Maurice Utrillo | |
|---|---|
 Portrait of Maurice Utrillo (1921), bySuzanne Valadon, his mother | |
| Born | Maurice Valadon (1883-12-26)26 December 1883 Montmartre, Paris, France |
| Died | 5 November 1955(1955-11-05) (aged 71) Dax, Aquitaine, France |
| Education | Self-taught |
| Known for | Painting |
| Spouse | Lucie Valore [fr] |
| Parent(s) | Suzanne Valadon (mother) Miquel Utrillo (legal father) |
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Maurice Utrillo (French:[mɔʁisytʁijo,moʁ-]; bornMaurice Valadon; 26 December 1883 – 5 November 1955) was a French painter of theSchool of Paris who specialized incityscapes. From theMontmartre quarter of Paris, France, Utrillo is one of the few famous painters of Montmartre to have been born there.[1]
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Utrillo was the son of the artistSuzanne Valadon (born Marie-Clémentine Valadon), who was then an eighteen-year-old artist's model. She never revealed the father of her child; speculation exists that he was the offspring of a liaison with an equally young amateur painter named Boissy, or with the well-established painterPierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes, or even withRenoir.[2] (See below underPaternity). In 1891 a Spanish artist,Miquel Utrillo, signed a legal document acknowledging paternity, although the question remains as to whether he was in fact the child's father.[3]
Valadon, who became a model after a fall from atrapeze ended her chosen career as a circusacrobat,[4] found that posing forBerthe Morisot, Renoir,Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and others provided her with an opportunity to study their techniques. She taught herself to paint, and when Toulouse-Lautrec introduced her toEdgar Degas, he became her mentor. Eventually, she became a peer of the artists she had posed for.
Meanwhile, her mother was left to raise the young Maurice, who soon showed a troubling inclination towardtruancy andalcoholism.[5] Whenschizophrenia took hold of the 21-year-old Utrillo in 1904, his mother encouraged him to take up painting. He soon showed real artistic talent. With no training beyond what his mother taught him, he drew and painted what he saw in Montmartre. After 1910 his work attracted critical attention, and by 1920 he was internationally acclaimed. In 1928, the French government awarded him the Cross of theLégion d'honneur.[6] Throughout his life, however, he was interned in mental asylums repeatedly.
Today, tourists to the area will find many of his paintings on postcards, one of which is his very popular 1936 painting entitledMontmartre Street Corner orLapin Agile.
In middle age Utrillo became fervently religious and in 1935, at the age of fifty-two, he marriedLucie Valore and moved toLe Vésinet, just outside Paris. By that time, he was too ill to work in the open air and painted landscapes viewed from windows, from postcards, and from memory.
Although his life also was plagued by alcoholism, he lived into his seventies. Maurice Utrillo died on 5 November 1955 in Hotel Splendid inDax, at age 72,[7] of a lung disease, and was buried in theCimetière Saint-Vincent inMontmartre.
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An apocryphal anecdote told byDiego Rivera concerning Utrillo's paternity is related in the unpublished memoirs of one of his American collectors,Ruth Bakwin:
"After Maurice was born to Suzanne Valadon, she went toRenoir, for whom she had modeled nine months previously. Renoir looked at the baby and said, 'He can't be mine, the color is terrible!' Next she went toDegas, for whom she had also modeled. He said, 'He can't be mine, the form is terrible!' At a cafe, Valadon saw an artist she knew named Miguel Utrillo, to whom she spilled her woes. The man told her to call the baby Utrillo: 'I would be glad to put my name to the work of either Renoir or Degas!'"[8]
In 2010, several retrospective exhibitions were staged, atOglethorpe University Museum of Art[9] and inMontmartre (Paris) that culminated in an auction of 30 of Utrillo's works on 30 November 2010[10] from the collection ofPaul Pétridès [fr], Utrillo's art dealer, whoseGalerie Pétridès [fr] also dealt with the likes ofJacques Thévenet. This follows the exhibition of Suzanne Valadon and Maurice Utrillo's works held in Paris in 2009.[10]
In 2022, Utrillo'sCarrefour à Sannois which the Nazis had looted from the French Jewish art collector and dealerGeorges Bernheim in 1940, was restituted to the heirs after a long legal battle. The city ofSannois (Val-d'Oise) had bought the painting atSotheby's in 2004. In 2015 the Commission responsible for dealing with Nazi-looted art (the CIVS) advised the town that the painting had been looted. A new law voted by France'sNational Assembly in 2022 paved the way for restitution.[11][12][13]
Utrillo is played byBruno Gouery in the 2024 filmModì, Three Days on the Wing of Madness directed and co-produced byJohnny Depp.[14][15]
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