Suzanne Valadon, born Marie-Clémentine, was the daughter of an unmarried domestic worker and grew up in Montmartre. She supported herself from an early age with various jobs, including circus performer. After a fall from a trapeze she became a model for artists such as Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec who painted The Hangover (Suzanne Valadon) (1887-89) which is in Harvard Art Museums.

It's a last call for the Centre Pompidou in Paris which will close this summer for five years for renovations. One of the final exhibitions before closure features the work of Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938) who is forever associated with Montmartre where she began as a model before becoming an artist herself by following her own very unconventional route. Later photographs such as this, taken in 1926, show she also had a striking personal style.

Snowdrops have inspired all manner of designs on linocuts, watercolours, oil paintings, product packaging, needlepoint, cross stitch, knitting - and stained glass. This is a detail of a 2019 window in St John the Evangelist in Langcliffe, Yorks, by Ann Sotheran. 

The Snowdrop (1804) is a mezzotint engraving from The Temple of Flora (1799-1807), "one of the greatest ever flower books". It was compiled by Dr Robert John Thornton (1768-1837), a physician and botanical writer who lectured on medical botany, and featured plates by a number of artists reproduced using a variety of techniques. Mezzotint is type of intaglio printing which gives soft gradations of tone; here it allows the snowdrops and crocuses to stand out against the winter landscape. 

This elegant snowdrop tile design (c1880) is by Christopher Dresser (1834-1904) and was made by Minton Hollins & Co. Below the snowdrops is a row of small, stylised bulbs and the row above shows a worm's eye view of the flowers. Christopher Dresser is considered to be Britain’s first independent industrial designer but began his career as a botanist, and flowers and plants feature in many of his designs.

Snowdrops (c1935, National Galleries of Scotland) is by Mabel Royds (1874-1941) whose technique was indebted to Japanese woodcuts.She studied at the Slade School of Art then the Edinburgh School of Art where trained with Frank Morley Fletcher who was one of the first to bring the traditional art of Japanese woodcut printing to Britain. Her various flower woodcut prints are beautiful, and many feature on greetings cards. 

We have a very unassuming but well-loved subject on the Post this week: snowdrops. They are emerging now and herald the promise, if not the actual arrival, of spring. They have also inspired many artists in various media. This is a collage made in 1777 by Mary Delany, now in an album in the British Museum. She began her "exquisite craft" at the age of 72 and went on to produce "a series of 985 extraordinarily detailed floral collages".