Maurice Utrillo

Born to an unknown father in Paris’ Montmartre neighborhood, Maurice Utrillo was the son of the artist’s model and painter Suzanne Valadon. The Catalan painter Miquel Utrillo, who was one of Valadon’s lovers, legally recognized him as his son in 1891. He lived with his mother and grandmother in Montmartre and the north of Paris. Encouraged to take up painting in order to help him battle his early alcoholism, he continued for the pleasure it gave him and shared his mothers’ studio at 12, rue Cortot in Montmartre. He sold his first work in 1905 and exhibited at the Autumn Salon in 1909. Despite numerous internments and detoxification cures, Utrillo continued to paint regularly, supported by his mother.
The Montmartre neighborhood provided him with subjects for hundreds of paintings. He would make several paintings of a street or monument that inspired him, one such being Notre Dame de Clignancourt Church. These austere pieces of architecture brought to life by the little figures of passers-by are the painter’s signature trademark. The peak of his career from 1912 to 1914, known as his “White Period”, is characterized by white impasto, crushed with a knife and sometimes mixed with the plaster that was manufactured on Butte Montmartre at the time.
The dealer Paul Guillaume discovered Utrillo paintings in the 1910s, thanks to the poet Max Jacob who also lived in Montmartre. In 1922, he finally held an exhibition of thirty-five of his works, an event that brought Utrillo success. The painter’s reputation grew as a result and he was thenceforth able to make a living from his art. Utrillo started on his so-called “Colorful Period”, but Paul Guillaume preferred to keep works from the previous period in his private collection, as he considered it to be the most decisive in the artist’s career.

View Maurice Utrillo's works