Long before her paintings attracted notice, Suzanne Valadon’s drawings were her primary means of thinking about what it meant for a woman to look and to be looked at. Nowhere is this clearer than in her portrayal of women, which stands apart sharply from the soft idealisation typical of her male contemporaries. Valadon drew women as weight-bearing, muscular, and often awkwardly real. Her line is firm and economical, outlining bodies with a confidence that resists decorative prettiness. Hips are broad, bellies sag or tense, thighs press into chairs. These are women inhabiting their own flesh.

Valadon’s women do not perform for an implied male viewer. Many avert their gaze, appear absorbed in their own thoughts, or meet the viewer with frank appraisal rather than coyness. This shift in looking is radical – having been a model for Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec she reverses the traditional power dynamic by asserting the female artist’s authority to observe, define, even judge the female form. Her drawings make clear that women are not symbols of beauty or vice, but complex – sensual, weary, strong, sometimes uncomfortable in their own skin.