Honour For Insane French Artist

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 560, 12 January 1929, Page 22

Honour For Insane French Artist

Maniac in Home for Inebriates Receives Legion of Honour for Artistic Genius

f- RAVING-MAD painter, who is spending his last days making superb masterpieces in a sanatoritim for inebriates, m was presented with the Legion of Honour recently. the French Government’s supreme tribute to one of the greatest artistic geniuses France has ever produced. He is (writes R. S. Fendrick. in an American exchange) Maurice Utrillo, the derelict and disreputable Bohemian Who has immortalised Montmartre with his palette and brush, but wrecked his life doing it. Standing on the edge of a madman’s grave today. at the age of 45, it is said that he has not drawn a sober breath for almost thirty years, except during the nine times he has been interned in insane asylums and drink-cure establishments. He doe» not have the slightest realisation that he is one of the greatest French painters of his -eaeration; that the pictures he sold for a single drink a few years ago are j now priced at thousands, and that he will go down through the centuries in legend as another Francois Villon. And Utrillo does not care about any of these things. All he has ever! « ared about is alcohol. He himself has often confessed that he never painted for the love of painting, but only to satisfy his insane appetite. But if any young painters fancy this is a successful formula for fame, they are mistaken. Hundreds of other painters in Paris have been drinking regularly and religiously for years j wi hout stirring up the slightest spark of genius. The story of Maurice Utrillo’s life is stark tragedy. His mother, Suzanne ] Valadon, was a trapeze performer in a travelling fair. One day when she j was about 15 an artist met her in the i

. famous ‘ Cabaret des Assassins” in Montmartre and was so impressed by • I her ravishing beauty that he took her as a model. By the time she reached IS she was posing for Puvis de Chavannes, Toulouse-Lautrec. Degas—the greatest artists of the time —and it was her graceful body that Puvis de Chavannes used so often in his famous mural painting, “The Sacred Wood,” in the Pantheon in Paris. At the very height of her vogue she suffered a cruel misfortune that almost killed her. Her son Maurice was born on December 26, ISS3, and -hen the father, a drunken painter 1 named Boissy, refused to marry her j as he had promised, and even refused

to recognise tile child. It was eight years later that a kind-hearted Spanish painter and .journalist named Utrillo, whose heart had been deeply 'ouched by the mother’s grief over her son having no name, went to the town hall in Montmartre and made a formal declaration to the effect that lie was the father, although this was

untrue. The boy thereupon changed I his name from Maurice Valadon to j Maurice Utrillo, but he retained bis ' French nationality. The boy Maurice literally grew up [in the alleys. His mother had little : time to look after him, as she bad gone back to work as a model to earn a living for the two of them, and this kept her away from home all day. He went to school intermittently, but the teachers found him a difficult pupil, lie was a sombre-minded child who would often burst out into violent fits of temper that bordered on insanity. By the time he reached 14 his mother suddenly discovered that he had bej come an addict of absinthe, which is : not only strongly alcoholic, but poisonj ous. A score of medical men have reported at various times that he inherited this weakness from Boissy, his drunken father. In desperation Suzanna Valadon be- ’ gan to teacn her son to paint—she had j picked up a little *160111110116 in the j studios —in an eort to keep his mind off; drink, but with no success. And so, from the age of 15 or 36, I Maurice Utrillo became known as ’ “The Drunken Painter” of Mont (Continued on Page 23)