 Welcome to Barn's Takeout, your daily serving of art. I'm Robin Creeran, Collections Research Coordinator at the Barn Foundation. Today I'm going to talk to you about this painting by Maurice Utrillo, a French painter and you see it here in Room 19 on the north wall and it's actually flanked symmetrically on the other side by another painting by Utrillo. We actually have 12 paintings in the collection but today I'll just talk about this painting from of the Montmartre which is a neighborhood in Paris. So Maurice Utrillo was born in 1883 in Paris in Montmartre to Suzanne Valladant who was also a French painter but she was also a model to artists like Renoir and Toulouse-Artrac among others. Utrillo did spend a period of his youth outside of the city in the suburbs of Paris and there he developed alcoholism at a pretty young age and he suffered from alcoholism and belts of mental illness throughout his life and his first institutionalization from this was actually quite young around 1821. He was encouraged apparently by his mother to begin painting during his rehabilitation and it's something he kept up with throughout his life. He never did receive any formal training but he was a very prolific painter and produced thousands of canvases many of which were of his probably favorite subject of Montmartre and this painting is one of them. So Montmartre is an area which is a large hill in the city of Paris. It's an 18th arrondissement on the right bank of the river Seine. Like I said it's a big hill so it's one of the areas of Paris where most of it is climbing up this kind of windy hill. And this scene is from the Place du Théâtre which is a lively square near the top of the hill and it's just a few streets away from the Basilica de Sacré-Cœur which is kind of the iconic the icon of Montmartre that we know today. The area was actually only made part of the city of Paris in 1860 and before that it was actually a really rustic area with farms and vineyards and lots of windmills. But beginning in the 1870s it really became this haven for artists and the like and it lasted until around the First World War where they began moving to a different neighborhood in Paris called Montparnasse. But at the time that the trailer was painting this most likely it still was kind of that hub of nightlife and area for artists to gather. It's famous for being the location of Le Moulin Rouge and Le Chat Noir which were cabarets and there were lots of cafes also bistros, restaurants and dance venues that made it like I said this major hub of nightlife. But that's not what it really looks like in this painting. It feels actually quite empty. There's only about five figures including this little policeman right here or that's what I read it as who's possibly kind of guarding the square. And then these other four figures walking along the street kind of almost in a line. The other thing that makes it feel kind of empty is that a lot of the windows of these buildings are shuttered. These are open but a lot of these if you look at the top windows are all shuttered. So it makes it feel really like almost not lived in. And even the names of these of these shops and restaurants you can make out restaurant. So he doesn't actually choose to say what the actual restaurant is. He just names it a restaurant. And then up here if you can read it it says hotel or hotel. But it's really hard to read out if he's actually giving any name to that hotel. And then over here it just says for wine. It's like a wine shop. And then this one even over here it's rather hard to read. Maybe it's his liquor but it's kind of hard to tell. He did this often in a lot of his paintings. He didn't assign actual names to them which kind of makes it hard to figure out where exactly they're located. So how do we know that this one is the place de théâtre? Well it actually has a couple clues that make it a little bit more obvious. So this big domed steeple up here this white domed steeple is actually a part of the Basilica of Sapeca which I mentioned before. It was built in 1875 and finished around 1914. It was not consecrated until a few years later because of the First World War. But it became like I said was this icon of the area around this time. And it's pretty recognizable. This right here you can also see kind of like an outline of another building and it's right in front of this kind of blue bluish green roof. And that's actually one of the oldest churches in Paris which is almost exactly next to Sapeca. And that's the Eglise Saint-Pierre de Montmartre. It's about 800-900 years old. The area of Montmartre is actually was settled hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Even going back to the like Gallow Roman times. Which makes sense because this hill so could be used as a military stronghold but it actually had an abbey and church related buildings on it for a long period of time like this church. Which as I said is almost 800-900 years old. So why do you think why do we think that this painting is so empty? One reason could be that Utrella was trying to kind of bring back these pictures, bring us back to a time period before it was so commercialized or teeming with people. To a time period it's a little bit more rustic and nostalgic. But another kind of more obvious answer is that this could just be an early morning. You know the sky, the blueish partly cloudy sky does brighten the image but it does feel especially with the shutters closed like it could be an early morning before anything's really happening. Utrella did paint from life but he also is known to have painted from postcards. Something which he was strongly criticized for. Postcards were becoming very popular during this time period from the late 19th into the early 20th century. They became very popular for a quick and easy way of communicating and they often had photographs of iconic places like the Plastiterre or the Basilica of Sacré-Cœur or other areas or landmarks within the city of Paris. They may have been used by locals to communicate with their friends or family or also as souvenirs for people during their travels. So it's a little bit more of an easy communication than a letter. It was quick and it served as kind of a souvenir as an image of where they were. But like I said he was criticized for using his reference. But I think that we can look at them in a little bit different of a way even if this scene is from life not from a postcard. His paintings of Montmartre are very nostalgic. Like I said they're often stripped of their figures and of the commercialization of the area in favor of something that almost memorializes these relics of the area in which he was born and spent most of his life. And it brings it back to this quieter time. A quieter time before all these people were living in the area and making it this noisy teeming place back to a more rustic time. So that's it for today's takeout. If you haven't already subscribed to our channel to get your daily servings of art you can also leave a comment below. We love hearing from you. Thanks for watching. I'm Tom Collins new Bauer family executive director of the Barnes Foundation. I hope you enjoyed Barnes takeout. Subscribe and make sure your post notifications are on to get daily servings of art. 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