Renoir’s Dancer - The Secret Life of Suzanne Valadon by Catherine Hewitt- 2018

Renoir’s Dancer - The Secret Life of Suzanne Valadon by Catherine Hewitt- 2018

Paris in July hosted by Thyme for Tea, great event, will end on August 4th. 

I Focus on literary works and nonfiction but you are invited to share your thoughts and experience on anything Paris related, from a great recipe, a favourite movie set in Paris, mine is Ninotchka, an account of your stay in Paris.  I hope lots of people join in.  Just be sure to  link you post on The event home page.  

There is still time to join us.

 There are lots of very interesting posts from food bloggers, Francophiles, travel bloggers, as well as book bloggers.  Normally I don’t venture far from the international book blog community so for me this event is an excellent way to expand my horizons. 

So far I read for Paris in July 2018

1. “A Yiddish Poet in Paris” by Blume Lempel, 1978
2. Vagabond by Colette, 1904
3. Lost Times - Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp by Józef Czafski -translated and introduced. by Eric Karpeles - 2018
4. “Her Last Dance” by Blume Lempel - 
5. Gerorge Sand by Martine Reid 2017

THE ARCHIVE THIEF The Man Who Salvaged French Jewish History in the Wake of the Holocaust LISA MOSES LEFF

6. “Cousin Claude” by Blume Lempel
7. Taste of Paris:A History of the Parisian Love Affair with Food by David Downie
8. “The Beggar” by Gaito Gazdanov, 1962
9. “Image on a Blank Canvas” by Blume Lempel
10. Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick.  2004,Kind of a rewrite of The Ambassadors by Henry James with a female lead.  No post planned
11. “Salmon Rushdie at the Louvre” - an essay by Cynthia Ozick. No post planned.
12. In Another Country by James Baldwin.  1960, Partially set in Paris. No post planned.  
13. Renoir’s Dancer - The Secret Life of Suzanne Valadon by Catherine Hewitt- 2018

Suzanne Valadon

Born 1865

Died 1938

1883- begins to model for Renoir and others

Became a full time painter in 1896, mentored by Degas.

She is widely considered France’s greatest female painter.

I was completely fascinated and very involved on several levels by Renoir’s Dancer - The Secret Life of Suzanne Valadon by Catherine Hewitt- it is biography elevated to high art.  I knew nothing about Suzanne Valadon when I began the book, by the close I felt I knew her with near intimate vermisilitude.  

Valadon’s mother was a laundress in the provinces.  Hewitt offers a lot of interesting details about life and folkways in rural France. Valadon was a bit of a wild child, by age fifteen the nuns at her school felt it was time for her to go to work.  She tried washing dishes, doing laundry, and hat maker.  It seemed for a while she might succeed as a circus acrobat but she injured herself in a fall.  

Now 17, very attractive and outgoing, she went to the Paris Model’s market.  I was unaware of this and greatly enjoyed learning how artists hired their models.  A model had to have lots of stamina which Valadon had and for many assignments be willing to pose nude.  The job paid a good bit more than her prior work.  Models were seen by polite society as part demi-monde but Valadon liked to party, drinking and couldn’t care less. Men clearly were drawn to her.

Soon, with her mother, she was living in the Montmarte district, infamous for nightlife.  She was introduced to Pierre-Auguste Renoir and became his favourite model and mistress.  She also modeled for other elite impressionists.  The Paris art scene was very intertwined, with gossip, swapping models and artistic cross pollination.  Hewitt description of the art scene is very informative and fun to read.

Valadon was now pregnant, having numerous lovers, she did not name a father but a minor artist took responsibility.  In time  her son, her only child, was became difficult.  Soon Valadon married and  began to live with an older affluent businessman, her mother and son lived with him also. Hewitt lets us see what a devoted mother Valadon was to her son whose severe drinking binges kept him in and out of sanatoriums the rest of his life. The death of her mother is very movingly depicted. Her mother was very important to her and helped her with her son.

The most exciting part of the biography for me was Valadon’s progress from model to highly acclaimed artist.

She had shown an aptitude for drawing since a child.  She learned a lot about artistic techniques from observing those who painted her.  She began to paint in an impressionistic style.  Toulouse-Lautrec, one of her clients, introduced her to high end art markets.  At 28 she had an exhibition and sale at a top venue.  For the rest of her life she produced and sold hundreds of works of art.  A fun for me segment of the biography was Hewitt’s treatment of Toulouse-Lautrec.

At around age 45 she divorced her first husband and married a younger man, also an artist.  Her troubled son had also become a serious commercial success as a painter and was to become a bigger earner than his mother.  Mother and son were very close, the destructive behavior of her son, including several arrests, was a life long trial for her, one she bore as well as she could.  She was a very devoted mother and her son worshipped her.  Eventually he married and stabilized somewhat.

There is much more in this wonderful biography, it is a potrait of the life among The Impressionists of Paris, I think anyone interested in this era will like this book.  One thing it brought out was how the railroad connected the provinces to Paris.  

Valadon is considered an early feminist icon by msny, supporting herself, flaunting conventional moral restraits on women.

Maybe she was to French painting what Colette was to literature.  

I give my total endorsement to Renoir’s Dancer - The Secret Life of Suzanne Valadon by Catherine Hewitt.  I look forward to reading more of her work.

From The author’s website 

http://catherinehewitt.co.uk/

Having been awarded a first-class honours degree in BA French from Royal Holloway, University of London, she went on to attend the prestigious Courtauld Institute of Art where she took a Masters in the History of 19th-Century French Art and was awarded a distinction. In 2012, she completed her PhD on The Formation of the Family in 19th-Century French Literature and Art, with joint supervision from Royal Holloway and the Courtauld Institute. Throughout her academic career, she has regularly presented papers at conferences, published work in academic journals and was awarded numerous university prizes.

After being awarded her PhD, she set out on her career in biography. Based on meticulous research, Catherine’s writing seeks to lift history out of the dusty annals of academia and bring its characters and events to life for the 21st-century reader. Her writing introduces real people, telling their stories in intimate detail and enabling readers to share their successes and frustrations. As well as writing, Catherine lectures and runs workshops on 19th-century French art, literature and social history, always seeking to share her enthusiasm for French history and culture. She also works as a freelance translator, and her portfolio includes a translation of a permanent exhibition of the work of the radical French female painter Suzanne Valadon for a gallery near Limoges in France.

Catherine lives in a village in Hampshire, UK. When she is not writing, she can be found helping restore her family’s house in the middle of rural France, cooking, reading and enjoying country walks with her little black cockerpoo, Alfie.

Mel u