Maurice Utrillo (1883 Paris - 1955 Dax)
"Rue Saint-Rustique sous la neige" (Rue Saint-Rustique in the snow). Original title
View of Paris painted around 1933/34 with a view of the street in Montmartre and the Basilique du Sacré-Coeur glowing white in the background. From around 1912, Utrillo repeatedly painted the picturesque alley located on the highest point of the Montmartre hill in different versions and techniques from varying angles in landscape and portrait format. The historic, oldest street in Paris, with its cobblestones and small houses leading up to Sacré-Coeur, offered him a fascinating wealth of motifs. Utrillo himself was born in the artists' quarter of Montmartre as the son of Suzanne Valadon, who was only 18 years old, a muse, model and later an important painter in her own right. He experienced psychological crises as a teenager and fell prey to alcohol - an addiction that haunted him throughout his life. Valadon, Edgar Degas and the painter Alphonse Quizet encouraged him to paint himself, and art also became a therapy for him against his own demons and alcohol. In the years 1910 to 1914, he found his own individual, expressive-realistic style beyond all artistic trends. His main subjects were Paris and in particular Montmartre, where he lived and worked. Unlike many of his fellow artists, Utrillo had never completed a classical training in painting. Yet it was precisely this that enabled him, as a self-taught artist, to depict the streets, urban canyons and squares with an originally raw power, often with only a few, but nevertheless virtuosically confident brushstrokes. These form a structuring, formally strict framework, whereby Utrillo's creative phases can be distinguished from one another less by their painting style than by their different coloring. Even before the I. Utrillo was represented in important exhibitions of modern art in Paris and Germany even before the First World War, including at Hans Goltz's "Neue Kunst" gallery in Munich in 1913/14. This triumphal march continued in the 1920s, Utrillo achieved increasing fame and popularity among collectors and critics, which continues to this day, so that in 1926 he finally had "Paris at his feet", as Oskar Schürer wrote in his article on Utrillo in the authoritative magazine "Die Kunst für Alle" (with illustration of a painting "Strasse St. Rustique"). Gouache/cardboard. Signed a. with location Montmartre. 48 cm x 62 cm. Frame.
Wvz. Pétridès AG 612. Hélène Bruneau, Association Maurice Utrillo in Pierrefitte sur Seine, confirmed the authenticity of the work in an email on 23.12.2022.
Provenance: Auction Grisebach, Berlin, 28.11.1997, lot 55.
Gouache on cardboard. Signed with location Montmartre. Mentioned in the catalogue raisonné (Pétrides no. AG 612). The authenticity was confirmed in an email by Hélène Bruneau, Association Maurice Utrillo on the 23rd December 2022.
Estim. 75,000 - 150,000 EUR
