Oil on board painting of nude by Suzanne Valadon.Circa 1925.The painting is 12" x 7" in a frame 16"x 11".////(From Wiki):"Suzanne Valadon (23 September 1865 – 7 April 1938) was a French painter and artists' model who was born Marie-Clémentine Valadon at Bessines-sur-Gartempe, Haute-Vienne, France. In 1894, Valadon became the first woman painter admitted to the Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts. She was also the mother of painter Maurice Utrillo. The subjects of her drawings and paintings included mostly female nudes, female portraits, still lifes, and landscapes. She never attended the academy and was never confined within a tradition.[1] Valadon spent nearly 40 years of her life as an artist.Valadon grew up in poverty with her mother, an unmarried laundress; she did not know her father. Known to be quite independent and rebellious, she attended primary school until age 11. In 1883, aged 18, Valadon gave birth to a son, Maurice Utrillo.[2] Valadon’s mother cared for Maurice while she returned to modelling.[3] Valadon's friend Miguel Utrillo would later sign papers recognizing Maurice as his son, although his true paternity is uncertain.Valadon helped to educate herself in art by reading Toulouse-Lautrec’s books and observing the artists at work for whom she posed.[1]In 1893, Valadon began a short-lived affair with composer Erik Satie, moving to a room next to his on the Rue Cortot. Satie became obsessed with her, calling her his Biqui, writing impassioned notes about "her whole being, lovely eyes, gentle hands, and tiny feet", but after six months she left, leaving him devastated. Valadon married the stockbroker Paul Mousis in 1895, leading a bourgeois life for 13 years at an apartment in Paris and a house in the outlying region. In 1909, Valadon began an affair with the painter André Utter, the 23-year-old friend of her son, divorcing Moussis in 1913.Valadon married Utter in 1914, and he managed her career as well as her son's. Valadon and Utter regularly exhibited work together until the couple divorced in 1934.Valadon was well-known during her lifetime .CareerDance at Bougival, by Renoir; the female dancer is Valadon.Valadon began working at age 11 in a variety of areas including a milliner’s workshop, a factory making funeral wreaths, a market selling vegetables, a waitress, and then finally in the circus.[11] At the age of 15 Valadon met, Count Antoine de la Rochefoucauld and Thèo Wagner, two symbolist painters who were involved in decorating circus belonging to Medrano. Through this connection she began work at the Mollier circus as an acrobat, but a year later, a fall from a trapeze ended that career. The circus was frequented by artists such as Lautrec, Sescau and Berthe Morisot and it is believed this is where Morisot did her painting of Valadon.In the Montmartre quarter of Paris, she pursued her interest in art, first working as a model for artists, observing and learning their techniques, before becoming a noted painter herself.She began painting full-time in 1896.Valadon debuted as a model in 1880 in Montmartre at age.She modeled for over 10 years for many different artists including Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes, Théophile Steinlen Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Jean-Jacques Henner, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.[2] She modeled under the name "Maria", eventually being nicknamed "Suzanne" by Toulouse-Lautrec, also her lover, after the biblical story of Susanna and the Elders as he felt that she especially liked modelling for older artists.[15][16] She was considered a very focused, ambitious, rebellious, determined, self-confident, and passionate woman. In the early 1890s, she befriended Edgar Degas who, impressed with her bold line drawings and fine paintings, purchased her work and encouraged her; she remained one of his closest friends until his death. Art historian Heather Dawkins believed that Valadon's experience as a model added depth to her own images of nude women, which tended to be less idealized than that of the male post impressionists representations.[17]The most recognizable image of Valadon would be in Renoir's Dance at Bougival from 1883, the same year that she posed for Dance in the City.[18] In 1885, Renoir painted her portrait again as Girl Braiding Her Hair. Another of his portraits of her in 1885, Suzanne Valadon, is of her head and shoulders in profile. Valadon frequented the bars and taverns of Paris with her fellow painters, and she was Toulouse-Lautrec's subject in his oil painting The Hangover.[19]ArtistJoy of Life, Suzanne Valadon, Metropolitan Museum of ArtJoy of Life, Suzanne Valadon, Metropolitan Museum of ArtIt is commonly believed that Valadon taught herself how to draw at the age of nine.[8] Valadon painted still lifes, portraits, flowers, and landscapes that are noted for their strong composition and vibrant colors. She was, however, best known for her candid female nudes that depict women's bodies from a woman's perspective.[20] This is particularly important because it was unusual in the nineteenth century for a woman artist to make female nudes her primary subject matter.[21] Valadon was not confined to a specific style, yet both Symbolist and Post-Impressionist aesthetics are clearly seen within her work.[22]AccomplishmentsValadon's earliest surviving signed and dated work is a self-portrait from 1883, drawn in charcoal and pastel.[8] She produced mostly drawings between 1883 and 1893, and began painting in 1892. Her first models were family members, especially her son, mother, and niece.[23] Her earliest known female nude was executed in 1892.[24] In 1895, the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel exhibited a group of twelve etchings by Valadon that show women in various stages of their toilettes.[8] Later, she regularly showed at Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in Paris.[25] Valadon’s first time in the Salon de la Nationale was in 1894. She also exhibited in the Salon d'Automne from 1909, Salon des Independants from 1911; Salon des Femmes Artistes Modernes, 1933-8.[26] Degas was notably the first person to buy drawings from her,[27] and he also introduced her to other collectors, including Paul Durand-Ruel and Ambroise Vollard. Degas also taught her the skill of soft-ground etching.[28]Casting the Net, 1914, by Suzanne ValadonIn 1896, Valadon became a full-time painter after her marriage to the well-to-do banker Paul Mousis.[8] She made a shift from drawing to painting starting in 1909.[29] Her first large oils for the Salon related to sexual pleasure, and they were some of the first examples in painting for the man to be an object of desire by a woman. These notable Salon paintings include Adam and Eve (Adam et Eve) (1909), Joy of Life (La Joie de vivre) (1911), and Casting the Net (Lancement du filet) (1914).[30] Valadon produced around 300 drawings and over 450 oil paintings by the end of her life.[29]Her works are in the collection of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Museum of Grenoble, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, among others.StyleValadon primarily worked with oil paint, oil pencils, pastels, and red chalk; she did not use ink or watercolor because these media were too fluid for her preference.[6] Valadon’s paintings feature rich colors and bold, open brushwork often featuring firm black lines to define and outline her figures.[2] She used hard black lines to emphasize the structure of the body. She also used firm lines in her nudes to emphasize the play of light on curves.[4]Valadon’s self-portraits, portraits, nudes, landscapes, and still lifes remain detached from trends and aspects of academic art.[31] The subjects of Valadon’s paintings often reinvent the old masters' themes: women bathing, reclining nudes, and interior scenes. However the nudes Valadon paints veer far from the norms of this male-dominated genre; the paintings are interpreted in a much different way which could contradict or question the nature of the genre.[10] Many have suggested a vibrant, emotional sense that emanates from her drawings and paintings as a result from an intimate, familiar observation of these women’s bodies. Similarly to Valadon, Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt painted mostly women, yet because of their middle class status in French society at the time they were unable to paint the nude body, regardless of gender.[10] However, in a divergence from her female contemporaries, Valadon also painted many nude self-portraits, across the span of her career. The later portraits are unflinchingly honest and unselfconsciously show the artist's aging body. Valadon also emphasized her focus on the importance of composition of her portraits over painting expressive eyes.[6] Her later works, such as Blue Room (1923), are brighter in color and show a new emphasis on decorative backgrounds and patterned materials.[32]It is thought that her experience as a model and as an artist allowed her to analyze the process that transformed and positioned the body as an object of the gaze within a work of art and influenced her understanding and perspective of women and the female body.[33] Valadon has been considered transgressive in her position as a woman painting the nude female body.[34] Her class allowed her to enter the male public domain of art through modeling and then emerge as an artist within her circle of prominent male artists, and her lack of formal academic training may have made her feel more comfortable breaking with convention.[35] She resists typical depictions of women via their class and supposed sexuality through her use of unidealized and self-possessed bodies that are not overly sexualized.[36]Feminist legacyAs one of the best documented French artists of the early 20th century, Valadon's body of work has been of great interest to feminist art historians, especially given her focus on the female form. Her work was candid and occasionally awkward, often characterized by strong lines, and her resistance to both academic and avant-garde conventions for representing the female nude have encouraged interest in her work:"It has been argued that many of her images of women signal a form of resistance to some of the dominant representations of female sexuality in early 20th-century Western art. Many of her nudes painted from the 1910s onwards are heavily proportioned and sometimes awkwardly posed. They are conspicuously at odds with the svelte, 'feminine' type to be found in the imagery of both popular and 'high' art.Unlike her contemporary Mary Cassatt, Valadon did not identify as a feminist. Even so, her work has been reassessed and viewed in a feminist light, especially as it was created during a time period in which "The Woman Question" was gaining more interest and prominence.////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////Provenance:Krzystof Postawa Estate.Descended directly and kept in the family that descended from Frederick Mont.Frederick Mont was born in Vienna, Austria on 3/26/1894. He died on 8/20/1994 in N.Y.C.He was survived by his wife Anna Mont nee Suchestow. He had no children.Anna Mont died on 7/28/2010 in N.Y.C. She was survived by her sister Lottie Brandel.Lottie Brandel died on 7/20/11 in Jackson Heights, NY and was survived by her husband, Krzysztof Postawa.Krzysztof Postawa died on 7/11/2018 in Jackson Heights, NY.The lawyer for the Postawa Estate consigned the painting to David Killen Gallery for auction. (From the Frick Museum online archives):Frederick Mont, aka A. F. (Adolf Fritz) Mondschein or Frederick Mondschein, was a New York dealer of Old Master paintings. Before immigrating to New York in the 1930s, Mont, owned and directed Galerie Sanct Lucas (Yeide, Nancy H. The AAM Guide to Provenance Research, AAM, Washington DC., 2001).Frederick Mont sold mostly European old masters mostly to U.S. museums; he was chosen as sole agent by the Prince of Liechtenstein for the sale of masterpieces from his collection; favored his relationships with American dealer Victor Spark (1898-1991) and the Newhouse Galleries.Mont was married at least three times; his first wife, Betty (née Berta Austerlitz, 1897) Mont, was also involved in the art business and Frederick was a partner in her father’s, Wilhelm Austerlitz [d. 1940], London art business; his second wife, Eva (née Seiler, 1919–1953), died on vacation with her husband in Naples, Italy; his third wife, Anna S. (1914-2010), bequest some works of art to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2010 in memory of Frederick Mont, other works from her bequest entered the collection in 2012.

Good condition overall.