1940


Oil on panel signed lower right.

35 x 50 cm.

It is probably to better signify the Butte Montmartre that the painter has here

Chosen to saturate its composition by leaving little room in the sky. This point of view

Downwards accentuates the rising effect, reinforced by the vanishing line of the street on the left

With its ascending palisade. In the background, two Montmartre symbols are displayed

To better identify the place: the Sacre Coeur and the mill of Galette. The title, bottom

On the left, already informed us. It is the famous maquis of Montmartre, today

Disappeared, and of which Utrillo made himself one of the last witnesses. He painted it dozens of times,

Often from the same point of view, at all times, in all seasons, both under

The snow that, as here in the spring. This mythical place of the Butte, replaced by

The current Avenue Junot, was a miserable but picturesque place built of huts and

Of houses that Utrillo restores us here with naiveté. In the center of the table, next to

The white house on the right, a cottage on stilts gives us an idea of ​​these dwellings

precarious. The woman who stands next to her, with her brushed apron with large features, testifies

Of the wretched population living there. On the date he painted his painting, Utrillo assisted

Yet in the last hours of the maquis. The two women in the foreground, elegant,

Hats, already announce the new inhabitants of a neighborhood soon crested. Right here,

No trace of nostalgia, however, the painter's vivid palette imbues

The atmosphere of a certain cheerfulness. The sunny yellow of the ground seems to ignore the gray sky

Reduced to a single strip, while the orange-red roofs enhances the dominant