Untitled (Still Life)

Artist Suzanne Valadon (French, 1865 - 1938)

Date1921

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 21 3/4 × 12 1/4 inches (55.25 × 31.12 cm)
Framed: 30 1/2 × 21 1/2 × 2 3/8 inches (77.47 × 54.61 × 6.03 cm)

Credit LineBequest of Elizabeth Calvin Bonner

Object number2003.16.6

Signedsigned lower left corner: "Suzanne Valadon 1921"

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

Modern Art

Terms

DescriptionThe painting is a still life with pinkish colored flowers in a dark blue vase centered in the vertically oriented composition. A piece of red cloth is depicted directly behind the blue vase.Gallery Label

Gallery Label

Pink rosebuds and one full blossom rise from a deep blue vase in this vibrant still-life painting. Suzanne Valadon was the first woman painter to be admitted to the prestigious Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. A child of poverty, she began working at the age of 11, selling vegetables at markets and, later, as a circus acrobat and artist model. Among her friends were fellow artists Edgar Degas, André Derain, and Pablo Picasso. She was the mother of artist Maurice Utrillo, whose painting is also in the Nelson-Atkins' collection.

Provenance

John McGowan (1894-1977), Los Angeles and Charleston, SC, by 1951 [1];

Elizabeth Calvin McGowan (1906-2002), Charleston, SC, 1951-2002 [2];

Bequeathed by Elizabeth Calvin Bonner to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 2003.

NOTES:

[1] McGowan’s name is inscribed on the back of the painting’s support.

[2] A Christmas card addressed to Elizabeth from John, preserved in the Elizabeth Bonner scrapbook, South Carolina Historical Society, Charleston, SC, refers to Elizabeth’s possession of the painting after their divorce in 1951. Elizabeth later married Paul Hyde Bonner (1893-1968).

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