Suzanne Valadon

Another of the painters that dropped in at Lautrec’s studio (at the same time an Vincent) was

Suzanne Valadon, a young lady well established in the Parisian art world.  In addition to being a painter, Suzanne was a model for Renoir, among others, a mistress for Lautrec and a mother.  At 16 she bore an illegitimate son – Maurice Utrillo who gained fame as a painter himself)

To the public Suzanne presented herself as an eccentric.  At one time she too to wearing a corsage of carrots on her ragged coat, at another she would carry a nosegay of lettuce and live snails.  The Butte often saw her in outsized Indian moccasins with a pair of cats in her arms and a goat at her heels.  On the night of the Armistrice she appeared in the Place du Tertre clothed in nothing but fluttering flags on the Republic and a moth-eaten fur tippet.  One night sightseers were flabergasted to see her before Chez Ma Cousine milking a mare into a wine glass and drinking the milk with apparent pleasure.

The World of Van Gogh, Time Life Library p. 53

Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938) was a French painter at Bessines-sur-Gartempe, Haute-Vienne, France. In 1894, Valadon became the first woman painter admitted to the Société 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. Suzanne spent nearly 40 years of her life as an artist.

Check for more info about this interesting, independent woman.