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Lot Essay
The artist and model Suzanne Valadon encouraged her son Maurice Utrillo to paint by having him copy postcards of the winding, narrow streets of Montmartre, which had become the artistic center of Paris by the early 1900s. After six years of hard work and little reward the young artist had his first success depicting this urban landscape in 1909 when three of his paintings were included in the Salon d'Automne and the writer and art dealer Louis Libaude purchased a number of his works. Clovis Sagot, a former clown and pastry chef with an eye for the Paris avant-garde, sold Utrillo's paintings (and an occasional Picasso as well) out of a former pharmacy on rue Lafite, a few doors down from Ambroise Vollard's gallery.
From a young age, Utrillo began depicting urban landscapes with originality and a recognizable style of quiet simplification. He dedicated his long, troubled life to painting his beloved neighborhood of Montmartre, the winding, narrow streets which had become the principle artistic center of Paris by the early 1900s. Although his life was plagued by alcoholism and self-destruction, Utrillo's artistic genius was unwavering with a remarkable gift for composition and unerring sense of color relation. Utrillo's one-time agent, the dealer Louis Libaude observed, "Maurice Utrillo is the painter of Montmartre. Since Lupine, I believe no other artist has been able to render with such acute sensitivity the charm of this little provincial town, isolated on the summit of Paris. Utrillo excels in painting the cracked walls of the old houses. The smallest miserable façade takes on in his paintings an extraordinary intensity of color and life" (Maurice Utrillo, exh. cat., Galerie Eugène Blot, Paris, 1913).
Few artists are as associated with a single area as Maurice Utrillo and Montmartre. The artist celebrated the Paris hill and its housing, which changed gradually during his own lifetime, whether he was in situ or working from afar, revealing his profound link to the place. The present large canvas depicts the Maquis de Montmartre, formerly a marshy area where displaced people from the redevelopment of Paris lived in self-built wooden huts (Maquis in French means land of little value, scrub or moorland). The area was was gradually improved and formed the foundation for part of Avenue Junot. The painting is filled with the textural details that make Utrillo's works so immediate: his famous whites are present in various areas, sometimes revealing a chalky feel that brings the plaster-coated walls of Montmartre to vivid life. Roland Dorgelès recounted how "his production never seemed faithful enough for him...To render color, he crushed his tubes of paint and went into a rage when he couldn't find the right one. 'They're not in silver-white, the façades, are they? Not in zinc white...They are made of plaster...' He absolutely needed to obtain the exact same chalky white" (quoted in D. Franck, Bohemian Paris, New York, 2001, p. 10). Meanwhile, the present work appears to show life, be it in the form of the colorful figures on the street, the young leaves of the trees that are scattered around the composition and which have been rendered with a darting energy using flecks of green, or indeed the iconic windmill and church which dominate the skyline at the top of the composition.
Utrillo's choice of motif in Le Maquis de Montmartre allows these icons of Parisian architecture and culture to intrude while nonetheless depicting a more 'real' aspect of Montmartre. The gleaming, pointed dome of the Sacré Coeur is partially occluded by a tree; however, the Moulin de la Galette, the celebrated meeting place and former flour mill, occupies a more dominant position. This iconic building, which has been moved and altered over the centuries, has been painted by a host of artists: Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec created celebrated images of the balls that were held there, while Vincent van Gogh painted it several times from afar during his time in Paris in the 1880s, depicting it from angles similar to that selected by Utrillo here. However, in Van Gogh's day, the mill was surrounded by greenery, whereas the city had encroached enough by Utrillo's day that it was a thriving neighborhood, one that remained heavily linked to the artistic community in the French capital over the decades. Through the influence of those avant-garde figures, Utrillo developed a manner of depicting the Paris street scenes that was at once immersive and highly expressive, as is the case in Le Maquis de Montmartre, which is dominated by tranches of light paint yet punctuated by flashes of bold and intense color, be it in the leaves or in the various buildings and their shutters.
From a young age, Utrillo began depicting urban landscapes with originality and a recognizable style of quiet simplification. He dedicated his long, troubled life to painting his beloved neighborhood of Montmartre, the winding, narrow streets which had become the principle artistic center of Paris by the early 1900s. Although his life was plagued by alcoholism and self-destruction, Utrillo's artistic genius was unwavering with a remarkable gift for composition and unerring sense of color relation. Utrillo's one-time agent, the dealer Louis Libaude observed, "Maurice Utrillo is the painter of Montmartre. Since Lupine, I believe no other artist has been able to render with such acute sensitivity the charm of this little provincial town, isolated on the summit of Paris. Utrillo excels in painting the cracked walls of the old houses. The smallest miserable façade takes on in his paintings an extraordinary intensity of color and life" (Maurice Utrillo, exh. cat., Galerie Eugène Blot, Paris, 1913).
Few artists are as associated with a single area as Maurice Utrillo and Montmartre. The artist celebrated the Paris hill and its housing, which changed gradually during his own lifetime, whether he was in situ or working from afar, revealing his profound link to the place. The present large canvas depicts the Maquis de Montmartre, formerly a marshy area where displaced people from the redevelopment of Paris lived in self-built wooden huts (Maquis in French means land of little value, scrub or moorland). The area was was gradually improved and formed the foundation for part of Avenue Junot. The painting is filled with the textural details that make Utrillo's works so immediate: his famous whites are present in various areas, sometimes revealing a chalky feel that brings the plaster-coated walls of Montmartre to vivid life. Roland Dorgelès recounted how "his production never seemed faithful enough for him...To render color, he crushed his tubes of paint and went into a rage when he couldn't find the right one. 'They're not in silver-white, the façades, are they? Not in zinc white...They are made of plaster...' He absolutely needed to obtain the exact same chalky white" (quoted in D. Franck, Bohemian Paris, New York, 2001, p. 10). Meanwhile, the present work appears to show life, be it in the form of the colorful figures on the street, the young leaves of the trees that are scattered around the composition and which have been rendered with a darting energy using flecks of green, or indeed the iconic windmill and church which dominate the skyline at the top of the composition.
Utrillo's choice of motif in Le Maquis de Montmartre allows these icons of Parisian architecture and culture to intrude while nonetheless depicting a more 'real' aspect of Montmartre. The gleaming, pointed dome of the Sacré Coeur is partially occluded by a tree; however, the Moulin de la Galette, the celebrated meeting place and former flour mill, occupies a more dominant position. This iconic building, which has been moved and altered over the centuries, has been painted by a host of artists: Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec created celebrated images of the balls that were held there, while Vincent van Gogh painted it several times from afar during his time in Paris in the 1880s, depicting it from angles similar to that selected by Utrillo here. However, in Van Gogh's day, the mill was surrounded by greenery, whereas the city had encroached enough by Utrillo's day that it was a thriving neighborhood, one that remained heavily linked to the artistic community in the French capital over the decades. Through the influence of those avant-garde figures, Utrillo developed a manner of depicting the Paris street scenes that was at once immersive and highly expressive, as is the case in Le Maquis de Montmartre, which is dominated by tranches of light paint yet punctuated by flashes of bold and intense color, be it in the leaves or in the various buildings and their shutters.