, 1890 Utrillo was the son of the artist
Suzanne Valadon (born Marie-Clémentine Valadon), who was then an eighteen-year-old artist's model. She never revealed the father of her child; speculation exists that he was the offspring of a liaison with an equally young amateur painter named Boissy, or with the well-established painter
Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes, or even with
Renoir. (See below under
Paternity). In 1891 a Spanish artist,
Miquel Utrillo, signed a legal document acknowledging paternity, although the question remains as to whether he was in fact the child's father. Valadon, who became a model after a fall from a
trapeze ended her chosen career as a circus
acrobat, found that posing for
Berthe Morisot, Renoir,
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and others provided her with an opportunity to study their techniques. She taught herself to paint, and when Toulouse-Lautrec introduced her to
Edgar Degas, he became her mentor. Eventually, she became a peer of the artists she had posed for. Meanwhile, her mother was left to raise the young Maurice, who soon showed a troubling inclination toward
truancy and
alcoholism. When
schizophrenia took hold of the 21-year-old Utrillo in 1904, his mother encouraged him to take up painting. He soon showed real artistic talent. With no training beyond what his mother taught him, he drew and painted what he saw in Montmartre. After 1910 his work attracted critical attention, and by 1920 he was internationally acclaimed. In 1928, the French government awarded him the Cross of the
Légion d'honneur. Throughout his life, however, he was interned in mental asylums repeatedly. Today, tourists to the area will find many of his paintings on postcards, one of which is his very popular 1936 painting entitled
Montmartre Street Corner or
Lapin Agile. In middle age Utrillo became fervently religious and in 1935, at the age of fifty-two, he married
Lucie Valore and moved to
Le Vésinet, just outside Paris. By that time, he was too ill to work in the open air and painted landscapes viewed from windows, from postcards, and from memory. Although his life also was plagued by alcoholism, he lived into his seventies. Maurice Utrillo died on 5 November 1955 in Hotel Splendid in
Dax, at age 72, of a lung disease, and was buried in the
Cimetière Saint-Vincent in
Montmartre. ==Paternity==