How Maurice Utrillo pushed me into a modern painting

VART2026  In the Footsteps of the Impressionists

"I got it into my head that only plaster – real plaster – would give

 marvellous results.  But it cracked, cracked too quickly.

  I had such a search for truth that I wanted to stick real things

 to my picture, like the leaves of a tree.”

Maurice Utrillo, 1914

 

 I started 2014 with a standard and acceptable History of Art course and followed that up with a unit called In the Footsteps of the Impressionists.  This was a two-week study tour actually in Paris.  I spent hours in the Louvre as well as chasing after Impressionist painters. I spent some time experimenting with pen and wash.

Le Dome Café

Pont Neuf

 pl Charles Dullin

Monet's Waterlillies

Montmartre Cemetery

 

I actually did the first pen and wash on an  afternoon in Montmartre when, exhausted, I sank onto a café chair and did my first pen and wash, just  the scene in front of me:

The next day in the Musée de l’Orangerie I discovered a painting of the exact same scene.  It was made by Maurice Utrillo one hundred years before:

Utrillo said of his work,  “I got it into my head that only plaster – real plaster – would give marvellous results.  But it cracked, cracked too quickly.  I had such a search for truth that I wanted to stick real things to my picture, like the leaves of a tree.”  In 1914 that wouldn’t have been considered extremely avant garde, but in 2014 it's quite old hat.   So, for the tour exhibition, I produced another interpretation of Saint Pierre de Montmartre and the Sacred Heart. I tested plaster-of-Paris, sand, leaves, shells, sticks and natural pigments: with PVA glue to stop it all cracking:

 I decided to simplify my composition and started with lots of small thumbnail drawings:

 I tried a larger version of the coloured one with oil pastels:

 Then I took to acrylics I and changed it a bit a bit; the three green circles on the left were cut-outs I used to experiment wit bushes:

I asked friends for feedback and one supplied me with a simplification, which I liked.  I cropped it down to a small area in the centre:

                  

 I did another acrylic study, which I rather wish I'd kept:

I finally picked up my "real" materials  and produced a textured version with plaster and dried leaves as Utrillo wanted.  I used sand, shells and coffee grounds to vary the textures when I found I couldn't move the plaster into the brush rhythms of the acrylic version:

Going through this process taught me a lot about developing an artwork rather than just jumping in.  I wonder what Utrillo would have thought of my version.  I'm sure he would have been happy about the plaster-of-Paris and real leaves.