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A parallel in pictures to the world of Persephone Books.

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17th February 2025

The Post is in Stockholm this week and looking at Carl Larsson's connections to the city. Together with his wife, Karin, he is of course associated primarily with Lilla Hyltnäs his family house in Sundborn, almost three hours north west of Stockholm. But he was born in 1853 into difficult and impoverished family circumstances in Gamla Stan, Stockholm's old town. This is his birthplace, Prästgatan 78, photographed in the 1920s, with a plaque to the left of the door.


14th February 2025

Suzanne Valadon also painted many stunning still lifes such as this, Bouquet of Tulips (1927, private collection). Her range was wide and her output vast, yet still she has been sidelined and underestimated, something the exhibition aims to correct. It runs until 25th May and although the Centre Pompidou closes for five years this summer, the Musée de Montmartre has Valadon's recreated atelier/apartment on permanent display.


13th February 2025

Suzanne Valadon is known for her paintings of both male and female nudes done at a time when both, but especially the former, were considered shocking subjects for a woman. She defied many other conventions; at 18 she gave birth to Maurice Utrillo, whose true paternity was never disclosed, and she later married his artist friend, André Utter, who was one of her first male models. The three - Valadon, Utrillo and Utter - are often referred to a 'la trinité maudite'. Here they are in Valadon's Portraits de famille (1912, Musée d'Orsay) with her mother and Utrillo in the foreground.


12th February 2025

Although she could not afford formal art classes, Valadon learned from the painters around her who included Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec and Renoir. Her work is colourful and bold, and while there are clear similarities with her contemporaries' paintings, she developed her own distinctive style. This is La Chambre bleue (1923, Centre Pompidou) of which it has been said that she "evokes Matisse and then pulls out the rug, conjuring a traditional theme only to disrupt it with jarring modern intrusions.'



11th February 2025

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.


10th February 2025

 

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.


7th February 2025


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

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