Suzanne Valadon, Suzanne Rouvier and The Razor's Edge

Posted by Meg Nola Mar 21, 2009

Art meets literature again in Somerset Maugham’s novel The Razor’s Edge, which follows the quest of a well-bred young man to look beyond materialism and conventional living and find a more spiritual way. Larry Darrell is from a wealthy Chicago suburb and expected to become a doctor or lawyer or stockbroker like his peers. Larry’s questioning nature and traumatic experiences in World War I make him doubt this kind of life, however, and he goes off to Europe and ultimately India to seek deeper meaning. One of the women Larry meets along the way is a character named Suzanne Rouvier, a free-spirited artist whom Maugham most likely based on the actual French painter Suzanne Valadon.

Suzanne Valadon was born in 1865 and grew up fatherless in Paris. She learned to fend for herself early on and held various jobs, including being a circus trapeze artist. Her striking looks made her a sought-after model to such painters as Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec, and she also found a teacher and patron in Edgar Degas. Suzanne had many romances and eventually gave birth to painter Maurice Utrillo, though it was never clear as to who Maurice’s real father was. Suzanne’s art showed a fine use of color and unique perception, and as a feline lover, she did a truly outstanding job in depicting cats.

Somerset Maugham often included artist characters in his novels, and in The Razor’s Edge it seems pretty likely that Suzanne Rouvier came from Suzanne Valadon. Maugham describes his Suzanne’s independent yet resourceful nature and her own artistic work, both as muse and creator. In the novel, Suzanne has an affair with Larry, but when Larry is ready to say goodbye, she doesn‘t question his need to move on.

Suzanne Rouvier is one of the more vibrant characters in The Razor’s Edge, though Maugham does tend to minimize her artwork. He describes Suzanne as essentially mimicking her artist lovers’ styles, “landscape like the landscape painter, abstractions like the cubist,” until her present lover and patron tells her not to imitate men but to use a more feminine style, and to not “aim to be strong; be satisfied to charm.” And while the real Suzanne Valadon encouraged her son to take up painting to challenge his often self-destructive behavior, Razor’s Edge Suzanne has a daughter instead and pragmatically urges the girl to learn to type and study stenography.

Click to see Suzanne Valadon’s portrait of composer Erik Satie, another of her boyfriends and one who apparently was pretty crazy about her. It seems that her perception of Satie was quite good and not just imitative -- and unlike Suzanne Rouvier -- that her pursuit of art might have been more than a hobby “she got a lot of fun out of.”