Born out of wedlock under the given name Marie-Clémentine, Suzanne Valadon spent her early years in Paris and Nantes, where her single mother worked as a cleaning woman. Valadon was enrolled in a religious school in Paris until 1876, then apprenticed in a dressmaking shop, a florist, and an open-air market before she started drawing. She briefly worked as a trapeze artist in a circus in the beginning of the 1880s, but a fall forced her to look for another occupation. She then began working as a model, posing for Henner (q.v.), Puvis de Chavannes (q.v.), Renoir (q.v.), Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901), and several other painters. Around this time she chose to be called Suzanne. In 1883, when she was eighteen years old, she gave birth to a son, future painter Maurice Utrillo (1883-1955). Encouraged by Degas (q.v.) and Renoir, she became a full-time painter in 1896, financially supported by her new husband, Paul Mousis. Degas taught her printmaking and introduced her to the dealers Durand-Ruel and Vollard. Valadon divorced Mousis in 1909 to marry André Utter (1886-1948), a painter and a friend of her son. Beginning in 1909 she exhibited regularly at the Salon d'Automne, and from 1912 she participated in the Salon des Indépendants. Valadon painted portraits, landscapes, nudes, and still lifes.
