French, 1865-1938
Provenance: Private Collection, France
Marc Ottavi, Paris, June 2009
Literature: Included in L’Oeuvre complet de Suzanne Valadon: Avant-propos de l’auteur by Paul Pétridès, P 229, catalogue entry, page 313
“Nature has a complete hold over me. Trees, sky, water and people move me deeply, passionately. It is shapes and colors and movements that have made me paint, in an attempt to render with love and fervor that which I care about so much. In what I have painted there is not a stroke or a line that is not based on nature. Nature is the yardstick by which I measure the truth in building up canvases that are conceived by me, but always motivated by the feeling of life itself.” - Suzanne Valadon
This except taken from Suzanne Valadon by Jeanine Warnod reflects the basic and simplistic approach Valadon took to painting a canvas. She was not an intellectual and what drew the attention of the greatest talents of the day to her work, was her raw talent for a great use of line and ability with no training to achieve a rawness of truth upon the canvas. The earlier examples of her still lifes have a strong influence of Paul Cézanne and Henri de Toulouse-Latrec, two of the masters that she modeled for and studied with. Later in her career and at the time that she painted Vase de Fleurs sur un Plat d’étain in 1921, Valadon achieved a style and palette that was her own. In each painting from this period, her sensuality, tenacity and veracity for life is felt. Our painting is numbered P 229 in the catalogue raisonné by Paul Pétridès, and it is preceded and followed in the catalogue by four excellent examples of her still lifes from this date titled, Bouquet de Fleurs sur une Table (P 228), Vase de Fleurs sur un Guéridon (P 230), Bouquet de Fleurs sur le Rebord de la Fenêtre (P 231) and Fleurs dans un Vase Bleu (P 232). In each of these works Valadon has painted a centralized a vase containing flowers of different varieties upon a table and sometimes a chair. Her work is also characterized at this time by a strident use of color that at times can fight with itself and yet create an interesting play on the canvas. Valadon’s work is sought after for its curious mixture of brute genius and talent with her intuitive and simplistic approach to simply “paint a good picture”. Her relationship to the circle of Impressionists and Post – Impressionists is legendary. Degas, Toulouse – Lautrec and Renoir were often her most supportive admirers.
During her life Suzanne Valadon was seen as an outcast and extreme individual. She was born as the illegitimate child of a laundress, and took all sorts of odd jobs in her early life. She worked as a circus performer until the age of 16 when she fell off a trapeze. Because she desired a profession that was less prone to injury she decided to become an artist’s model and she posed for artists such as Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Henri Toulouse-Latrec and artist and future lover, Pierre-Auguste Renoir. While modeling for various artists Valadon paid careful attention to their manner of painting and the construction of their canvasses. Without any training, Suzanne Valadon began to paint on her own. One of the first people to see her work was Toulouse-Latrec who greatly liked what he saw and encouraged her to continue to pursue painting as a career. 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 that she is rewarded with today was very slow coming in her lifetime and although her work was not always looked upon with approval, her audacity and daring nature finally won her a solo exhibition in 1915.
Collections & Museums:
Art Institute of Chicago
Fine Art Museums of San Francisco
Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Museum of Modern Art
Allen Art Museum at Oberlin College
Cleveland Museum of Art
Harvard University Art Museum
Milwaukee Art Museum
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, France
Museu de Arte de São Paulo, Brazil
National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC
Princeton University Art Museum
Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
French, 1885-1937
Provenance: Collection of J. Cukier, Paris
Literature: Denise Bazetoux, Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint de Georges Valmier, pg 137, No. 455 ilustrated
This gouache is a study for the oil of the same title represented in the Catalogue Raisonné, no. 453
Georges Valmier was from the start an enthusiastic draughtsman. In 1905 he enrolled at the Académie Humbert. Two years later he passed the entrance examination for the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris, where he studied painting in Luc-Olivier Merson's master class until 1909. Valmier's early Cubist-inspired work shows the influence of both Georges Braque and Paul Cézanne, whose work he had become familiar with in 1907 at the 'Salon d'Automne'. During the years that followed Valmier did mostly portraits. He articulated the motifs of his still lifes and landscapes like prisms while increasingly enhancing volume. In 1913 the artist had his first opportunity to display his work at the 'Salon des Indépendants', regularly taking part in these exhibitions until the outbreak of the first world war. Conscripted at once, Valmier sketched his impressions of the war in 'Carnets de guerre'. On his return to Paris in 1918, Valmier met the collector and art dealer, Léonce Rosenberg, who was so enthusiastic about his work that he gave him a contract. The artist now began to make preliminary studies for his paintings in the form of gouaches and collages. He approached his final motif via numerous composition studies, some of them only slight variations in colour or shade. His geometric phase culminated in a period of work that was almost abstract. At the same time Valmier was seeking new materials, experimenting with egg tempera and casein colour. By 1922, however, he was back to Cubism, producing sophisticated, balanced compositions in vibrant colours. From then on the artist participated in a great many international exhibitions. From 1928 his work again underwent a considerable change in character. Curved forms now replaced straight lines in his compositions, lending them an almost vegetal quality. The early 1930s saw Valmier again turn to abstraction. He joined 'Abstraction-Création', whose founding members included Auguste Herbin, Georges Vantongerloo, Hans Arp, Albert Gleizes, Jean Hélion and Frantisek Kupka. At this time Valmier was also designing stage sets and costumes for plays by Paul Claudel, Georges Pillement and Max Jacob. In 1932 he showed work at the group retrospect 'Vingt-cinq ans de peinture abstraite' mounted by Galérie Braun. The Galérie des Beaux-Arts in Paris showed work by Valmier in 1935 at their large-scale exhibition devoted to 'Les créateurs du cubisme'. Two years later the artist completed his last important commission: for the French national railways pavilion at the 1937 Paris Exhibition.
http://www.kettererkunst.com/bio/GeorgesValmier-1885-1937.shtml
