Rue à coté du Sacré-Coeur, Montmartre, Sous la Neige. Street by the Sacré-Coeur, Montmartre , with Snow. by Maurice Utrillo, 1883-1955

Maurice Utrillo, 1883-1955
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Rue à coté du Sacré-Coeur, Montmartre, Sous la Neige. Street by the Sacré-Coeur, Montmartre , with Snow.

Original lithograph in colours. c.1935/40. Signed in ink (ball-point). Numbered (89) in pencil from the edition of 100 impressions. Commissioned from the artist and issued by Paul Petrides, Paris, 1935/40. Impressions of this lithograph appear only very rarely on the market.
(Note: With a copy certificate of authenticity from Paul Petrides, 1971 Petrides was Utrillo’s main dealer for all the main part of his career, and was also the author of the standard catalogue listing his works).

Very fine impression with strong colours. On pale cream wove Arches paper. Generally excellent condition; signs of old edge mounting on the reverse. Good margins. Sheet: 18 x 21 1/2ins. Image overall: 12 1/2 x 17.

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‘Rue à coté du Sacré-Coeur, Montmartre’ was one of the pair of large scale colour lithographs that Utrillo drew in c.1935 for his dealer Paul Petrides. (The other is ‘Rue Norvins à Montmartre’ - see WWG catalogue no 1, 2000). These two works are the finest examples of Utrillo’s colour lithography, and totally characteristic of his unique feeling for the special atmosphere and light of the Parisian townscape.

Utrillo’s art was at its finest in studies of the streets and squares of Montmartre, the milieu in which he was most at home. He used the lines and shapes of the buildings to create a visual framework for patterns of colour and light, and it is the play of these patterns with the suggestion of snow on the ground which makes this composition so attractive. At the same time it was not only the buildings themselves which he drew; he was somehow able to capture the whole atmosphere of that unique ‘quartier’ of Paris.

Despite Utrillo’s long lasting interest in lithography as a medium he drew very few of his lithographs in colour.