Museé Montmartre Celebrates Utrillo, Valadon and Utter

It was one of those perfect late winter Sundays with sunny skies that held the promise of spring, mobilizing Parisians to get outdoors.  Bundled up, the sun felt warm on my face, buffering the cold wind as I walked slowly up the very steep cobblestone hill, past the vineyard and Le Lapin Agile towards the Musée Montmartre.

This was the last weekend of the special exhibit about Maurice Utrillo, his mother Suzanne Valadon, and her young spouse, André Utter. All three were painters known around the neighborhood as  “le trio infernal”.

I have always adored the exquisite paintings of Utrillo, who was considered a post impressionistic painter.  He captured the winding street scenes and energy of old bohemian Montmartre unlike any other painter.

Besides, as a therapist, I was likewise fascinated by his very sad convoluted family history that deeply affected his life. Despite his bouts of addiction and mental illness, I found him to be the most talented of the three artists.

Maurice Utrillo was born on December 26, 1883, on Rue Poteau, making him a true native of the acclaimed bohemian butte.  His mother Suzanne Valadon was only 18 years old and was a nude model  to some of the greatest Impressionistic painters of the time.

If she knew who was the biological father was of her son, she never revealed his name. She never knew who her own father either, having grown up in poverty, where her mother moved to Montmartre, working as a wash woman.

Instead, she did her very best to saddle up his paternity with several famous painters that she frequented.  Her promiscuity was legend and her lovers read like a list of who’s who in the art world.

She supposedly presented him to Pierre Auguste Renoir, who declined saying”No, he couldn’t be mine, his color is terrible”

Then she tried out Degas, who likewise declined saying “No, He could not be mine, his form is terrible”.  It was actually Degas, who encouraged Suzanne to try painting, noting that her sketches showed promise.

Unrelented, her opportunistic tendencies lead her into a relationship with Toulouse Lautrec, who nicknamed her Suzanne, explaining that the name had an aristocratic sound, rather that her birth name Marie Clémentine.

She used her relationship with Toulouse Lautrec, who was in love with her,  to foster the rumors that he was the father, although her son was born before they met! You can read more on Henri Toulouse Lautrec in a post I published on April 28, 2014.

Suzanne had a penchant for using men to either climb socially, or for extracting whatever she could from them emotionally and materially. She ran through multiple lovers, breaking several hearts.

One of the first was Erik Satie, whom she painted a famous portrait of him. He was so smitten with her, he proposed on the first night that they met.

It wasn’t till Maurice was 8, that one of her former lovers, the Spanish writer/artist Miguel Utrillo agreed to give her son his name.  He never had any paternal influence on Maurice, nor did anyone think that he was the father.  Maurice always introduced himself as Maurice Valadon and signed his art with a V after Utrillo.

Suzanne more or less abandoned the care of her son to her own mother, who was said to often put Calvados in his bottle to get him to sleep or give him wine to calm him down.

He never showed any inclination to paint during his childhood, which was divided between Montmartre and Pierrefitte, a northern village where his grandmother lived.

His adolescence proved to be very turbulent as he acted out the frustration and anger of father loss and lack of his mother’s presence.  He was often given to bouts of extreme anger, during which he destroyed property and started to drink heavily, not only wine but absinth, called the “green fairy” which was rampant in Montmartre.

By the time he was 18, he was sent to hospital Sainte Anne where he had his first treatment for alcoholism. It was his mother, who encouraged him, to pick up the brush in an effort to provide therapeutic recreation in hopes to stymie his further descent into alcoholism.

By this time, Maurice had already witnessed his mother take up residence with several of her lovers and she eventually wed a wealthy banker Paul Moussis in 1895.   Though  he tried to be somewhat of a stepfather to Utrillo,  Maurice plundered aimlessly around Montmartre’s saloons of the Chat Noir, Le Bateau Lavoir and Le Lapin Agile, painting between intense hangovers.

His best friend became  André Utter, who upon conducting his drunk friend  home met his mother.  It wasn’t long before Utter, who was 21 years younger than Suzanne became her lover and Valadon proceeded to  divorce her husband after he got wind of their romance, which she never really tried to hide.

Maurice ‘s depressions had become more severe, necessitating multiple long term hospitalizations due to suicidal attempts.    He was able to stop drinking for periods of time, but often relapsed due to his revolving despair and depressive episodes.

His first public exhibit of paintings was in 1909, at the age of 26.  By that time he was said to derive pleasure from his recognition, which helped stave off some of his misery.

He was a serious painter, who ground his own pigments and would often mix his paints with dust or concrete to add texture to his canvases.  Some say his brush work resemble Sisley, which Utrillo did admire.

Utrillo, his mother and Utter all moved in together in the house on 12 Rue Cortot, that she wrangled from her divorce.  Suzanne ended up marrying Utter in 1914, and all three worked respectively producing many sketches, water colors and paintings.

Suzanne had already made a name for herself artistically, as she was the first woman to be admitted to the National Society of Beaux Arts.  Although she did several still lifes of flower bouquets, she was best known for her nudes, predominantly of women, often using herself as the model.

However, she is noted also as  the first women to paint male nudes.  One of her most famous paintings was that of three male figures, each posed by her husband Utter.

Her family portrait of herself, Utrillo and Utter is very poignantly revealing of the sadness that consumed her son, reeking of frustration and utter despondency with his head resting on his hand..

André Utter also painted nudes, but he never achieved the same degree of fame as Utrillo, nor his wife.

Utrillo, despite the distant mothering he had during his childhood, remained totally devoted to his mother, proclaiming her a “goddess” and the most generous and loving woman in his life.

His putting his mother on a pedestal is  seen as a self proclaimed projection onto her  of all that he had wanted from her that he never got. This unequivocal devotion served as a overcompensation and denial of all the misery he had growing up without her.

I can not go so far to say that this was a reaction formation, without having known him personally.

By 1925, Utrillo started pulling in more money than his mother’s art.  A housekeeper was hired to look over Maurice, while his mother and Utter moved into a new home on Rue Junot.

They had purchased a château just north of Lyon, where they sent Utrillo in hopes of cutting him off from his habitual bar hopping in Montmartre.

During this time, Utrillo became interested in religious matters and  decided to be baptised.  Throughout the rest of his life, his faith which continuously deepened served to give him some needed solace.

In 1926 Suzanne and Utter separated due to his womanizing, although they reportedly remained friends.  In 1935, Utrillo married the widow of a wealthy Belgium banker and they moved to Angouleme.

He painted quite a lot and his wife, Lucie,  took care of his financial affairs and organised his exhibitions.  Some say his life took on some sort of stability that he had never achieved before.

In 1938 Suzanne Valadon, who suffered from diabetes, died of a stroke.   Maurice was so shattered that he was unable to attend his mother’s funeral.

Utter remained close to Utrillo and noted that Suzanne in her later years had become difficult and unpleasant , which he suspected was jealously over Maurice’s greater success and fame. He died in 1948 at age 62, and was buried next to Suzanne.

In  the early fall of 1955, Maurice received the Médaille d’Or from the city of Paris and filmed a movie with Sacha Guitry, “Si Paris nous était conté”.  His name had become a source of world-wide fame and pride to the city that nourished his soul and art.

Maurice and his wife returned to the Parisian area to live in the suburb of Le Vesinet.    Several years later, while undergoing a “cure” or medicalised spa treatment in Dax, he was found dead in his bed on November 5, 1955 next to his easel.

The  funeral cortege for Utrillo was followed by over 55,000  mourners to honour this extremely troubled but very talented Montmartrois artist.

The “infernal trio” now had all been finally laid to rest. Ironically, despite the ravages of his alcoholism, he outlived Utter and died at  72, the same age of his mother at her death.

Maurice Utrillo was finally able to transmute some of his tormented and anguished existence into creating beautiful  canvases of the tiny winding streets of Montmartre that he knew so well.

Maurice Utrillo V, as he always signed his paintings, was a perfect example of a phenomena where painful existence or life events can be a change agent par excellence.  This can occur not only with professional artists but for all of us.

I have often noted that such intensity of creative genius can sometimes be enhanced by the explosive thrashing of psychic agony, which however painful, rips open or unleashes artistic ideas and creativeness never before expressed in more tranquil times.

This is due to the ego being so torn and tattered, that one no longer cares about the internal critic and fears related to our persona  that can over regulate and limit our individual expression of self.

A large part of the Montmartre museum is actually located on 12 Rue Cortot, where you can visit Valadon’s house and the restored studio of all three, including Utrillo’s  bedroom seen above.  It offers a sweeping view over a very nice garden and vineyard high above the northern city limits of Paris.

The last photo on the Musée’s ground is the old studio of Renoir.

To complete your visit, you can visit Utrillo’s tomb in the lovely Cimetière Saint Vincent de Montmartre, whereas his mother is buried at the cemetery of Saint Ouen.