Suzanne Valadon (The Hangover)

Suzanne Valadon was a French painter and in 1894, Valadon became the first woman painter admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. The daughter of an unmarried laundress she became a circus acrobat at the age of fifteen but a year later a fall from a trapeze ended that career. In the Montmartre quarter of Paris she pursued her interest in art, first working as a model for artists (at the same time observing and learning their techniques) before becoming a noted painter herself. She modelled for Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (who gave her painting lessons), Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes. Valadon and is known to have had affairs with the latter two. In the early 1890s she befriended Edgar Degas who, impressed with her bold line drawings and fine paintings, purchased her work and encouraged her efforts. She remained one of Degas' closest friends until his death.