Lot 196 D

Maurice Utrillo was a child of Montmartre. This place shaped his work throughout his life and would repeatedly draw him back to itself. As a painter 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. Despite his being a virtuoso in the handling of colour, Utrillo - in contrast to many of his contemporaries - nonetheless remained a portraitist of the landscape and, particularly, of Paris. His views of northern Paris and especially of Montmartre are what made the son of Suzanne Valadon world-famous.

The painter maintained his interest in the landscape and city 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 from around 1910 appear glaringly bright, almost overexposed; then, from around 1915, colour returns back to them. The present painting is an impressive example of the bold colours of the artist's palette in his late work. Here, the depiction of the Moulin de la Galette convinces us with the distinctive vitality of the brushwork and the complex nuances of its airy tonality. With great ease and mastery, Utrillo has succeeded in creating an emphatically atmospheric impression of this iconic view of Montmartre.