Utrillo to pass from the cabarets

However, how many extravagances did it take for Utrillo to pass from the cabarets of Montmartre to collectors and for the sale of the Skin of the Bear on March 2, 1914, to pay four hundred francs for one of his Our Lady ! The artist had been painting since 1903 and this success had no future. Indeed, at the same auction house, other works by Utrillo were sold a few weeks later at ridiculous prices.

The Church of Montigny, among others, painfully reached sixty francs, and the hope that the bistros in Montmartre cherished of selling their stock vanished almost instantly. Who suffers, if not the painter? But the painter didn't care. Unaware of the "schemes" that would have put him in the limelight, he worked only to drink and, far from profiting from the sale of the "Peau de l'Ours", got rid of his canvases in the course of time.

His friend, Father Gay, had taken him back, and, doing his best to catechize him, kept his eau de cologne locked up. Utrillo did not protest. He would allow his wine to be watered down, then suddenly burnt politeness to his landlord and addressed him from the neighbor's house, M. Delloue, with ironic compliments which he charged a child to carry.

M. Delloue, second-hand dealer, rue de Clignancourt, also sold paint. He set up a bed in his shop for Utrillo who, very happy to have two homes when the agents asked him to indicate one, sometimes no longer knew how to recognize himself there and ended up deserting them for the benefit of Mr. Charles. , restaurant owner based in rue d'Orsel.

I knew Charles' little restaurant. We literally walked on the paint, he had so much and didn't know where to hang it. He gave it to his customers, went to offer it in town as far as the avenue d'Italie where Mr. Nicolas a clever man bought him Utrillos that were never seen again. It was at this friendly and resourceful boy that I one day met a curious character who, for the love of art, parted with a small shoe polish factory in full prosperity to buy Max Jacobs. A fever seemed to seize the most peaceful people in the neighborhood, to urge them to find a dauber, to secure him by contract.

Oh! how pleasant it was then to be a painter in Montmartre! You were cared for, you were invited to dinner, supper, you were discreetly proposed in marriage to the young daughter of the family, and the gossips outside their doors whispered as you passed: "But, my dear, it's the artist at the cobbler or the tobacco shop!"

Unless Utrillo, zigzagging, appeared and filled with consternation or wrath those same gossips who, all in chorus, cried out: - The unfortunate ! In fact, he didn't look like much with his dented felt hat, his mud-stained clothes, his old shoes, his shirt without a collar and his exalted air. The look he had on you discouraged the less shy. As for the remarks that Mr. Maurice made freely to the good people he met on the way, they weren't very reassuring either. It was like, "Bandits!" Hey! thieves! assassins! rascals! or even worse when the mood took him. The rapins of the Butte, informed of his habits when he could surprise one in his work, did not insist.

They quickly packed up, took refuge in the first bistro they came across, then, informed by the boys of the direction Utrillo had taken, resumed their work as if they feared for their lives. It's that Monsieur Maurice was not a happy wine and that his antics, when by chance he indulged in them, did not end without damage. He claimed to be at home in Montmartre and could not bear to have his favorite subjects painted from life. What did nature matter! Didn't one have enough power of suggestion to work, at home, in one's room, or in some second-hand shop, drawing inspiration from documents? He had his in a pocket of his jacket, took them out, showed them around without caring whether they approved of him or not.

"Try it," he said, to anyone who pointed out that it was wrong to stick to postcards. But give it a try; you will see .. And taking his interlocutor to task, he tried to persuade him to invite him, finally, to buy a drink. We laughed. We mocked him, but sometimes we yielded to his tireless solicitations, because not having a valiant penny, he undertook against a tour, to give you a painting or a small sketch. Drunk to the floor, he executed this sketch by the minute, colored it summarily, signed it in his large handwriting and went further. - Here ! he grumbled talking to himself. Hey! manure! disgusting!

It is claimed that he had then, in his drunkenness, a marked taste for compositions where straight streets, drawn almost vertically, and treacherous staircases, reminded him of the innumerable ble difficulties It is claimed that he then had, in his drunkenness, a marked taste for compositions in which straight streets, drawn almost vertically, and treacherous staircases, reminded him of the innumerable difficulties they offer to climb. I don't believe it.

Utrillo has always shown a strong predilection for these steep perspectives and these tiers of steps. Does this mean that he was only a drunkard and had no ambition but to count the steps of this street? It would be stupid. That there enters into his obstinacy some drunken insistence, I do not contradict it, but, in my humble opinion, it bears witness, in the painter, to the meticulous exactitude with which his work, as a whole, is marked.

Alas! the military doctors took care not to miss it. Mobilized in May 1915, at the Argentan depot, they did not keep Utrillo after their examination, as his condition had suddenly deteriorated. The painter therefore returned to Gay, shut himself up there, brushed nothing but barracks, charred and ruined walls, bombarded villages. His Reims cathedral tells us about his feelings.

He was flabbergasted, appalled. He lived only in expectation of some cataclysm, the image of which in his eyes was so horrible that drinking was no longer enough for him. He went outside Paris, driven by the idea of knowing what people thought and was showered with insults as his questions were amazing. It became a habit. His running away, which Father Gay had hitherto not been much moved by, threatened to have him arrested. But what to do there? Utrillo escaped, then out of scruples for his lodger sent him reassuring news by post card.

"Not drunk," he scribbled from a post office in Saint-Denis or Saint-Ouen. Everything is fine.

Or - perhaps out of malice:

"Drank a single rum."
And his large signature with tangled curls contradicted what such an affirmation offered in disarming candor.