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Not having the possibility at the beginning of her career to pay models, her portraits are first devoted to her family, her mother, her son Maurice Utrillo, her sisters, her niece and her lover. With fame, the paintings will become portraits of the bourgeoisie and women of high society.
In her self-portraits she is always severe with herself.
Her last self-portrait, dated 1931, when she is 66 years old, represents a woman with tight lips, a vaguely sagging chest, a woman who does not hide her age without voluptuousness or complacency.
Often her bodies have complex positions, as in «The Acrobat» which recalls the work of Degas and Toulouse Lautrec or in «The Little Girl with the Mir- ror».
Towards the end of her life, she dedicated herself to the landscapes of the rue Cortot in Montmartre to nature and flowers.
«The Blue Room» from 1923 shows a corpulent woman, osten- sibly modern and free. Far from languid nudes, it is a body at rest without eroticism with a nonchalant attitude.
This emancipated woman, in pajamas with a cigarette in her mouth and two books on her bed, perfectly represents the attitude and ideals of Suzanne Valadon.
Suzanne Valadon
Portrait of Geneviève Camax-Zoegger, 1936 Oil on canvas, 56 × 46 cm
Italy, Bergamo, private collection
Photo © Galleria Michelangelo