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). Many artists painted Paris; but most have seen them City as a phenomenon, as a tangle of streets and buildings, bridges and embankments, basilicas and boulevards, sunrises and rains, lovers and clochards. Utrillo was a painter of the street, road, alley, house - he painted, so to speak, not the 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 of the birth of her son, a famous model and budding artist. Marie-Clementine (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 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, Valadon appeared as a nominal father to his son: seven-year-old Maurice was adopted by spanish artist And art critic Miguel Utrillo y Molins. He did this, most likely, because good attitude to his mother, but did not take any further part in Maurice’s life.
A rather funny version of this adoption, told by Diego Rivera, was left by the American collector Ruth Baquin: “After the birth of Maurice, Suzanne Valadon came to Renoir, for whom she had posed 9 months earlier. Renoir looked at the child and said: “He cannot be mine, his color is terrible!” Then she went to Degas, for whom she also posed at that time. He said: “It cannot be mine, its 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 surname Utrillo: “It is an honor for me to give my name to the work of Renoir or Degas!”
Maurice, whose upbringing was carried out almost exclusively by his grandmother, grew up as a nervous and hot-tempered child - he skipped school and often got into trouble. His early alcoholism did not add peace to the house either. According to one version, in order to calm little Maurice, the grandmother from the very beginning early childhood gave him wine, according to another, the teenager was treated to drinks by fellow travelers with whom he traveled from the suburbs of Paris (the family settled there in 1896, when Suzanne Valadon married lawyer Paul Musy) to his school in Montmartre.
Maurice simply became an alcoholic, and in 1900 his stepfather took him from educational institution and got him a job, hoping that labor and a strict work schedule would not allow Maurice to drink so much. However, work did not help. At the age of 18, Maurice first came to the clinic with an attack of delirium tremens. One of the doctors’ recommendations to bring him into an adequate state was to take up painting. Suzanne Valadon, wanting to save her son and distract him from his addiction, began to teach him everything she knew. This is how Maurice Utrillo entered 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 pencil sketches, and after some time began to paint in oils. Already in the fall of 1903, he worked in the open air - he painted views from his parents’ porch, as well as landscapes of the surrounding villages, Montmagny and Pierrefitte. The years 1904–1906 (1907) in Utrillo’s work are today called the “early (Montmagnian) 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 upset nerves and for the future creative manner Maurice: he was not used to self-restraints, but was placed in strict limits from the outside - and they had to be taken into account. Having reworked some of the techniques of Pissarro and Sisley (vertically built landscape, straight, sharp strokes, laconic coloring), he came to an almost graphic style, with straight lines of houses and streets, transparent air and flattened perspective - and this manner was already his own.
In 1906, Maurice - apparently wanting to establish his own artistic independence - began to sign his works with the surname Utrillo, abandoning his mother's surname (he had previously signed Maurice Valadon, Maurice Utrillo V. or M. W. Valadon).
In 1907, his mother and stepfather separated, and Maurice again found himself in Montmartre. From then on, Paris, and especially Montmartre, became main theme his creativity. In Paris the artist experienced short period impressionism (1907–1908). At this time he was looking for angles, compositions that in the best possible way would convey the life of its streets, as if frozen in time. At this time, he worked a lot with dark, rich shades of green and brown, which were not previously in his palette, painting with a brush and palette knife - with wide, quick strokes.
In 1909, Utrillo successfully showed his paintings at the Salon. From that time on, 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 was finally formed - a narrow street or road leading to the horizon line, into the center of flattened lines of buildings and houses. The artist refused complex shape, reduced, where possible, images to simple geometric silhouettes and straight lines, transferring the image to the canvas using a ruler and compass. Many critics of that time found this style of painting overly simplified and dry, but over the years it remained almost unchanged, which did not prevent his works from finding more and more 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 personal exhibition was held with great success.
All these first achievements date back to 1909–1914, a period that in Utrillo’s work is usually called “white” - due to the characteristic predominance in the palette white and its shades: the sky and roads look whitish, the walls of houses are covered with white plaster; a white light emanates from 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 adding sand, glue, lime to the oil, and placing pieces of moss and paper on the canvas.
In 1914, the “white period” gave way to the “colored” period, which dominated Utrillo’s work for the next two decades. Utrillo's palette flourished during these years bright colors, which he now applied in thinner, more transparent and wider strokes. Therefore, it is natural that the line in his works became more graphic, and the perspective and horizon built by it became almost mathematically verified. Another important innovation in the painting of this time was the appearance of human figures in the landscape - albeit for now 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, alive. Paris of the “color period” celebrated holidays and was decorated with flags, bright banners and posters; Flowers grew on the balconies, the trees turned green, and the snow on the roofs and pavements sparkled freshly. The updated city views of Utrillo turned out to be simpler and easier to understand; many people liked them, and their author became increasingly popular both in France and, by the 1920s, beyond its borders.
In 1925, the first monograph appeared, dedicated to creativity artist - “Utrillo Gouaches”, written by the famous art critic Andre Salmon.
Utrillo's personal exhibitions, held in Paris, Lyon, and Brussels, were a great success. On December 11, 1925, the premiere of George Balanchine’s ballet “Barabo” took place in London, staged by the Russian Ballet troupe, for which Utrillo created costumes and scenery commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev. In 1929, the French government awarded the artist the Order of the Legion of Honor.
In 1935, Utrillo married Lucie Pauvel, a former actress and the 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 haunted Maurice throughout his life.
Changes in life were followed by changes in the artist’s style - the lines softened, the composition became freer, bright, sometimes even flaming, colors appeared. It began, as it is usually defined, “ late period"in the artist’s work, which lasted until his death on November 5, 1955. The only thing that remained unchanged was the image of pre-war Paris, especially Montmartre, as it was before the First World War.
In 1937, Utrillo held personal exhibitions in the USA, then in England, Germany and Switzerland. In 1950, a retrospective of his work was organized in Venice. The Comédie Française hosted the premiere of Gustave Charpentier's opera "Louise" with sets and costumes by Maurice Utrillo.
In total, more than a thousand works came out of Utrillo’s brush. Very popular with the public, his paintings quickly became both a collection item for wealthy people and something that simpler people were happy to decorate their rooms with - in a word, the demand was enormous. But often fans and simple businessmen, taking advantage of the artist’s craving for alcohol, exchanged canvases for bottles of wine. There are also small-format works that Utrillo painted directly in drinking establishments as payment for drinks - they were once called “Utrillo from the Bistro.”
His relatives - first his mother and stepfather, then his wife - fought his tendency to drink 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 getting to the bottle from time to time). The famous writer of Paris in the first half of the twentieth century, Francis Carcot, in his book “From Montmartre to the Latin Quarter,” even recalls a certain “Papa G.”, who controlled Maurice’s life to the smallest detail, brought him clients, making sure that they did not bring him drinks, but in return, he had priority rights to all paintings painted by Utrillo.
One of the most famous collectors of Utrillo’s paintings was Paul Petrides, a gallerist and 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 each week. These weekly visits of Petrides to Utrillo's house looked something like this (as presented by LCR - a participant in the AI forum):
“By 5 or 6 o’clock in the afternoon, Utrillo would wake up and begin pacing around the house, trying to get a glass of wine from the kitchen. Lucy tried to convince him to take the job. Then the hoarse voice of the suffering Utrillo was heard throughout the house:
He got me! Lord, how he got me!
“Ah-ah, he’s talking about me,” Petrides, lounging in a chair, smiled radiantly.
In the end, around 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 photograph from a photograph. old job with longing in his eyes.
Master, master,” Petrides addressed him, “let’s hurry up!”
Grumbling through his teeth, Utrillo finished listing the white houses that had been destroyed twenty years ago.
Walls! - Petrides commanded.
The artist applied a layer of white paint to the canvas.
Utrillo obediently added several horizontal lines.
Now sign!
It took longer to sign the works; the artist diligently wrote down his name: .
As soon as the work was signed, Petrides grabbed the still completely 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 collection of Petridis November 30, 2010 auction house Artcurial held an auction of “30 works by Maurice Utrillo.” The auction sold 100% of the lots for a total of 5,522,209 euros.
In general, Utrillo’s works quite often appear in 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 times sold paintings and graphics appeared in catalogs about a thousand times.
Among Utrillo’s heritage, the market most values \u200b\u200bthe works of the 1910s, i.e., 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. Thus, a record sum for the artist of 7,300,000 francs ($1,277,500) was paid for the work “Cafe Tourelle in Montmartre” (1911) at the Artcurial auction on June 19, 1990. Second place among the most expensive works belongs to the view of the famous Parisian cafe "The Agile Rabbit" (1910), sold at Christie's auction in London on June 25, 1990 for 600,310 pounds ($1,026,678). The third place in this list is occupied by the large-format canvas "Sacré-Coeur, Montmartre "(c. 1953), which was auctioned at Christie's (New York) on May 15, 1990 for $900,000.
Another surge of interest in the artist was noted in the mid-2000s. On May 9, 2007, at an auction at Sotheby's, the work "The Slums of Montmartre" (ca. 1931) was sold for $936,000 - a record result for Utrillo's works 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: this was the result with which the auction ended for lot 56 - the painting “The Old Mills of Montmartre and the Debreu Farm” (1923).
More recent results include a screen painted by Utrillo that sold at the 30 Works by Maurice Utrillo auction on November 30, 2010 for €835,540 ($1,102,327).
According to artprice.com, $100 conventionally invested in Utrillo’s works (total in paintings and graphics) in 1999 would have turned into $125 by March 2013. The growth is small, and there are no sharp price rises, but, more importantly, there are no outright failures, i.e. the market for Utrillo’s works can be considered quite stable.
The artist Maurice Utrillo is a native Parisian, a brilliant “singer of Montmartre landscapes” and a deeply unhappy person with an unstable psyche and a broken fate. His personal and creative life closely intertwined with the life of his mother, the talented artist Suzanne Valadon.
(Total 26 photos)
1. Maurice Utrillo never knew his real father; he could have been any of the artists for whom his mother, Suzanne Valadon, posed.
2. Suzanne was an independent and liberated woman; she was one of the favorite models of Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. It was Suzanne Valadon who posed for famous painting Renoir "Dance at Bougival".
3. Suzanne had endless affairs with men from her circle, but at the same time she was not just a “pretty face”; nature also endowed her with artistic talent, which she was able to develop in herself to the fullest.
4. Suzanne Valadon achieved recognition and financial well-being while still alive. Special success they brought her portraits of nude models: for late XIX centuries, artists depicting nude women were the exception rather than the rule.
5. When little Maurice was born, Suzanne listed Miguel Utrillo and Morlius as his father; perhaps he gave the child his last name out of pity for the illegitimate baby.
6. Already the first months of Maurice Utrillo’s life were burdened by nervous attacks: he either fell into a stupor, then trembled all over, and his breathing stopped for a short time.
7. The child was raised by his maternal grandmother, who was able to be distracted by the birth of her grandson from heavy drinking. Following rural customs, the old woman fed little Maurice with a mixture of broth and red wine after nervous attacks. This drink was considered a sedative among Limoges peasants.
8. Before Maurice Utrillo began to speak, he was already an alcoholic, and with age his nervous attacks only became more frequent.
9. Utrillo grew up as an uncommunicative child, subject to uncontrollable and causeless attacks of anger, at which time he burst into streams of wild abuse.
10. Already twelve years old, Maurice Utrillo was drinking half to death, falling asleep in the forest or under a bridge. The future artist saved his pocket money to buy himself absinthe or wine, and if he was denied alcohol, he flew into a rage, tore his clothes and broke furniture.
11. During one of these attacks, Maurice Utrillo, armed kitchen knife, threatened to commit suicide. To a young man He was then 19 years old and was first referred 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.
12. 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 his hospitalizations, the artist wrote a work called “Madness”; this picture is fundamentally different from the usual “Utrille” landscapes of Montmartre.
13. As an adult, Maurice Utrillo will stoop to drinking paint thinner. The craving for alcohol and mental instability were largely a consequence of the psychological trauma inflicted on him by his adored mother.
14. The liberated Suzanne had affairs in front of her own son, bringing first one man or another into the house. Maurice Utrillo lived most of his life with his mother and her lovers. One day, a drunken Utrillo brought his mother to his house. young artist Andre Utter, who for many years became the lover and partner of Suzanne Valadon.
15. Utter was 21 years younger than Suzanne and three years younger than Maurice Utrillo himself. In Montmartre, Valadon, Utrillo and Utter were often called the “damned trinity”; their cohabitation was accompanied by constant scandals and Utrillo’s eternal drunkenness. Suzanne wanted Utter to take the place of head of the family and provide positive influence on her son, but nothing worthwhile came of this venture.
16. Despite severe alcohol addiction, the life of Maurice Utrillo was quite long (72 years), he outlived many artists, painted countless canvases of varying quality (according to some sources - 3000, according to others - 10,000).
17. Alcohol abuse would be his doom for the artist; he looked like a real laughingstock even in the eyes of pimps and prostitutes from Place Pigalle. As soon as they noticed the figure of Utrillo on his weak legs, they teased him as “the fool from the hill,” and the kids shouted after him an offensive nickname - Litrillo.
18. “He wandered the streets of Paris and its suburbs, unconsciously looking for adventures, which he sometimes found. He was even glad to have some dubious meeting, just to discharge himself and spend excess strength, at least in a fight...” recalled Utrillo’s friend, writer Francis Carco. Usually, after such “discharges,” it took at least a week for the artist to calm down and come to his senses.
19. When not intoxicated, Maurice Utrillo was a quiet and lonely person who avoided communication 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.
20. Despite heavy drinking and a pathological relationship with his mother, the artist’s paintings sold well during his lifetime. One of Maurice Utrillo’s biographers said 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.
21. Mother died when Maurice was 55 years old. Realizing that the son is absolutely not adapted to independent life, she insisted that he marry Lucie Valor (the widow of a Belgian banker). Maurice Utrillo was 51 years old at the time of his marriage.
22. Another version says that the artist, terribly jealous of his mother for her many lovers, married to spite her.
23. Be that as it may, under the influence of her husband Lucy, Valor begins to paint in a naive manner: most of her works depict bright flower bouquets.
24. Maurice Utrillo painted his gentle and quiet landscapes despite the severe form of alcoholism, the fits of rage and aggression that accompanied it great artist throughout life.
25. “Before Utrillo, I did not know that in appearance such monotonous quarters were beautiful with a fresh and almost mysterious beauty,” said French writer Andre Maurois.
26. Paris, captured on the canvases of Maurice Utrillo, forever became the city of this artist.
The material was prepared with the support of the Center for Propaganda and Development of Creativity for People Suffering from Mental Disorders, Daria Evseeva
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Maurice Utrillo is the son of a professional model, known for the images of paintings by Auguste Renoir, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Vincent van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Berthe Morisot, for which she posed, and later for the artist Suzanne Valadon. Maurice's father was supposedly an amateur artist, Boissy. In 1891, at the age of eight, the boy was adopted by the Spanish art critic and writer Miguel Utrillo.
Maurice did not receive an art education as such; he began drawing at the promptings of his mother and observing the work of artists in the Montmartre district of Paris, where he was born.
But the path to art was not easy. As a teenager, Maurice became addicted to alcohol. He had to travel independently from the suburbs to the Parisian college where he studied. Plasterers sometimes gave him a lift, treated the 14-year-old boy to wine... Because of his addiction, he had to drop out of college. If he couldn’t get a glass of absinthe, he would fly into a rage: he would tear notebooks and clothes, break furniture, and threaten suicide. By the age of 16, he had become the subject of widespread ridicule. Then, on the advice of a psychiatrist, the mother began to teach her son to draw, literally moving her son’s hand with a pencil over the paper. Initially, the pencils did not obey Maurice, he tore the cardboard, tried to jump out of the window... but gradually painting captivated him.
He began to paint city landscapes, which were popular with the general public, but were not recognized by critics. He signed his paintings as Maurice Valadon, after his mother's surname, and in 1906 he adopted the surname Utrillo.
In 1909, the artist’s works were exhibited for the first time at the Paris Salon d’Automne, and soon he and his mother and stepfather went on a trip to Corsica and Brittany, but even there he continued to paint views of Montmartre from memory.
By 1910, the Cathedral became the artist’s favorite subject. Notre Dame of Paris. Interest in cathedrals - the artist painted in Paris, Rouen, Chartres, Reims, Lourdes - is associated not only with their picturesqueness, but also with the increasing religiosity of Maurice Utrillo over the years.
Utrillo's first solo exhibition took place in 1913, then he gained fans among art critics, and in the 1920s he became an international celebrity.
In 1929, the French government awarded him the Legion of Honor.
In 1935, Utrillo married the widow of a banker who collected his artwork.
Maurice, having married, left with his wife for the Parisian suburb of Le Vezine, where he spent the last 20 years of his life.
The texture of the canvas, high-quality paints and large-format printing allow our reproductions of Maurice Utrillo to be as good as the original. The canvas will be stretched on a special stretcher, after which the painting can be framed in the baguette of your choice.
She was extremely appreciated as a talented model. Genetic analysis was not done in those years, and Suzanne had very open views on the relationship between women and men in general, artists and their models in particular. So it remains a mystery who passed on artistic talent to Maurice on his father’s side.
Whose author is the child?
17-year-old Suzanne gave the child to be raised by her mother. Maurice's grandmother was a simple laundress. And the child had an extremely unbalanced disposition; already in infancy, he had nervous attacks. To calm her grandson down, his grandmother gave him wine mixed with milk...There is a funny, almost anecdotal story that explains how Suzanne Valadon's son got the surname Utrillo. During lunch with friends, someone asked her a question about the boy's father. "Maybe , this is the work of Puvis de Chavannes, or maybe Renoir or Degas"“,” Suzanne answered half-jokingly. Her friend, art critic and writer Miguel Utrillo y Molins, exclaimed that he would be happy “put your signature on the creation of any of these masters”. And he did: he adopted the boy and gave him his last name. It does not at all follow from this that Maurice found a stepfather; on the contrary, Miguel soon left for Spain and was no longer reminded of himself.
Lots and lots of alcohol
Maurice Utrillo was 13 years old when Suzanne Valadon married successful lawyer Paul Moussy and took her son from his grandmother. According to one version, by that time he, fed on wine, was already an alcoholic. According to another, it was while traveling with the workers from the suburbs to school in Montmartre that he became addicted to treating them to drinks. There is a high probability that both facts took place. If he couldn’t get his hands on alcohol, Maurice would destroy everything he could get his hands on and threaten suicide. As a result, his stepfather took him out of school and got him a job - maybe the schedule and work will have a positive effect on the young man? Didn't influence. He was kicked out from everywhere for drunkenness; even the shoe shiner could not tolerate Maurice as an assistant for more than a month. He was 18 years old when he had his first attack of delirium tremens. Maurice spent two months in a psychiatric clinic.Montmagny period
From the hospital he went to the house of his mother and stepfather in Montmagny. One of the doctors recommended that Suzanne, since she is an artist, try to involve Maurice in drawing - simply in the hope of diverting his attention from the bottle. I can’t say that everything went smoothly: Maurice got angry, tore up the paper, threw pencils out the window. But I still started drawing. As biographers report in such cases, this was “a stage in the formation of an artist.” He was also simply trying to please his mother, for whom he felt a painful attachment, which was a synthesis of jealous adoration and hatred.At first I made sketches in pencil, then switched to oil. Suzanne Valadon provided her son with a palette of five colors: zinc white, two yellows, cinnabar and rose madder. Then Maurice worked mostly using the impasto technique. He finished the painting in 2-3 hours. In 1903 he began to paint en plein air.
At first he signed his paintings “Maurice Valadon”. It is not known for certain what exactly at that time darkened his not at all cloudless relationship with his mother, but since 1906 he refused to use his mother’s surname and began to sign himself “Maurice Utrillo.” Around that time, Suzanne divorced, and Maurice moved to a workshop in Montmartre. His palette became darker, green and brown tones appeared in it ( , )
Utrillo sometimes balanced his coloristic minimalism with a richness of texture: he added sand and glue to the oil, used lime, making the brushstroke more tangible, and he applied the paint to the canvas with a knife, rubbed it with his fingers, and attached pieces of paper to the canvas. It seems that he wanted to condense, strengthen, make his images as clear and tangible as possible.
Color period
It is necessary to clarify the division of the work of Maurice Utrillo into periods. It's primarily about changing the palette. His manner as such changed little throughout his life. This is understandable: he was not interested in the quests of contemporary artists, and he also had no reverence for his predecessors. Neither in museums, nor in art galleries Utrillo did not go. Alfred Barr (the first director of MoMA) recalled that his attempt to talk with Maurice Utrillo about painting was a failure: “When I told him the names of the great artists of the past, he looked at me as if he had heard about them for the first time.”.During the color period, from 1915 to the 1930s, Utrillo often painted churches, cathedrals and entertainment venues - cabarets, cafes. Even people began to appear on his canvases - as a rule, painted schematically, most often with their backs turned to the audience (, ,). Due to the fairly simple structure of Utrillo’s paintings, many were forged even during his lifetime. By the way, it is not a fact that he could even identify the fakes himself, because he did not keep records of his paintings and was not often sober during the creation process.
In 1916, another attack of delirium tremens brought Maurice Utrillo to a mental hospital. He was treated, discharged, he continued to drink, and again ended up in a hospital. All this was accompanied by nervous breakdowns, suicide attempts and endless drinking. After another brawl, he was detained by the police. Suzanne Valadon, his beloved and hated mother, realized that it was impossible to leave Maurice in Paris.
Surprisingly, his financial affairs were doing very well by that time; paintings were bought at fairly high prices. Therefore, Suzanne Valadon, using the proceeds from the sale of her son’s works, purchased a villa near Lyon and took Maurice there. Perhaps in this way she belatedly fulfilled her maternal duty to early child unknown "authorship"? At least, thanks to the intervention of Suzanne, Utrillo's fate turned out differently than that of his fellow drinking buddy and genius Amadeo Modigliani, whom no one could stop from self-destruction.
Late Utrillo and late marriage
Biographers call the late period of Utrillo the time from the 1930s until the artist’s death. At the age of 47, Maurice Utrillo married the widow of a Belgian banker, Lucie Pauvel, who collected his works. Some biographers believe that Suzanne Valadon insisted on her son’s marriage, fearing that without her Maurice would be completely unfit for life. However, there is another version: Maurice, who was terribly jealous of his mother’s many suitors all his life, married her to spite her. Be that as it may, Suzanna died the next year, and Utrillo was already under the supervision of his wife. Lucy took matters into her own hands, fully supporting Suzanne's idea that there was no place for Maurice in Paris and that he would completely drink himself to death. The “young” settled in the suburbs.Either a funny or sad fact from family life Utrillo and the history of the paintings. Gallerist Paul Piedres in 1935 received the sole right to sell any works written by Utrillo. In return, he paid his family a fixed (very substantial) amount for the painting presented to him weekly. Maurice Utrillo did not at all glow with the heat of inspiration on this occasion, but on the contrary, he could not stand Piedres. He came almost all Sunday, Maurice grimaced: “He again! I’m so tired of him!”, and Piedres urged the artist right at the easel: “Write! Time goes by. Walls! Now shut the shutters! Signature!". Utrillo worked with a pained expression on his face, dreaming of getting the gallery owner out the door as quickly as possible. And he packed the still damp canvas into the trunk, gave Lucy the money and left - until next Sunday.
Personal exhibitions of Maurice Utrillo were held with great success in the USA, England, Germany and Switzerland. The coloring of the late Utrillo blossomed in full force(,). And, perhaps, in his works the melancholy and loneliness that wafted from the streets and temples on early paintings. In 1928, Maurice Utrillo was awarded France's highest award, the Legion of Honor. Even during the artist’s lifetime, his works were valued at millions of dollars: one of the paintings from the “white period” in 1950 was sold at auction for 8 million francs. And the following year the public cried over the film “The Tragic Life of Maurice Utrillo.” By the way, about cinema. Few people know that in the film “If Paris Would Tell Us,” released after his death, Maurice Utrillo played a cameo role, that is, himself. But all this fuss did not touch him at all. He went to his workshop, set up a toy train on the floor, given to him long ago by his mother, and fenced himself off from the world in which he still felt like a stranger.