Graphite Sketch, Woman Bathing, Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938)Suzanne Valadon was one of the most successful female artists of her generation and the mother of French artist Maurice Utrillo.As the daughter of an unmarried maid, Valadon had a rather solitary childhood, living in the Montmartre neighborhood of Paris,where she began working as a model for artists who patronized the cabaret called the Lapin Agile, such as Pierre Puvis de Chavannes,Pierre-Auguste Renoir,and Jean-Louis Forain.Valadon taught herself to draw around the age of nine and fellow artists, including Renoir, Edgar Degas, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, responded encouragingly to her work. In 1896, her marriage to Paul Mousis enabled her to leave behind her career as an artist’s model and work full-time as an artist. Her first solo exhibition took place in 1911,and she reached the height of her celebrity and success during the 1920s.Valadon frequently painted reclining figures in ornately decorated interiors, as in Blue Room (1923). Valadon’s works are included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York,the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.,the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris,and the Art Institute of Chicago. This small, signed and dated 1908 graphite sketch of a nude female is in excellent condition, other than the lower right corner is missing and measures 7 x 6 inches.