Butte Pinson

Butte Pinson is a hill at Montmagny, about ten kilometres north of Paris, and Utrillo's family had lived there since 1896. His stepfather built a house on the hill partly to keep the boy away from the bohemian life of Montmartre, and his mother, the painter Suzanne Valadon, advised him on his colours. This view comes from somewhere between 1905 and 1908, when he was in his early twenties. Small painted sheds, one red and one blue-green, show through a screen of bare trees behind a wooden fence. The palette is dark, and the museum notes why. Many trunks and branches were first painted reddish or green, then covered over in black. Only the twigs against the pale strip of sky at the top kept their original colour.