Editing Maurice Utrillo (section)

==Biography==
[[File:(Barcelona) Photographie de Suzanne Valadon et de Maurice Utrillo.jpg|thumb|left|Maurice Utrillo and his mother [[Suzanne Valadon]], 1890]]
Utrillo was the son of the artist [[Suzanne Valadon]] (born Marie-Clémentine Valadon), who was then an eighteen-year-old artist's model. She never revealed the father of her child; speculation exists that he was the offspring of a liaison with an equally young amateur painter named Boissy, or with the well-established painter [[Pierre Puvis de Chavannes|Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes]], or even with [[Pierre-Auguste Renoir|Renoir]].<ref name="The New Yorker - 7 February 2012 - Renoir at The Frick: Go See Dance at Bougival">{{cite magazine|url=http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/renoir-at-the-frick-go-see-dance-at-bougival|title=Renoir at The Frick: Go See "Dance at Bougival"|last=Peter Schjeldahl|author-link=Peter Schjeldahl|date=7 February 2012|magazine=[[The New Yorker]]|access-date=13 September 2014}}</ref> (See below under ''[[#Paternity|Paternity]]''). In 1891 a Spanish artist, [[Miquel Utrillo]], signed a legal document acknowledging paternity, although the question remains as to whether he was in fact the child's father.{{sfn |Warnod |1981 |p=48}}

Valadon, who became a model after a fall from a [[trapeze]] ended her chosen career as a circus [[acrobatics|acrobat]],{{sfn |Warnod |1981 |p=13}} found that posing for [[Berthe Morisot]], Renoir, [[Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec]], and others provided her with an opportunity to study their techniques. She taught herself to paint, and when Toulouse-Lautrec introduced her to [[Edgar Degas]], he became her mentor. Eventually, she became a peer of the artists she had posed for.

Meanwhile, her mother was left to raise the young Maurice, who soon showed a troubling inclination toward [[truancy]] and [[alcoholism]].{{sfn |Warnod |1981 |pp=57–59}} When [[schizophrenia]] took hold of the 21-year-old Utrillo in 1904, his mother encouraged him to take up painting. He soon showed real artistic talent. With no training beyond what his mother taught him, he drew and painted what he saw in Montmartre. After 1910 his work attracted critical attention, and by 1920 he was internationally acclaimed. In 1928, the French government awarded him the Cross of the [[Légion d'honneur]].{{sfn |Warnod |1981 |p=85}} Throughout his life, however, he was interned in mental asylums repeatedly.

Today, tourists to the area will find many of his paintings on postcards, one of which is his very popular 1936 painting entitled ''Montmartre Street Corner'' or ''[[Lapin Agile]]''.

In middle age Utrillo became fervently religious and in 1935, at the age of fifty-two, he married [[:fr:Lucie Valore|Lucie Valore]] and moved to [[Le Vésinet]], just outside Paris. By that time, he was too ill to work in the open air and painted landscapes viewed from windows, from postcards, and from memory.

Although his life also was plagued by alcoholism, he lived into his seventies. Maurice Utrillo died on 5 November 1955 in Hotel Splendid in [[Dax, Landes|Dax]], at age 72,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=DS19551105-02.2.17|title=Desert Sun 5 November 1955 Edition 02 — California Digital Newspaper Collection|website=cdnc.ucr.edu|access-date=23 August 2018}}</ref> of a lung disease, and was buried in the [[Cimetière Saint-Vincent]] in [[Montmartre]].