Utrillo - Berlioz's House

This is Maurice Utrillo's painting Berlioz's House. Since his name may be unfamiliar, here's a brief introduction to the artist before the work itself. Utrillo was born in Montmartre and spent his life painting that neighborhood and its surroundings. His mother was Suzanne Valadon, celebrated as a muse to the Impressionist painters; because of her free-spirited love life, Utrillo grew up never knowing his biological father, which left him emotionally unsettled, and he was struggling with alcoholism by his teenage years. He began painting at his mother's encouragement, and although he battled alcoholism his entire life, he achieved enough success as a painter to receive France's highest honor, the Légion d'honneur.

The house in this painting is where the composer Berlioz once lived in Montmartre, and the work belongs to Utrillo's so-called "White Period." During this phase he mixed sand and plaster into his paint, and here too he used plaster to render the building's exterior, giving it a texture that genuinely resembles real stucco walls.

Paintings from the White Period tend to carry this same subdued, somber mood, which is why Utrillo is sometimes called "the sad painter of white." The house itself was demolished during the First World War, and an apartment building now stands on the site.