Lot 281 D

As a child of Montmarte Maurice Utrillo had already spent the earliest years of his life in that place which would so lastingly shape his work and would repeatedly draw him back to it. His views of northern Paris, especially of Montmartre, were what made the son of Suzanne Valadon world-famous.
The self-taught Utrillo took the Impressionist art of his time as his model; the light-filled painting of Alfred Sisley made a particularly lasting impression on him. However, in contrast to many of his contemporaries, Utrillo's views do not dissolve into landscapes of colour. Instead, they preserve a striking representational clarity.
The painter maintained his iconic formal idiom throughout every phase of his oeuvre, varying colour more than anything else: after his early work, in which darker tones had still been dominant, Maurice Utrillo discovered light in Brittany. The luminously white works of around 1910 appear glaringly bright, almost overexposed. From around 1915, as his eyesight increasingly failed, Utrillo found his way back to colour. The present view of the Place St Pierre and Sacré Coeur de Montmartre is an impressive example of that delicate use of colour which - together with his masterful variations of white - characterises his work. The dense composition is invested with its specific vitality through both the complex palette, with its nuanced accents of colour in brown and green, and the staffage figures typical of Utrillo's work. With great lightness Utrillo achieves a thoroughly atmospheric view of the Place St Pierre, with the prominent and luminously white dome of Sacré Coeur rising majestically above it.
Maurice Utrillo's urban vedute and views of churches were often created on site, but also in his studio on the basis of postcards. For example, the authentic model of the monumental postbox on the right in the foreground can still be identified today in historical postcards.