Montmartre was [Maurice] Utrillo’s obsession. It was his lifelong and almost exclusive subject in his paintings. There was scarcely a street, an alley, a wall, a church, or the facade of a house in Montmartre that he did not paint at least once. Many views he painted several times – a house seen from an angle and then from another, a street from one direction and then from another, a square at one season of the year and then at another. Together his paintings make a composite portrait that is unique in art.– Pierre Courthion, Utrillo and the Painters of Montmartre
