ART REVIEW: MAURICE UTRILLO AT THE SOMPO

Rue Marcadet (1909) Nagoya City Art Museum

Paris is very much a city of the mind. In addition to it being a real place of some importance, it is one of the few cities that almost everyone everywhere has some mental picture of. Even if these notions sometimes turn out to be romanticized fables, Paris nevertheless remains an extremely picturesque and poetic city.

Perhaps no painter captured both its grubby reality and flowery romance better than Maurice Utrillo (1883-1955), a painter whose beautiful and unassuming works, now on display at the Sompo Museum in West Shinjuku, belie the tempestuous story of his life.

Widely regarded as the premier urban landscapist of the 20th century, one of Utrillo’s strengths was his unintellectual approach to art -- this at a time when Parisian art had evolved far beyond the simple task of representing objects to the more intellectualized concepts of the School of Paris, a wide-ranging cosmopolitan art movement that dominated the art scene in the early 20th century.

While Utrillo's contemporaries wrestled with new ‘Isms’ and endeavored to astound the art world by breaking existing paradigms, Utrillo was happy to paint prosaic but affecting scenes like "Le Lapin Agile" (1910), literally "The Nimble Rabbit" a cabaret and tavern, frequented by artists like  Picasso, Modigliani, and Utrillo himself.

Le Lapin Agile (1910) Paris, Centre Pompidou-Musée national d’art modern-Centre de creation industrielle © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. GrandPalaisRmn / Bertrand Prévost / distributed by AMF

The exhibition brings together three of the six versions of this recurring subject, painted in various years, showing its weathered charm with its whitewashed walls, green shutters, and surrounding foliage.

In comparison to the exciting ‘Isms’ of the time -- Fauvism, Cubism, and Expressionism -- that were rocking the art world, a series of paintings like these, with their hint of Impressionism, suggests a conservative, reserved, and rather dull personality.

Utrillo, however, was anything but. A mentally unstable alcoholic, prone to outbursts of intense rage, he first turned to painting on the advice of a doctor, as occupational therapy, and ironically kept going when he realised that he had a talent that could pay at will for his next drink.

La Petite Communiante, Eglise de Deuil, Maurice Utrillo (1930) © Hélène Bruneau 2025

Such unorthodox motivation ensured a refreshing absence of critical self-consciousness in Utrillo's work -- he was even happy to use postcards as the basis of some of his paintings, especially those depicting non-Parisian scenes. 

Utrillo’s life is an argument in favour of "nature over nurture." Born as the illegitimate and neglected son of Suzanne Valadon, a model who had become an accomplished painter, and one of her painter lovers (Puvis de Chavannes is the bookies' favourite), he obviously had strong ‘artistic DNA’ that helped him to produce impressive paintings that owed little to the Impressionist works of his mother, as well as the artistic movements of the day.

Just as he ignored the leading lights of the art capital, he also ignored its great architectural monuments with one exception. the gleaming, skull-white dome of the Church of the Sacred Heart which loomed over the charmingly squalid streets of  Montmartre where Utrillo lived, and serves rather in the same way as Mt. Fuji served Hokusai -- to give many of his works, like the Sompo's own "Maison de Mimi-Pinson et Sacré-Cœur" (1925) a visual signature. 

This work also includes some of Utrillo's "controversial" female figures, which in recent years have stimulated something of a feminist debate. This show, accordingly, grabs the bull by the horns with a section dedicated to Utrillo's "troubled" relationship with the fairer sex, which I will tactfully pass over:

To the initiated, Utrillo's paintings may seem to lack punch and therefore power, but viewed en masse, as at this exhibition, which brings together 70 works, including many from Paris's own Musée National d'Art Moderne, they slowly exert their magic, which lies mainly in the painter's mastery of tone.

His paintings feature a restrained colour palette, dominated by soft whites, grays, pale blues, and earthy tones. This muted tonality creates a sense of nostalgia, melancholy, and timelessness, which aligns with the weathered, lived-in feel of Montmartre’s streets and buildings. It also explains why he eschewed Paris's more garish and recognizable landmarks.

This tonal restraint subtly draws the viewer into the quiet, hypnotic atmosphere of the scene. You feel you are in Paris (0r sometimes a French village) without being overly aware of it. The mastery of tone also creates the unshowy contrasts that give a sense of three-dimensionality to his buildings, making them appear solid and grounded despite his sometimes naïve or crude draughtsmanship.

La Cathédrale Saint-Pierre à Angoulême, Charente (1935) oil on canvas, Hiroshima Museum of Art

Utrillo, himself, became increasingly aware of how he achieved his effects and added to them, using a few tricks of the trade, for example, employing thick, impasto-like applications of paint, and sometimes mixing in sand or plaster into his paint to mimic the rough surfaces of Montmartre’s grubby stonework. 

It is this almost Nihonga-like textural technique that, I suspect, helps endear him so much to Japanese audiences.


Sompo Museum of Art, Now ~ 14th December

Age 26 or older: 1800 yen

Ages 18 up to 25: 1200 yen

High School Students with ID/ Junior High School Students with ID/ Children (under age 12):  Free

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