Valadon, The Blue Room initial analysis

Suzanne Valadon, initial analysis The Blue Room, 1923, oil on canvas, 90 x 116 cm (35 x 46”)

A woman lies horizontally on a The modelling of the figure has been achieved with The figure’s posture and the bed or draped couch wearing a a combination of colours and a strong black outline. general context of the strapped pink top garment and The colours give provide a liveliness to the depiction picture, the cigarette, the striped trousers fastened by a and the thick lines provide a confident depiction. decoration and the books, string in the fashion of The swirl of lines and colour patches on the depicted suggest urbanity. A sense of pyjamas. Her feet are bare. fabrics give a sense of improvisation and joyous the fashionable and part of a She sits up from the horizontal application. group of women using a pillow. The bed or demonstrating equal couch is covered with a fabric opportunities in a male- in bright blue with yellow and dominated culture. Valadon white maple leaf pattern. On had spent a large part of her the left are two books. Behind early career as an artist’s her there is part of a decorated model, working with, among triangular board, the others, Puvis de Chavannes, decoration repeats the maple Pierre-Auguste Renoir and leaf pattern on the fabric, but Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. is more varied in its colours. Behind all this is a draped blue The figure reminds viewers curtain-like fabric also partly of the perpetuated naked using the maple leaf pattern. female model usually depicted as objects of desire The woman has an unlit by her male counterparts cigarette in her mouth. She is from a classical Western wearing eye make-up and tradition of Venuses to their lipstick. She has black hair tied development in the behind her head. nineteenth century. The overall design of the furnishings with its triangular back shape gives a hint of a throne, but not with any sense of this being overdone.

The painting is in the national collection of the Centre Pompidou, Paris.

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