The Bath

While she received little formal artistic training, Suzanne Valadon had many opportunities to observe artists at work as she modelled for painters such as Henri de Toulouse- Lautrec and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Valadon’s experiences as an artist’s model informed her own renderings of female subjects, whom she portrayed sympathetically and realis- tically as they engage in everyday domestic activities. The Bath is one such deliberately rough and unidealized scene: a young girl bathes with the help of her grandmother. Despite their physical intimacy, the child looks away, her icy blue stare complicating the nurturing relationship a viewer might expect from this type of scene.