Maurice Utrillo "Sacré-Coeur et Moulin" Oil
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GUEST:
My dad was a lover of all art. He was from Germany. He came over here during the war, made a business for himself from the ground up. He just started collecting art that he liked. And this is a piece that I've had for over 30 years. I have looked up on the Internet a little bit the artist, and I know his mother was kind of a flamboyant character and was an artist as well, I believed.
APPRAISER:
Maurice Utrillo had an interesting life. As you mentioned, his mother, Suzanne Valadon, was a painter herself. Maurice never knew who his father was. Was ill when he was growing up as a child and his mother urged him to paint as a profession. He had no formal training other than with his mother. He would paint the environs of Paris. I think this is probably one of his favorite subjects, probably done in the 1930s. It has Montmartre in the background and the galette. If you go to Montmartre, you'll probably see a lot of the same scenes are still remaining. During the '30s, he was particularly ill. He had a problem with alcohol and other illnesses. He painted a lot of outside his window or painted a lot from his home. This is one of those views. And I love the fact that you have the French flag on the top of the Moulin and the figures in the foreground going up the little alleyway. I think it's oil on paper. You can see where the thumbtack was, where he would tack it up on a board to do these.
GUEST:
Oh, interesting.
APPRAISER:
Now, this came from the James Vignon Gallery in Los Angeles. He was a well-known gallerist and would sell these in the '50s and the '60s, I think even up into the '70s. We'd have to check the catalogue raisonné to make sure it's in there, but from the style, I don't think there's a question, and also from the provenance. I think that this would bring, at auction, somewhere in the neighborhood of $80,000 to $120,000.
GUEST:
Wow.
APPRAISER:
So they have gone up considerably in value. These are not...
GUEST:
Thank you, Dad. (laughs)
APPRAISER:
Very kind of him. So they weren't... they sort of went in...
GUEST:
Wow.
APPRAISER:
Like a lot of things, it went in cycles. Utrillo's work, particularly from the...
GUEST:
I'm feeling a little lightheaded right now.
APPRAISER:
Is that right? Don't faint on me.
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