Maurice Utrillo, (born December 26, 1883, Paris, France—died November 5, 1955, Le Vésinet), French painter who was noted for his depictions of the houses and streets of the Montmartre district of Paris.
Born out of wedlock, Utrillo was the son of the model and artist Suzanne Valadon. His father was not known, and he was given his name by a Spanish art critic, Miguel Utrillo. He had no instruction as an artist apart from that given by his mother, who herself was untutored. When, as an adolescent, he became an alcoholic, his mother encouraged him to take up painting as therapy. Despite his frequent relapses into alcoholism, painting became Utrillo’s obsession.
Shy and withdrawn,
Utrillo painted very few portraits. He usually portrayed—often using picture
postcards as sources—the deteriorating houses and streets of Montmartre, its
old windmills, and its cafés and places of amusement. He was also inspired by
trips to Brittany and Cors
Utrillo’s most highly
regarded work is that of his “white period” (c. 1909–14), so called
because of his lavish use of zinc white, which he sometimes mixed with plaster.
In heavy, rich pigment, he depicted aging, cracked walls, sometimes covered in
inscriptions. These works brought him fame and financial success. In 1924, to
keep her son permanently away from the bars of Montmartre, Valadon moved with
him to a château near Lyon, France.
Utrillo was made a chevalier of
the Legion of Honour in 1928. In 1935 he married
Lucie Pauwels, a widow who was herself an amateur painter,
and they settled in Le Vésinet, a fashionable suburb of Paris. In his later
years, his painting declined sharply in originality and vigour. Utrillo was
notably prolific; he produced thousands of oil paintings. First-rate paintings
by Utrillo are few, but critics have linked him as a landscapist with such
18th- and 19th-century masters as Francesco Guardi, Hubert Robert, and Camille Corot. Unfortunately, countless crude
forgeries have interfered with his good reputation.