed for artists such as Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. She served as a subject for Renoir's The Bathers. Mingling with Impressionists in the clubs and cabarets of Montmartre, she caused a stir with her provocative stunts. When she was 18 years old, Valadon gave birth to an illegitimate son, the future artist Maurice Utrillo. While modeling for various artists, Valadon paid careful attention to their manner of painting and the construction of their canvases. Without any formal training Suzanne Valadon began to paint on her own. One of the first people to see her work was Toulouse-Lautrec, who encouraged her to continue to pursue painting as a career. Edgar Degas was in fact so taken with her drawings that he became the first to purchase an example of her work, even though she was largely self-taught and lacking any formal academic training at any one of the respected schools in Paris. The bohemian and unconventional style of Valadon’s paintings captured the attention of the bourgeois society and was cause for much uproar during her time. The acclaim with which she is rewarded today was very slow in coming during her lifetime. Although her work was not always looked upon with approval, her audacity and daring nature finally won her a solo exhibition in 1915.
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PROVENANCE:
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Collection Mme. Bordeaux Le Pecq, Paris
Private Collection, Connecticut
Lester Avnet, New York
Sotheby’s, New York: Wednesday, May 10, 1995 (Lot 00327), Impressionist & Modern Art, Part II
Private Collection, USA
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LITERATURE:
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Paul Pétridès, L’Oeuvre Complet de Suzanne Valadon, Paris, 1971, no. P. 150,
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EXHIBITION HISTORY:
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Haus Der Kunst Muchen, June 15 to September 11, 1960
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