Pont Neuf
Painted about 1908, Pont Neuf was painted before Utrillo's famous "white period". The scene is the 16th century bridge from the left bank of the Seine. The western tip of the Ile de la Cite is visible on the right and the flag of France is centered among lush trees and stone structures. (See also, Renoir's version of Pont Neuf).
Maurice Utrillo was a French painter born as Maurice Valadon, son of Marie-Clementine "Suzanne" Valadon, an acrobat, model, and artist, who was well acquainted with several famous artists. Maurice studied art under her instruction and developed a style all his own. His work inspired other artists to re-examine their work, to re-create reality.
Commentary by Alfred Werner (1953):
One may recognize the influence of Pissarro and Cezanne, but his solidity of composition, his gift for simplification, and his unerring sense of color relation are instinctive to him. Just as he is not a primitive, neither is he a classicist, a realist, an Impressionist, a Fauve, an Expressionist, nor even a romantic. He is a complete individualist who defies all classifications. It is customary to concentrate on the pictures of his “white period,” when roughly between 1909 and 1914, white tints and shades were prominent in his work. However, the years preceding those of his “white period” yielded many fine paintings; and in the paintings of his later “colorist period” he often used bright and gay hues successfully.
Utrillo is one of the few contemporary painters whose works please sophisticated as well as simple tastes. Despite changing fashions and fluctuations of the market, his canvases bring higher and higher prices with each year—good Utrillos of the “white period” are sold for thousands of dollars.