October 7, 2002:

Suzanne Valadon's struggle to define her identity.

Street scruff: mother a laundress. In Paris in the 19th century this means half a step from prostitution. In the rubble of the Commune a child teaches herself to draw.

While the Impressionists were painting under umbrellas in the open air, Valadon was scribbling on walls, on scraps of paper, anything she could scrounge. She coaxed a coalman to give her broken pieces of charcoal and drew boldly on the pavement of the Place de Vintimille.

At fifteen her great beauty attracts the famous painters. She models for many of the loveliest works of the age. She's several of the figures in Puvis de Chavanne's The Grove Sacred to the Arts and Muses, 1884. She's two of Renoir's lovely dancers (1883), and all of his Bathers (1887).

On fine Sunday mornings, in the Place Pigalle, would-be models draped themselves around the fountain dressed up brightly colored as nymphs, shepherds, cherubs and Greek gods. All the models — bronzed Italian girls, 'Neapolitans as ready to prostitute themselves as to pose', dark-eyed Jews, youths dressed in tight trousers — hoped to catch the eye of the painters taking coffee or absinthe in the cafés opposite.

While the great men paint her beauty, she studies their techniques. You picture her as a card-cheat, sneaking glances at the canvas during trips to the bathroom. She draws at home in her garret, silent and determined, in secret, through years of her life, encouraged and supported by precisely no-one.

Renoir eventually did discover that his model was an aspiring artist when one day she was late for a session and he went to fetch her. Arriving in her room, he found his model sitting at her easel, drawing. Amused at first, he glanced at the work; then he studied her drawing more carefully and was impressed. 'You too, and you hide it,' he said; but he made no offer of help or guidance.

She becomes Toulouse-Lautrec's lover. When she leaves him, he bitterly paints her as a hungover drunk, in one of his most joyless works. But he praises her drawings, pins them on his wall, shows them to his fellow artists. They encourage Valadon to seek out Degas, who "was known to champion younger artists." A mutual friend, "astonished and enthusiastic," writes a letter of introduction.

[Valadon] went to visit Degas in a state of high tension. She had heard that he was a misogynist who guarded his privacy fiercely, a bachelor in his fifties who lived with his housekeeper. Years later, in an interview with an art critic, she talked about that first meeting with Degas.

Zoe Closier, Degas's middle-aged housekeeper at No. 37 Rue Victor-Masse, peered over her glasses hesitantly when she opened the door. During the day Degas shut himself up in his studio on the top floor of the house and Madame Closier knew he hated to be disturbed. But the sight of [Degas' friend's] familiar writing reassured her and she called Monsieur Degas. He came down, neatly dressed, and looked quizzically at the beautiful young woman, whom he had already noticed modeling in Montmartre. Without speaking he accepted the portfolio of drawings she offered him. Then he settled down to concentrate on the work.

Degas's own art was imbued with a study of the past, and he was wary of self-taught artists. For years he had experimented with different forms — drawing, painting, sculpting, print-making, even photography — always seeking perfection, loath to part with his work, which he always considered unfinished. A complex man, he had a passion for drawing and his own collection included works by Ingres, Delacroix and Hokusai as well as many moderns.

"He showered me with praise," said Valadon after the ordeal was over.

That afternoon Degas neglected his own work, talking and listening to [Valadon]. He was amazed that a girl from her class, a model, could work with such dedication and flair, and asked her how she could afford artists' materials. By the time she left, dazed with joy, Degas had bought his first Valadon, a drawing in red chalk of a girl getting out of the bath titled 'La Toilette' but undated. He hung it in his small dining-room. "You are one of us," Degas told her.

"That day I had wings," she said.

Valadon's story resonates for me as a model for all who struggle to define their own identity, independent of family, society, and circle.

I use Valadon in TriadCity, where I've placed her in an often-travelled spot, painting the River with her friend Edna Pontellier. The fictive technique is simple juxtaposition. The real-life Valadon, street-smart, uncompromising, mentors the literary character Edna, sensitive and emotionally frail. My intention is to imply something about solidarity. Edna's death in The Awakening is ultimately from isolation. She has no peers, separated by class and by confusion from the only artist available in her milieu, the pianist Mlle. Riesz. It's her partial and contradictory break from her circumstances, that is her refusal to seek peers outside New Orleans, which results in her suicide. She was no Valadon. Perhaps Valadon could have saved her.
They're in the "good" Third, which is to say, the part of the City where people are concerned about democracy, individual identities, and empowerment of the poor. Escaped slaves go there to be safe. Edna's gone there to be safe. Valadon's gone there to be herself, and to find her work valued. Edna might have done better to place more reliance on female relationships than male ones. Valadon succeeded because of her reliance on herself, that is, because she refused to surrender the self she wanted to be. Edna might have found her life, if she'd had the right model.

(The passages in italic are from June Rose, Suzanne Valadon, 1998, St. Martin's Press.)