Last week we began an exploration of five lesser-known women who overcame the odds to make history. This week we continue our journey through history with two more women who made it through difficult circumstances to have a thriving art career in their lifetimes.
Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938)
Many of the women who were able to fight their way into the art scene throughout history benefitted from such privileges as being born into a higher economic class or having a parent or spouse in the arts. Valadon is an exception to this trend.
Valadon was the illegitimate child of an unmarried laundress, born into poverty. Before she hit her teenage years she was left to support herself, working a range of odd jobs that included food service and circus performance.
When she was 15, she started modeling for painters whose names you might recognize, like Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec. She observed the artists at work and was able to learn from them in lieu of formal training (the expense of which was out of her reach). She transitioned from subject to painter, developing a bold and unique style that set her apart. She frequently painted the female nude, but from the lens of a woman exploring the female experience. Paintings depicted intimate but not sexualized moments, like a woman doing her hair or a mother drying off her teen daughter.
While Valadon regretted the injury that ended her circus career, her art career was long and illustrious, with friendships formed with artists like Degas in addition to Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec. She was able to become a full-time artist in 1896, which she sustained through two marriages, the deaths of her famous friends, and struggles with her son’s mental health. Her paintings did not command the prices that her son’s did, but she maintained a powerful reputation in the arts into her sixties, with 19 exhibitions between 1913 and 1932. Her painting career continued into her seventies in spite of illness, and she died at her easel, suffering a stroke while painting flowers.
Margaret Keane (1927-2022)
Keane was an American artist, born in Tennessee, who suffered a permanently damaged ear drum at the age of 2 that left her deaf in one ear. This later affected her signature style of painting, which featured portraits with big eyes as a reference to the attention she paid to people’s eyes in order to understand them when they spoke.
She drew constantly as a child and got married to Frank Ulbrich shortly after graduating high school. The marriage to Ulbrich produced her only child and also brought her to California, but the marriage didn’t last past ten years.
The move to California proved fateful, however, as it led to Keane meeting her second husband, Walter Keane, at an art fair in Berkely. She was trying to keep custody of her child, so agreed to a marriage.
Marriage to Walter seemed to provide another benefit; like many artists, Keane was devoted to her painting practice but didn’t have the promotional skills to easily and effectively sell her work. Walter, however, was excellent at promoting, so for a while it seemed like the ideal partnership. She could devote herself to her art and he could sell it on her behalf. This arrangement sounds idyllic to many artists who wish they could just focus on their work, but it soon turned sour.
Walter Keane began selling Margaret’s paintings at a San Francisco beatnik club, successfully transitioning from his work in real estate to the art scene. Unbeknownst to Margaret, who simply signed her paintings with her last name, he was also taking credit for the work. When she found out, he convinced her to go along with it by explaining that people are “more likely to buy a painting if they think they’re talking to the artist.” He also used a common scammer’s tactic: fear of legal retribution. He claimed they might have to deal with lawsuits if the people who had been purchasing from him found out the wife was actually the painter.
The relationship began a familiar downward spiral. He attempted to learn from her how to paint but couldn’t do it, and he blamed her for his own failings. Her paintings and prints were making millions, originals being purchased by celebrities, but Margaret had no control over the money she was earning. Walter moved them to a nice house and enjoyed the high life, but Margaret was kept in a locked room, painting 16 hours a day. She explains in an interview with The Guardian that he would call every hour he wasn’t home to make sure she didn’t leave, that he’d follow her if she tried to slip away, and that he’d escalated to threatening her with his mafia ties.
His biography from this time is filled with self-aggrandizing statements, claiming that when they met, Margaret called him the greatest artist she’s ever seen, and the most handsome. When Margaret painted Tomorrow Forever for the 1964 World’s Fair, he claims that his dead grandmother told him in a vision that Michealangelo nominated him for their inner circle and compared it to the Sistine Chapel. An art critic did not agree, and his scathing review resulted in the piece’s removal from the Fair. Walter was enraged at this criticism of his borrowed feathers. Margaret was initially upset, but realized enough people enjoyed her work and she decided not to let the criticism stop her from painting what she wanted.
Their marriage ended after 10 years, but Margaret continued to paint for Walter for a while. But in 1970, Margaret came clean. Walter responded predictably: spouting furious lies about her character. She finally issued a direct challenge to him: meet her at high noon at Union Square with paint, brush, and canvas, and they’d prove once and for all who the real painter was. He didn’t show.
In 1986, they went to trial after she filed a defamation suit. She was asked to produce an example of her work in front of the jurors, while Walter lamely cited a shoulder injury as a reason he couldn’t draw right now.
She was awarded $4 million after quickly proving to the jurors that she was the painter, but unfortunately Walter had already squandered the fortune she’d earned and she never saw that money.
Thankfully her life turned around. She became the subject of a Tim Burton biopic called Big Eyes that created a resurgence of interest in her paintings. She had a successful third marriage, lived in Hawaii for 25 years, and then spent the last years of her life in Napa Valley California. She lived a long, full life, passing in the peace of her own home at the age of 94.
This is far from a complete list of the female artists through history that fought hard to have their voices heard and their work seen. There is also a strong European bias in the readily available information on female artists, which must be acknowledged; the names of famous artists that get heard are affected by more than just gender bias. These biases have seen improvements in the past decades, but there is still a long way to go before we achieve true equity in the arts.
There is still plenty we can learn from these powerful women that can apply to our own lives and art careers. Don’t let the opinions and behaviors of others dim your own light. Form friendships and lift each other up in your art career (and life in general). Find your own path to learning, especially if the traditional paths are blocked to you for any reason. Fight for the credit for your work and don’t let anyone take the love of creating away from you.
Join us at The Art Center this March to celebrate Women’s History Month with our current exhibition, A Woman’s Place is in the Arts.
