Maurice Utrillo: son of his mother

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 is closely intertwined with the life of his mother, the talented artist Suzanne Valadon.

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

2. 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".

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

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

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

10. Already twelve years old, Maurice Utrillo got drunk 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.

11. 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.

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 the hospitalizations, the artist painted a work called "Madness", this picture is fundamentally different from the usual "Utrill" landscapes of Montmartre.

13. 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.

14. The liberated Suzanne had affairs 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.

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 "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.

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

17. Abuse of alcohol 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.

18. “He wandered the streets of Paris and its suburbs, unconsciously seeking adventure, 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.

19. Out of intoxication, Maurice Utrillo was a quiet and lonely person 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.

20. 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.

21. 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.

22. Another version says that the artist, who was 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: for the most part, her work depicts bright flower bouquets.

24. 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.

25. “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.

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 Promotion and Development of Creativity of People with Mental Disorders, Darya Evseeva evseeva-centre.ru