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This biography from the Archives of AskART:
| Please note: Artists not classified as American in our database may have limited biographical data
compared to the extensive information about American artists.
 Born in Paris with the name of Maurice Valadon, Maurice Utrillo
specilized in painting city scenes, especially of his beloved
Paris. It is said that he is one of the most copied and forged
artist in history.
He was the son of a teenage model, Marie-Clementine Valadon, and
perhaps an amateur painter name Boissy. Unsure of the father,
Valadon reportedly took him around among some of her male acquaintances
including Renoir, all whom denied parentage, and so she named him after
Miguel Utrillo, who was sympathetic but likely not the father. Among
the artists for whom Valadon posed were Berthe Morisot, Toulouse
Lautrec, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
By the age of 21, Utrillo was having the mental problems that would
reoccur throughout his life. To divert him, his mother encouraged
him to paint, so he made pictures of what he saw around him in his
neighborhood of Montmartre. His landscapes were unique, some said
bizarre, and people bought them. They became popular and
influential in that they encouraged other artists to depict their own
environs realistically instead of following the prevailing trends
towards abstraction. Many of his Parisian scenes, painted
'en-plein air', have appeared on postcards.
In the 1920s, when he was in his 40s, he had an international
reputation, and in 1929, he received the Legion of Honor from the
French government. In 1935, when he was 52, he married a
woman named Lucie Valore, and the couple settled in Le Vesinet, near
Paris. He lived into his seventies, although he had many bouts
with alcoholism. He died November 5, 1955 and is buried in
Montmartre in the Cimetere Saint-Vincent.
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Utrillo
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