Berthe Morisot: Tightrope Walker 1886
Once upon a time there was a poor sewing maid in a little town, somewhere people said Bonjour to each other every morning. The poor sewing maid had a little daughter to whom she had never told who her father was, maybe because she did not know it either. The little misbegotten girl, Marie Clementine Valadon, had lied a castellan father for herself, who was very engaged with his castle and looked upon the world from his tower.
Country people did not welcome the poor sewing maid and her daughter so one day the mother decided to go to the big city of lights to find a job and a better life. After a few years with the nuns, Marie worked in a milliner’s shop, where she attached the silk bows onto the fashionable hats what ladies wore at the racecourses in the Bois de Boulogne.
Around the day when the little girl read from men’s eyes that she was not a little girl anymore, watched a circus show and it mesmerized her with its vivid cavalcade, and happy atmosphere. The powder-cloud of adventures lured her behind the stage, to the clowns and acrobats, and she became one of them.
Marie bravely climbed up to the air in a tiny, curt white dress with a black velvet choker around her neck. She touched the tightrope with her feet and carefully walked to the other side, waggling and balancing with charm what audience rewarded with a loud applause. Marie expanded her arms and bowed with a wide smile on her face.
Marie’s mom washed Montmartre artists’ linen like Puvis de Chavannes, who introduced the girl to his artist friends. The painters discovered the pretty faced Marie and painted her regularly.
One day Marie fell off the trapeze and hit her back so badly that she could not work as an acrobat anymore. When she recovered she decided to be a model for the artists instead. Painters loved her for her dainty poses, beauteous face and body. She knew how to move and look beautiful. She modeled for Renoir, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Berthe Morison, Puvis de Chavannes, and many more. Marie’s figure greets us from famous paintings where she dances at Bougival, or braids her hair, stands among the black umbrellas, or just sits before a glass of wine.
Life taught her how to survive so Marie became crafty and fraudulent. She enjoyed her life in full, danced on bar counters and loved to love. It did not cause her trouble to undress at all.
At the age of eighteen she bore a son, Maurice, whose father could have been any artists in Montmartre. None of the painters recognized the boy as his so Marie lied a father to little Maurice. She could lie without a blink anyway. Later, a Spanish tavern owner friend, Utrillo, gave his name to the bastard from kindness.
Marie always drew between the sittings: on the walls, on the sidewalks, with a piece of charcoal. She drew all the time. Soon Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas, and others realized how talented she was and encouraged her to have drawing lessons. Lautrec also advised Marie to use the name Suzanne instead of Marie. There she reborn as Suzanne Valadon, the artist. She drew first, and later started to make oil paintings as well. She painted still lives, female nudes, her son Maurice, her mom, and self-portraits. She depicted the composer Satie and became his lover for a while.
Suzanne married a stockbroker, left Montmartre to raise Maurice in the countryside, and taught him to paint. After years, when she have met Maurice’s fellow painter friend, Andre, who was half of her age, they immediately fell in love with each other. She left her husband and moved back to Montmartre with Maurice and Andre.
Suzanne’s works became more and more popular. She had many offers and exhibitions, she got more money but she despised money. She kept a goat in her studio to eat up her bad drawings and fed her cats with caviars on Fridays. She was brave enough to paint a nude self-portrait when she was sixty-six.
One day, Suzanne felt dizzy while painting at her easel and fainted to the floor. Down there for an eternity, her eyes glazed the air, where she saw the tightrope of her youth and climbed up to it. She touched the rope with her feet, then carefully walked over to the other side, where bowed to the audience with a wide smile on her anew pretty young face. While the claps filled the big top, Suzanne Marie-Clemente Valadon jumped high to the air and did not get her feet again on earth.
Source: Jeanne Champion: Suzanne Valadon