Suzanne Valadon, born in 1865 of an erratic mother and an anonymous father, was by the very circumstances of birth destined to live an unconventional life. Her volatile nature, her sensuality found fallow ground in the surging, twisted streets of Montmartre, where her mother, lost in an alcoholic fog, sought oblivion. Her early antics as an outrageous gamine did little to indicate the creative and emotional richness that were to distinguish the...