Utrillo v. Tate

Second only in importance to London's British Museum is London's Tate Gallery, an institution which, since its founding 40 years ago and particularly since it has been taken under the munificent wing of Art Dealer Lord Duveen of Millbank, has become one of the great art collections of the world.

About six months ago the Tate Gallery got out a new catalog of its modern French paintings. Under the name of each artist was a brief and extremely reticent biography. One of these referred to a Spanish artist named Maurice Utrillo, 1883-deceased, painter of Paris street scenes. Within a week the catalog was withdrawn from circulation and a correction was made, but to no avail.

Not Spanish and not dead is Maurice Utrillo and last week under Britain's stringent libel laws he brought suit against the Tate Gallery, its director, James Bolivar Manson, and the former Lord Mayor of London, Sir William Waterlow, whose firm had printed the catalog. The Tate Gallery's smart lawyers quickly ap peared before the Master in Chambers and obtained an Order for Security Costs, which means that Plaintiff Utrillo must deposit a bond showing that he is able to pay the costs of the trial before his case can be heard. Even so, lawyers knowing the history of most British libel suits wagered that he had an excellent chance of collecting.

Artist Utrillo, born 53 years ago, is the illegitimate son of a onetime circus acrobat, Marie Suzanne Valadon, who at the age of 15 became a favorite nude model for Renoir, Puvis de Chavannes and Toulouse-Lautrec, later became a painter herself and is alive today, still painting, with a reputation nearly as great as that of her son. The father was an alcoholic, ill-tempered, untalented painter named Boissy. In 1888, when little Maurice was five, pretty Suzanne Valadon married a Paris importer named Paul Mousis, but M. Mousis refused to legitimize Maurice Valadon Boissy or give him his name, though he had no objection to paying lor the boy's education later and helping him out of innumerable scrapes. In 1891 little Maurice was legitimized by a good-natured Catalan dilettante. Miguel Utrillo y Molinis. Maurice Utrillo has never liked his legal name. Devoted to his mother, he signs most of his canvases Maurice Utrillo, V. (for Valadon).

From his heredity and background it was natural that Maurice Utrillo should have a talent for painting, but more startling is the fact that Maurice Utrillo was a sodden, wild-eyed dipsomaniac at the age of 15. No school would keep him.

He played hooky continuously to drink red wine with plasterers and ditchdiggers.

In 1901 he was a patient in an asylum for the first time, the Ste. Anne Municipal Hospital for Mental & Nervous Disorders.

It was a doctor at this institute who got him to try painting to take his mind off drink. Suzanne Valadon taught him all she knew, and Maurice Utrillo was soon wandering the streets of Montmartre, painting the white-walled houses, grey roofs and long, empty streets of Paris.

But he kept on drinking. Eight times since then he has been in various sanatoriums.

For ten years he had a new picture and a fresh hangover nearly every morning.

So many times was he arrested as drunk and disorderly that he kept a paint box and easel in several police stations. The police never released him until he had finished a picture.

About 1919 his pictures began sky-rocketing in value. Suzanne Valadon was also selling moderately well. A few years later, mother and son and a painter named Andre Utter, whom Mme Valadon married when she left her husband in 1909. were able to buy a little chateau in Beaujolais, and there Maurice Utrillo retired, a physical wreck. He has remained away from the world ever since, slowly recuperating.

About five years ago. apparently cured of drinking, he developed a new palette. In 1935 he suddenly married a Mme Pauwels, wealthy collector of the works of Valadon and Utrillo. The marriage so far has been most successful. Maurice Utrillo. now pious, ascetic, plays the piano and writes music, attempts poetry, travels a good deal about France. He still hates crowds and public recognition. Opened at Manhattan's Bignou Gallery last week was a fine show of his "White Period"--Parisian street scenes, painted from 1911 to 1914 when he was drunkest.

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