Maurice Utrillo, born Maurice Valadon (1883 – 1955), was a French painter 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.
© Nat R. Farbman |
Utrillo was the son of the artist Suzanne 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. In 1891 a
Spanish artist, Miguel Utrillo y Molins, signed a legal document acknowledging
paternity, although the question remains as to whether he was in fact the
child's father.
© Nat R. Farbman |
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, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and others provided
her with an opportunity to study their techniques; in some cases, she also
became their mistress. 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.
© Nat R. Farbman |
Meanwhile, her mother was left to raise the young Maurice,
who soon showed a troubling inclination toward truancy and alcoholism. When a
mental illness took hold of the 21-year-old Utrillo in 1904, he was encouraged
to paint by his mother. 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 the Légion d'honneur. Throughout his life, however, he was interned in
mental asylums repeatedly.
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paternity is related in the unpublished memoirs of one of his American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 modelled. 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!'"
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