Artist Utrillo Maurice paintings. Reproductions of paintings by Maurice Utrillo

Maurice Utrillo (1883-1955), French painter. Paris was his first love, most faithful friend and most attentive interlocutor. Through no fault of his own, early addicted to alcohol, Maurice Utrillo was an outcast among his peers, who teased him, calling him "Hamlet-Plushinel", ridiculed and despised. The son of the famous artist Suzanne Valadon, who taught him how to draw, Maurice Utrillo sought solace in painting and religion. The most powerful among his works are the views of Notre Dame Cathedral painted in 1908-1910. This cathedral, like other churches of Paris, Chartres, Rouen, Reims and Lourdes, Utrillo perceived and depicted not just as a picturesque nature, but above all as a shrine. Notre Dame, falling into the artist's field of vision, acquires not only materiality, but even, it seems, animation. It is majestic and solemn, it is so great that it seems to suppress a person. This melancholic feeling of depression, aching anxiety and loneliness is present in almost all of Utrillo's urban landscapes. This is his fate, his pain, his painful ascent to himself.

Maurice Utrillo was born on December 25, 1883. His mother, Marie-Clementine Valadon, whom everyone called Suzanne, worked as a milliner's apprentice, as a nanny, and as a circus gymnast. Unsuccessfully jumping off the trapeze, she was forced to give up work in the circus and became a professional model. She gave birth to Maurice when she was only eighteen years old. Suzanne considered the father of the boy to be one of the habitues of the Montmartre bistro, a certain Boissy, but in 1891 Maurice was adopted by Mipoel Utrillo y Molins, who worked on newspaper essays, painting and architectural projects, but soon left for Spain and never came back. Suzanne was painted by Renoir, Van Gogh, Puvis de Chavannes, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Edgar Degas was one of the first to notice her extraordinary artistic gift, called her a "drawing genius" and helped her master the technique of soft varnish. In 1893, Suzanne married the wealthy bourgeois Musi. Caring for her husband and painting did not leave time for her son, who grew up painfully unbalanced and, with his inattention and absent-mindedness, pissed off teachers at the local school (at that time, his mother and stepfather moved to live in a house near Paris), and at Rollin College in Paris. From Montmagny, which was thirteen kilometers from Paris, the boy was often brought to Paris by plasterers who, for fun, treated him to wine, and soon Maurice, in order to drink a glass of absinthe, began to save on pocket money. I soon had to leave the college, but Maurice could not study with either a shoe shiner, or a lampshade maker, or a copyist. At the age of sixteen, the young man, who continued to rowdy, was fired from the Lyon Credit office, where his stepfather arranged it. The psychiatrist, for whom the mother, at that time already a well-known artist, made sketches of furniture, advised her to teach the boy to draw. Gradually, painting captivated Maurice, and already in 1903, leaving for the open air, he made more than 150 landscapes. Painting classes all his life alternated with severe binges. Utrillo was fascinated by the painting of Pissarro, wrote in small jerky strokes. But his Paris, unlike Pissarro's, looks deserted and inhospitable. The space in his paintings is, as it were, squeezed by the backstage, the landscape is built in depth, and the water in the Seine is muddy and frozen.

In 1903-1907, Maurice painted views of Montmagny and Pierefitte, but they also lack lyricism, light colorful transitions. In an effort to convey the tangible materiality of the surrounding world and at the same time always preserving the graphic nature of the drawing, Utrillo painted bare tree branches, rather gloomy compositions in which there is practically no sky. He often used opaque, dark, dirty paints. Until about 1906, Maurice signed his work with the name "Maurice Valadon" and only later began to put the signature "Maurice Utrillo".

Very vulnerable by nature, Maurice Utrillo painted Parisian streets and temples with a feeling of deep loneliness, and sometimes with a desire to get rid of the nightmares that haunted him.

The "impressionistic" period in Utrillo's work was replaced by the so-called "white", when the artist began to use all kinds of shades of white on his canvases. Utrillo remained faithful to his painting system developed in the 1910s almost until the end of his life. Houses surround the road that goes into the distance, and in the background, most often, a tower or some other building appears, obscuring the sky and making the space closed. Utrillo was little worried about such an important light-air shell in the works of the Impressionists. He wanted to convey the texture of plaster, rough sandstone, tiled roofs, and for this he mixed oil paints with sand, gypsum, applied sheets of paper and pieces of moss to the canvas. Generalizing the contour, the artist reduced the outlines of objects to their basis. In 1909, Utrillo's paintings were exhibited for the first time at the Autumn Salon, and in 1913 his first solo exhibition was held. Even traveling with his mother and André Utte in Corsica and Brittany, he painted views of Montmartre from memory.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the color of Utrillo's paintings changed. His canvases become lighter, polychrome. Flowers on the balconies of houses, crowns of trees, fragile female figures begin to give poetry and sublimity to his canvases. Utrillo at this time became interested in watercolor, gouache, lithography. His fame is growing. And the family moves to the castle of Saint-Bernard, where the mother hoped to isolate her son from the habitues of Montmartre cafes. Many owners of drinking establishments began to sell his canvases for fabulous money, once given by the artist for a glass of aperitif.

In 1926, at the request of Sergei Diaghilev, Utrillo made sketches of scenery and costumes for Balanchine's ballet "Barabo". Montmartre had already changed at that time, but Utrillo, remaining true to the images of his youth, continued to paint his favorite streets, dear to his heart, using old postcards. Utrillo's works of this time resemble scenery rather than living nature.

In 1935, Utrillo married the banker's widow, who had been collecting his paintings for a long time. And in 1936 his mother died.

In 1950, at one of the Paris auctions, an American collector bought a landscape by Utrillo of the "white period" for 8 million francs. This was significantly higher than the amounts that rich people were willing to pay for paintings by Monet and Degas. And in 1951, the film "The Tragic Life of Maurice Utrillo" was released. However, the artist himself had little interest in his own fame. He lived in a country villa, painted every day in the morning, prayed in the home chapel, collected figurines of Joan of Arc and Our Lady of Lourdes, and loved to watch a toy train drive on the floor of his workshop. They say that at exhibitions he himself sometimes did not recognize On the day of his death, November 5, 1955, Maurice Utrillo began to paint his last landscape - the streets of Cortot, the Montmartre of his youth.

Bogdanov P.S., Bogdanova G.B.

This December marks the 130th anniversary of the birth of one of the most famous landscape painters of the 20th century, Maurice Utrillo (1883–1955).

This December marks the 130th anniversary of the birth of one of the most famous landscape painters of the 20th century, Maurice Utrillo (1883-1955). Paris was painted by many artists; but most have seen City as a phenomenon, as an interweaving of streets and buildings, bridges and embankments, basilicas and boulevards, dawns and rains, lovers and clochards. Utrillo was a painter of the street, road, lane, house - he painted, so to speak, not a crowd, but a face in the crowd - each time new, detachedly interesting and alive.

The future artist was born on the first day after Christmas, December 26, 1883, becoming a kind of gift for his seventeen-year-old mother, Maria-Clementine Valadon, a former circus acrobat, and by the time her son was born, a well-known model and budding artist. Marie-Clementine (in the future - Suzanne) Valadon was quite popular in the artistic circles of Paris. She posed for Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Puvis de Chavannes and, of course, Edgar Degas, from whom she even took painting lessons. Perhaps this popularity of hers was the reason that the real name of Maurice's father remained unknown (among the alleged fathers were the same Puvis de Chavannes, Renoir, and also a certain artist Boassi). In April 1891, the nominal father of his son Valadon appeared: the seven-year-old Maurice was adopted by the Spanish artist and art critic Miguel Utrillo y Molins. He did this, most likely because of a good relationship with his mother, but he did not take any further part in the life of Maurice.

A rather funny version of this adoption, told by Diego Rivera, was left by the American collector Ruth Baquin: “After the birth of Maurice, Susanna Valadon came to Renoir, for whom she had posed for 9 months before. Renoir looked at the child and said: “He cannot be mine, his color is terrible!” She then went to Degas, whom she also posed for at the time. He said, "He can't be mine, his shape is terrible!" In the cafe, Valadon saw a friend of the artist Miguel Utrillo and told him all this. Miguel replied that she could give the child the name Utrillo: “It is an honor for me to give my name to the work of Renoir or Degas!”

Maurice, whose upbringing was practically only his grandmother, grew up a nervous and quick-tempered child - he skipped school and often got into trouble. Calmness in the house was not added by his early alcoholism. According to one version, in order to calm little Maurice, his grandmother gave him wine from early childhood, according to another, the teenager was treated to drink by fellow travelers with whom he traveled from the suburbs of Paris (the family settled there in 1896, when Suzanne Valadon married the lawyer Paul Musy) to his school in Montmartre.

Maurice simply drank himself, and in 1900 his stepfather took him out of the educational institution and got him a job, hoping that work and a strict work schedule would not allow Maurice to drink so much. However, the work did not help. At the age of 18, Maurice first came to the clinic with an attack of delirium tremens. One of the recommendations of doctors to bring him into an adequate condition was painting. Suzanne Valadon, wanting to save her son and distract him from his addiction, began to teach him everything that she herself knew. So Maurice Utrillo got into the world of art.

His first experiments in painting date back to 1902; at the same time he settled in the house of his stepfather and mother in Montmagny. Utrillo began with sketches in pencil, and after a while he began to paint in oils. Already in the autumn of 1903, he worked in the open air - he painted the views that opened from the parental porch, as well as landscapes of the surrounding villages, Montmagny and Pierefitte. The years 1904–1906 (1907) in Utrillo's work are today called the "early (Montmagny) period". Suzanne Valadon offered her son a rather strange palette, consisting of only five colors: white, two shades of yellow, cinnabar and pink madder. This turned out to be very useful both for frustrated nerves and for Maurice's future creative manner: he was not used to self-restraints, but he was put in a rigid framework from the outside - and they had to be reckoned with. Having reworked some of the techniques of Pissarro and Sisley (vertically built landscape, straight, sharp strokes, laconic color), he came to an almost graphic manner, with straight lines of houses and streets, transparent air and a flattened perspective - and this manner was already his own.

In 1906, Maurice - apparently wanting to establish himself in his own artistic independence - began to sign his works with the surname Utrillo, abandoning his mother's surname (before he signed Maurice Valadon, Maurice Utrillo V. or M. W. Valadon).

In 1907, his mother and stepfather separated, and Maurice again ended up in Montmartre. Since then, Paris, and especially Montmartre, have become the main theme of his work. In Paris, the artist experienced a brief period of impressionism (1907-1908). At this time, he was looking for angles, compositions that would best convey the life of his streets, as if frozen in time. At this time, he worked a lot with dark, saturated shades of green, brown, which were not previously in his palette, painted with a brush and palette knife - wide, quick strokes.

In 1909, Utrillo successfully showed his paintings at the Salon. Since that time, he no longer worked in the open air - now Utrillo painted Paris and Montmartre, and mainly from photographs and postcards. The characteristic composition of his works has also finally taken shape - a narrow street or road leading to the horizon line, into the center of the flattened lines of buildings and houses. The artist abandoned the complex form, reduced, where possible, the images to simple geometric silhouettes and straight lines, transferring the image to the canvas with the help of a ruler and a compass. Many critics of that time found this style of painting too simplistic and dry, but over the years it has hardly changed, which did not prevent his work from finding new fans and gaining fame. By 1910, his palette had become noticeably lighter; fame came to him, he was recognized by criticism. In 1913, his first solo exhibition was held with great success.

All these first achievements date back to 1909–1914, a period that is usually called “white” in Utrillo’s work, according to the characteristic predominance of white and its shades in the palette: the sky and roads look whitish, the walls of houses are covered with white plaster; white light emanates the emptiness of his city and streets, on which there is practically no trace of human presence.

Color minimalism probably required the artist to balance it with texture - and Utrillo began to add sand, glue, lime to the oil, put pieces of moss and paper on the canvas.

In 1914, the "white period" was replaced by "color", which dominated the work of Utrillo for the next two decades. During these years, Utrillo's palette blossomed with bright colors, which he now applied with thinner, more transparent and broad strokes. Therefore, it is natural that the line in his works has become more graphic, and the perspective and horizon, built by it, are almost mathematically verified. Another important innovation in the painting of this time was the appearance of human figures in the landscape - albeit for the time being as staffage, but with them a time arose that had previously been denied access to Utrillo's paintings. Everything that was timeless suddenly turned out to be today's, alive. Paris of the “color period” celebrated holidays, was decorated with flags, bright panels and posters; flowers grew in it on the balconies, the trees turned green, the snow shone freshly on the roofs and pavements. The updated city views of Utrillo turned out to be simpler and more understandable for perception; many liked them, and their author became increasingly popular both in France and - by the 1920s - beyond its borders.

In 1925, the first monograph dedicated to the artist's work appeared - "Utrillo Gouache", written by the famous art critic Andre Salmon.

Utrillo's solo exhibitions, held in Paris, Lyon, Brussels, were a great success. On December 11, 1925, the premiere of George Balanchine's ballet "Barabo" staged by the Russian Ballet troupe took place in London, the costumes and scenery for which Utrillo performed by order of Sergei Diaghilev. In 1929, the French government awarded the artist the Order of the Legion of Honor.

In 1935, Utrillo married Lucy Povel, a former actress, widow of a Belgian banker. She quickly took control of her husband's affairs, thus freeing the artist's 69-year-old mother from this responsibility. Soon the couple bought a mansion in the suburbs of Paris, away from the city temptations that did not leave Maurice throughout his life.

Changes in life were followed by changes in the artist's manner - the lines softened, the composition became freer, bright, sometimes even flaming colors appeared. It began, as it is customary to define it, the "late period" in the artist's work, which lasted until his death on November 5, 1955. Only the image of pre-war Paris remained unchanged, primarily Montmartre, as it was before the First World War.

In 1937 Utrillo had solo exhibitions in the USA, then in England, Germany and Switzerland. In 1950, a retrospective of his work was arranged in Venice. The Comedie Francaise hosted the premiere of Gustave Charpentier's opera Louise with scenery and costumes by Maurice Utrillo.

In total, more than a thousand works came out from under the brush of Utrillo. Very popular with the public, his paintings quickly became both a collector's item for wealthy people, and something that simpler people were happy to decorate a room with - in a word, the demand was huge. But often fans and just businessmen, taking advantage of the artist's craving for alcohol, exchanged canvases for bottles of wine. Also known are small-format works that Utrillo wrote directly in drinking establishments as payment for a drink - they were once called "Utrillo from the Bistro".

Relatives - first his mother and stepfather, then his wife - fought his addiction to drunkenness as best they could. Utrillo spent most of his life under the strict control of people from the outside (which did not prevent him from time to time to still get to the bottle). The well-known everyday writer of Paris in the first half of the 20th century, Francis Carco, in his book “From Montmartre to the Latin Quarter” even recalls a certain “father G.” in return, he had a priority right to all paintings written by Utrillo.

One of the most famous collectors of Utrillo's paintings was Paul Petrides (Paul Petrides) - a gallery owner, a representative of the "interwar" generation of art dealers. Since 1935, Petrides had the exclusive right to sell Utrillo's works, and in return he paid the artist's family a fixed amount per work per week. These weekly visits of Petrides to Utrillo's house looked something like this (according to LCR - participants in the AI ​​forum):

“By 5-6 pm Utrillo woke up and began to pace around the house, trying to get a glass of wine in the kitchen. Lucy tried to persuade him to take the job. Then the hoarse voice of the suffering Utrillo was heard throughout the house:

He got me! God, how he got me!

Aaah, he's talking about me, - Petrides beamingly smiled, lounging in an armchair.

In the end, by seven o'clock, Petrides lost patience and went up to the studio, where Utrillo stood at the easel with a palette in his hands and copied his old work from a photograph with longing in his eyes.

Master, master, - Petrides addressed him, - let's hurry up!

Grumbling through his teeth, Utrillo finished writing out the white houses, destroyed twenty years ago.

Walls! Petrides commanded.

The artist applied a layer of white paint to the canvas.

Utrillo obediently added a few horizontal lines.

Now the signature!

It took more time to sign the works, the artist diligently wrote his name: .

As soon as the work was signed, Petrides grabbed the still quite damp canvas and ran to hide it in the trunk of his car. When he returned, he gave Lucy 80,000 francs. The comedy was over - until next Sunday."

Based on the Petridis collection, on November 30, 2010, the Artcurial auction house held an auction for "30 works by Maurice Utrillo". 100% of the lots were sold at auction for a total of 5,522,209 euros.

In general, Utrillo's works quite often appear in the catalogs of various auctions - both large ones, Sotheby's and Christie's, and small houses around the world, even in Japan. Over the past few decades, it has been put up for public auction almost three and a half thousand times, including about two thousand paintings were sold and graphics appeared in catalogs about a thousand times.

In the legacy of Utrillo, the market most appreciates the work of the 1910s, that is, the "white period": in the top ten most expensive paintings by Utrillo, there are 8 such works. The highest auction results of his paintings were shown in the 1990s. So, a record amount for the artist of 7,300,000 francs (1,277,500 dollars) was paid for the work "Cafe Turelle in Montmartre" (1911) at the Artcurial auction on June 19, 1990. The second place among the most expensive works belongs to the view of the famous Parisian cafe "Nimble Rabbit" (1910), sold at Christie's auction in London on June 25, 1990 for 600,310 pounds (1,026,678 dollars). The third line in this list is occupied by a large-format canvas "Sacré-Coeur, Montmartre" (c. 1953), for which May 15, 1990 at Christie's (New York) for $ 900,000.

Another surge of interest in the artist was noted in the mid-2000s. On May 9, 2007, at the auction at Sotheby's for $ 936,000, the work "The Slums of Montmartre" (ca. 1931) was sold - a record result for Utrillo's work at Sotheby's over the past 10 years. The record for the 2000s at Christie's is $ 679,500 - was delivered on November 3, 2004: it was with this result that the auction for lot 56 ended - the painting "The Old Mills of Montmartre and the Debré Farm" (1923).

More recent results include a screen painted by Utrillo and sold at the 30 Maurice Utrillo auction on November 30, 2010 for €835,540 ($1,102,327).

According to artprice.com, $100 conditionally invested in Utrillo's works (total in painting and graphics) in 1999 would have turned into $125 by March 2013. Growth is small, and sharp price rises are also not observed, but, more importantly, there are no outright failures, that is, the market for Utrillo's works can be considered fairly stable.

Soon, the compositional basis of most of his landscapes becomes a street going into the distance, flanked by the side wings of houses; in the background - a barrier of houses or towers, obscuring the sky and making the space closed. Unlike Pissarro's paintings, in Utrillo's landscapes, even, uniform lighting reigns, the wind is not felt, the sky is almost always cloudless.

Painting by Maurice Utrillo "Flag over City Hall".
Before us is a view of a provincial town in which the spirit of calm reigns; several people stopped near the white wall surrounding the garden. The coloring of the picture is sustained in muted tones, against which the colors of the French flag fluttering over the town hall seem especially bright. Thanks to the impeccable mastery of color. Utrillo knew how to create a feeling of an emotionally rich atmosphere in the landscape. Utrillo painted, for the most part, urban landscapes, especially often depicting the surroundings of Montmartre. His views of Montmartre have gained such popularity that they have become the object of countless imitations and fakes. The work of Maurice Utrillo greatly enriched the French landscape painting of the early 20th century. Together with Marquet and Bonnard, he belonged to the generation that succeeded the Impressionist painters in the urban landscape.

The artist Utrillo simplifies real forms, generalizing the contours, he reduces the outlines of objects to their basis; With one stroke of the brush, it creates the feeling of a slippery staircase or damp plaster, often only outlines window failures. Oil paints seem too transparent to him, and to convey the texture of plastered and moldy walls, he adds sand, gypsum, glue to the paint, uses lime, puts pieces of moss, inked and enameled plates, sheets of paper. Rubbing the paint in a cup, he applies it to the canvas with a knife, smoothes it with his fingers. This painting style, which was formed quite early, has hardly changed over the years. Until 1906, the artist signed his works as Maurice Valadon, then settled on the name of his mother's friend Miguel Utrillo y Molins, who adopted him when he was an eight-year-old boy. Utrillo wrote Montmartre, which, in his words, is "the original quarter of Paris with its provincial nooks and Bohemian customs." There, away from the central squares and boulevards of the capital of France at the beginning of the 20th century, Utrillo discovered the beauty of provincial streets, the picturesqueness of tiled roofs and cracked walls.

The most interesting and fruitful period in Utrillo's art is the 1910s. The most original were his images of French cathedrals, powerful, crushing with their weight; they suddenly took on a life of their own on the artist's canvases. The world fame to the artist was brought by his paintings with images of Montmartre - an ancient corner of Paris, which has retained its originality to this day. The Montmartre hill, formerly a suburb of Paris, by the time the artist began to paint it, had lost its idyllic charm: instead of picturesque shacks, multi-storey apartment buildings rose, winding narrow streets climbing the slopes of the hill began to resemble wells, the poppies that once adorned Montmartre disappeared , only a few corners have retained their original semi-rural appearance. However, for Utrillo, lonely, exhausted by his illness, Montmartre from the 1910s until old age became the main theme of his work. Utrillo's paintings were bought by tavern clerks for a glass of aperitif and shamelessly exploited the artist's talent. One of his biographers recalls: “On the pale mask, only the eyes shone with warmth and clarity, like the eyes of a child or a recluse. But this look was contradicted by the bitter fold of her lips. No, it couldn't be called a smile. There was too much compulsion in her ... ".

In 1909, the artist's works were exhibited for the first time in the Paris Autumn Salon, and soon he and his mother and stepfather went on a trip to Corsica and Brittany, but even there, from memory, he continued to paint views of Montmartre. Utrillo's first personal exhibition took place in 1913, and in addition to the tavern-keepers, he also had other admirers - real lovers of painting.
After the First World War, some changes are observed in the art of Utrillo. The theme of Montmartre continues to be the main one, although it is diversified by a number of new motives. The coloring becomes less restrained, lighter, sonorous, polychrome. The paint is put thinner, it begins to shine on the canvas. Now Utrillo especially likes to paint the city on holidays, when it is decorated with tricolor flags, bright banners and posters. The artist begins to notice the flowers on the balconies, the beauty of the spreading crowns of trees, fresh clean snow flakes on the roofs and pavements ("The Frisky Rabbit Zucchini"). However, the regular organization of the composition, sometimes gravitating towards symmetry, the increasing dryness of the contour over time begin to give his works some sketchiness and rigidity. But even in the later works of Utrillo, with their sharp geometrization of lines, flatness of volumes, there is an amazing attraction. Flatness gives architecture in Utrillo's landscapes a strange shade of scenery, and the world - a certain resemblance to a puppet theater, most often sad, but at the same time touching and somewhat naive.

Critics appreciated the work of Utrillo only in the 1910s. In the 1920s, the artist became an international celebrity. In 1929, the French government awarded Utrillo the Legion of Honor. After the war, some changes took place in the artist's work. In addition to Montmartre themes, new motifs appeared: the Sacré-Coeur church, the Moulin de la Galette, the Pink Rabbit cafe, Tertre Square, and others. The color of the paintings became less restrained. The artist paints the city on holidays, when it is decorated with flags, banners and posters. During this period, Utrillo also works in watercolor and gouache, and tries his hand at lithography. The fame of the artist is growing, his exhibitions are regularly arranged, monographs are published. Together with his family, he lives in the ancient castle of St. Bernard, which became his property (many owners of drinking establishments also became rich, having received Utrillo's landscapes for a glass of aperitif and subsequently selling them for a lot of money). In recent years, the artist has hardly worked from nature (the Montmartre of his youth has irrevocably changed), now a postcard was enough for him to paint another picture. Landscapes are gradually becoming more monotonous and monotonous. And yet, the late paintings of the artist also have their own charm - the flatness gives the architecture a touch of scenery, and the world of Utrillo - a resemblance to a puppet theater: sad, touching and naive.

Not affiliated with any direction, receiving lessons only from his mother Suzanne Valadon, Utrillo created his own image of Paris, a world permeated with a sense of loneliness and hidden anxiety. Maurice Utrillo died on November 5, 1955 in the city of Dax, Landes department. He was buried in the Montmartre cemetery of Saint-Vincent, next to his mother.

December 25, 1883 in Paris was born the artist Maurice Utrillo, a brilliant "singer of Montmartre landscapes" and a deeply unhappy person with an unstable psyche and a broken fate. His personal and creative life is closely intertwined with the life of his mother, the talented artist Suzanne Valadon...

Maurice Utrillo never knew his real father, he could be any of the artists for whom his mother, Suzanne Valadon, posed for.

Suzanne was an independent and liberated woman, was one of the favorite models of Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. It was Suzanne Valadon who posed for Renoir's famous painting "Dance at Bougival".

Suzanne had endless romances with men from her environment, but at the same time she was not just a “pretty face”, nature endowed her with artistic talent, which she was able to fully develop in herself.

Suzanne Valadon achieved recognition and financial well-being during her lifetime. Portraits of nude models brought her particular success: for the end of the 19th century, the artist depicting naked women was the exception rather than the rule.

When little Maurice was born, Susanna recorded Miguel Utrillo and Morlius as his father, perhaps he gave the child his last name out of pity for the illegitimate baby.

Already the first months of Maurice Utrillo's life were burdened with nervous attacks: he either went into a stupor, or trembled all over, and his breathing stopped for a while.

The child was raised by a maternal grandmother, whom the birth of a grandson could distract from unrestrained drunkenness. Following rural customs, the old woman soldered little Maurice after nervous attacks with a mixture of broth and red wine. This drink among the Limoges peasants was considered a sedative.

Before Maurice Utrillo began to speak, he was already an alcoholic, and with age, nervous attacks only became more frequent.

Utrillo grew up as an uncommunicative child, prone to indomitable and unreasonable fits of anger, during which he burst into streams of wild abuse.

Already twelve years old, Maurice Utrillo drank half to death, falling asleep in the forest or under the bridge. The future artist saved pocket money to buy himself absinthe or wine, and if he was denied alcohol, he fell into a rage, tore his clothes and broke furniture.

During one of these attacks, Maurice Utrillo, armed with a kitchen knife, threatened to commit suicide. The young man was then 19 years old, and he was first sent for treatment to St. Anne's Psychiatric Hospital. The treatment lasted three months. On the advice of a doctor, Suzanne Valadon began to introduce her son to painting in order to distract him from alcohol.

This first hospitalization of Maurice Utrillo was not the only one; the artist ended up in psychiatric clinics at least three more times. Being impressed by one of the hospitalizations, the artist painted a work called "Madness", this picture is fundamentally different from the usual "Utrill" landscapes of Montmartre.

Maurice Utrillo. "Madness"

As an adult, Maurice Utrillo will descend to drinking liquid for diluting paints. Craving for alcohol and mental instability were largely the result of psychological trauma inflicted on him by his adored mother.

The liberated Suzanne played novels in front of her own son, bringing one or the other man into the house. Maurice Utrillo lived most of his life with his mother and her lovers. One day, a drunken Utrillo brought a young artist, Andre Utter, to his mother's house, who became the lover and cohabitant of Suzanne Valadon for many years.

Utter was 21 years younger than Susanna and three years younger than Maurice Utrillo himself. In Montmartre, Valadon, Utrillo and Utter were often called the "cursed trinity", their cohabitation was accompanied by constant scandals and Utrillo's eternal drunkenness. Susanna wanted Utter to take the place of the head of the family and have a positive influence on her son, but nothing good came of this venture.

Despite heavy alcohol addiction, the life of Maurice Utrillo was quite long (72 years), he survived many artists, painted countless canvases of different quality (according to some sources - 3000, according to others - 10,000).

Alcohol abuse will become his fate for the artist, he looked like a real laughing stock even in the eyes of pimps and prostitutes from Pigalle Square. As soon as they noticed the figure of Utrillo on wobbly legs, they teased him "the fool from the hill", and the kids shouted after him an offensive nickname - Litrillo.

“He wandered the streets of Paris and its suburbs, unconsciously looking for adventures, which he sometimes found. He was even glad of some dubious meeting, if only to discharge and spend excess strength at least in a fight ... ”recalled Utrillo’s friend, writer Francis Carco. Usually, after such "discharge" it took at least a week for the artist to calm down and come to his senses.

Outside of intoxication, Maurice Utrillo was a quiet and lonely man who avoided contact with people, but such periods were extremely rare for him. “He wrote only to drink,” recalled one of the artist’s biographers, referring to the fact that Utrillo often sold his works for a liter or two of wine.

Despite unrestrained drunkenness and a pathological relationship with his mother, the artist's paintings sold well during his lifetime. One of the biographers of Maurice Utrillo told that, as an adult, the artist often locked himself in a room and in absolute silence had fun with a toy electric train that Suzanne Valadon gave him as a child.

His mother died when Maurice was 55 years old. Realizing that her son was absolutely not adapted to an independent life, she insisted that he marry Lucy Valor (the widow of a Belgian banker). Maurice Utrillo was 51 at the time of his marriage.

Another version says that the artist, who was terribly jealous of his mother for her many lovers, married to spite her.

Be that as it may, under the influence of her husband, Lucy Valor begins to paint in a naive manner: for the most part, her works depict bright flower bouquets.

Maurice Utrillo wrote his gentle and quiet landscapes despite the most severe form of alcoholism, fits of rage and aggression that accompanied this great artist throughout his life.

“Before Utrillo, I did not know that in appearance such monotonous quarters are beautiful with fresh and almost mysterious beauty,” said the French writer Andre Maurois.

Paris, captured on the canvases of Maurice Utrillo, forever became the city of this artist.

One of the frames of the film "Modigliani" cuts into memory with the obsession of a scene from a horror film - the painting "Madness" by Maurice Utrillo and the moments of the artist's life that preceded its writing. This is one of the few (if not the only) paintings by Utrillo, the center of which is a man. A man tormented not so much by the greenish gloom surrounding him as by rays of unattainable light. In a clot of pain that has merged into one with its own shadow, it is easy to recognize the most painful self-portrait in the history of painting: in 1916, the post-impressionist ended up in a psychiatric clinic in the town of Villejuif in northern France, after changing it to the Picclus shelter - these events became the impetus for painting a picture. She became a black crow among the whitewashed urban landscapes of the master, which glorified his name. But let's go back a few steps.

As a boy, Utrillo watched the work of future colleagues in Montmartre, and received some painting skills from his mother Suzanne Valadon, an artist and model - he signed his first works with her last name (Maurice Valadon), but later took the name of his Spaniard stepfather. The Mexican painter Diego Rivera (husband of Frida Kahlo) told an anecdote about the origin of the boy: “After the birth of Maurice, Suzanne Valadon came to Renoir, for whom she posed 9 months before. Renoir looked at the child and said: “He cannot be mine, his color is terrible!” She then went to Degas, whom she also posed for at the time. He said, "He can't be mine, his shape is terrible!" In the cafe, Valadon saw a friend of the artist Miguel Utrillo and told him all this. Miguel replied that she could give the child the name Utrillo: “It is an honor for me to give my name to the work of Renoir or Degas!” Whoever was the father of the child, he undoubtedly passed on to him part of his talent, which resulted in a different, more modern and melancholy form.

The early works of Maurice Utrillo are reminiscent of the urban poetry of Sisley and Pissarro.

In the later ones, Cezanne is more likely to see through - it shines through the wide windy streets, homeless and straight in a European way. Forms become solid and tangible, colors become a little more unambiguous and straightforward, the airy “trembling” stroke irrevocably disappears. Perhaps the departure from impressionistic lyrics to this severity of lines is explained by the rejection of plein-air painting in favor of “copying” from photographs and postcards (speaking of the eternal question of whether an artist should paint pictures from a photo: as you can see, even eminent masters did this! ).

Sacré Coeur and Château de Broyart