Renoir's Dancer: The Secret Life of Suzanne Valadon

She sounds really interesting. ( )

I always struggle when trying to decide if I should finish a book that is not holding my interest; but with so many books to read, I cannot waste my time slogging through something I'm not enjoying. That's the case with this book. It's a dispassionate, clinical biography of Suzanne Valadon, who was a model for many famous painters and also a painter herself. Had it been told with some emotion, perhaps I could have carried on. I reluctantly quit at page 170, and I'm sorry now that it took me that long. ( )

In the 1880s, Suzanne Valadon was considered the Impressionists’ most beautiful model.
With her golden hair, dramatic eyebrows and intense stare, Suzanne stole the hearts of the painters and their public. But behind her captivating façade lay a passionate, tempestuous character with a dramatic past and a closely-guarded secret.
Born Marie-Clémentine Valadon in the heart of rural France, Suzanne was the illegitimate daughter of a linen maid. When her mother’s poverty obliged her to move to Paris, eleven-year-old Suzanne moved from one unskilled job to the next until, aged fifteen, she was offered employment in a circus. However, tragedy struck when she fell from a trapeze and suffered a devastating injury. It ended her career as an acrobat, but steered her into the profession which would define the rest of her life: painting.
The blossoming teen began working as a model in Montmartre, where her beauty quickly won her admirers. With growing confidence, she posed for – and had affairs with – some of the most renowned painters of the day, including Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec. Suzanne basked in the artists’ attention and relished her new career, until one day, Renoir caught her indulging in a passion she had been trying to conceal: she was drawing. Her secret was discovered: Renoir’s model was a talented artist... (Kustantaja)

How often do we look at an object and secretly wish it could tell us its story, Catherine Hewitt has done that. No longer is she just a dancer. ( )

A fascinating biography of the model in one of my favourite paintings. ( )