A Alegria de Viver

In 1911 Suzanne Valadon was in her forties and had spent much of her earlier life on the other side of the easel, posing nude for Renoir and Degas before teaching herself to paint. Here she takes on a theme those men knew well, women arranged in a landscape as part of nature, and turns it around. The four women go about their business and pay no attention to the one nude man at the edge, who was modeled by Andre Utter, the painter she had recently taken up with and would soon marry. He was more than 20 years younger than she was. The women look out or away, and none of them is arranged for the viewer to enjoy.