ALCOHOLIC ARTIST

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 719, 24 April 1953, Page 14

ALCOHOLIC ARTIST

THE WINE OF GENIUS, by Robert Cough: lan; Victor Gollancz. English price, 12/6. MAURICE UTRILLO’S alcoholism

' has given his work a sort of éclat among collectors, and the excessive bohemianism of his life makes a pretty contrast with the purity and serenity of his pictures, which are usually street scenes of Montmartre. In this biography, some of which originally appeared in Life magazine, as may be judged from the clever title and the brilliant little photographs which accompany the text,’ the author ts wholly in sympathy with Utrillo, and tells his story with relish

and in a clear lucid style which befits a short book. It. is an amazing story of the artist’s love for his mother Valadon, herself an artist and the model and lover of great artists. Degas, Renoir, Toulouse Lautrec, are her visitors, while Maurice hintself, his father unknown and his surname casually donated by a friend in a bar, has drunken escapades. Later comes his friendship with Modigliani, the curious ménage at the Rue Cortot, the periods in various institutions, or the

police station at Montmartre, where the police kept a supply of canvases and oils on hand and refused to let him go until he had done another painting for their collection. Finally, there is the fantastic success of his paintings after years of derision. Money rolls in, and with it the claim of being France's greatest painter, and then follows his marfiage to the impossible Lucie Pauwels. The book may not tell a great deal about Utrillo’s art, but as the life story of an unusually eccentric artist it is a

very readable document.

P.J.

W.