TEMPESTUOUS ARTIST.
MISTRESS OF RENOIR AND LAUTREC.
MOTHER OF UTRILLO.

Suzanne

of Love and Art

She was a model before she became a painter. A muse before she became a master. And she refused to live by anyone else’s rules.

A novel based on the extraordinary life of Suzanne Valadon by Elaine Todd Koren.

 “She seized what she wanted from art and life, and tore it free with both hands making it irrevocably her own.”
    — Germaine Greer

Meet Suzanne Valadon

Suzanne Valadon lived at the center of the artistic revolution that transformed Paris. Born into poverty, she became an acrobat, an artist’s model, a muse—and ultimately a groundbreaking painter in her own right.

She moved through the world of Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas and the artists of Montmartre, refusing the conventions that defined what a woman could be. Fiercely independent and unapologetically unconventional, Valadon turned from being the woman in the painting to the woman holding the brush.

From the Book

“My name is Suzanne Valadon and I was born in 1865, the illegitimate daughter of an alcoholic charwoman, a servant, who ran off with me in shame to Paris where she stumbled into Montmartre and where I grew up in the streets.”

About Elaine Todd Koren

Like the woman at the heart of her novel, Elaine Todd Koren was an artist who refused to be confined by convention. A painter, writer and former educator, she spent more than ten years researching Suzanne Valadon’s life and the extraordinary circle of artists around her in both France and the United States.

Her fascination with Valadon became Suzanne of Love and Art, a novel bringing to life the passionate, fiercely independent woman who moved from artist’s model to acclaimed painter in her own right.

Suzanne of Love and Art

“An impressive achievement.”
— Bill Henderson

Experience the extraordinary life, loves and art of Suzanne Valadon.