Utrillo, Maurice (1883 – 1955). Paintings for Sell Monmartre. (1959) Rios Art

Montmartre : Sacre Coeur Church and Moulin under the Snow. (1947 / 65)

Colour etching, paper

Lm 32,8 x 45,9

Km 29,2 x 44,5

Lower right – Maurice Utrillo.V.

This piece is a lithograph by Maurice Utrillo, printed in 1959 for the Douze Contemporains portfolio, featuring various artists work.

Utrillo was a French painter who specialized in cityscapes. This piece depicts the Montmartre quarter of Paris, France, where

Utrillo was born and raised. This piece is signed in the plate and is from the unnumbered edition of 970.

Maurice Utrillo born Maurice Valadon; 26 December 1883 – 5 November 1955), was a French painter of School of Paris who specialized in cityscapes. Born in the Montmartre quarter of Paris, France, Utrillo is one of the few famous painters of Montmartre who were born there.

Utrillo was the son of the artist Suzanne Valadon (born Marie-Clémentine Valadon), who was then an eighteen-year-old artist’s model. She never revealed who was the father of her child; speculation exists that he was the offspring from a liaison with an equally young amateur painter named Boissy, or with the well-established painter Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes, or even with Renoir. (see below under Utrillo’s Paternity). In 1891 a Spanish artist, Miquel Utrillo [es] (Miquel Utrillo i Morlius), signed a legal document acknowledging paternity, although the question remains as to whether he was in fact the child’s father.

Valadon, who became a model after a fall from a trapeze ended her chosen career as a circus acrobat, found that posing for Berthe 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 to Edgar Degas, he became her mentor. Eventually, she became a peer of the artists she had posed for.

An apocryphal anecdote told by Diego Rivera concerning Utrillo’s paternity is related in the unpublished memoirs of one of his American collectors, Ruth Bakwin: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 to Renoir, 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 to Degas, 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!”