Maurice UTRILLO and the affair of his false paintings.

Maurice UTRILLO (1883-1955)

Autograph letter signed

A page in-4° with frayed edges.

Le Vésinet. November 6, 1948

Utrillo opposes his merchant Pétridès in the famous “false Utrillo” scandal.

“Master Maurice Garçon, I had a certain number of businesses and contracts with Mr. Paul Pétridès. Being in the need to revoke the power of attorney that I gave him, I come to ask you to take charge of the defense of my interests . With my thanks, I express to you, my dear Master, my anticipated gratitude. Maurice Utrillo, Artist-Painter. »

Few painters as much as Utrillo have aroused the desires of forgers. The latter, during the first half of the 20th century, acquired such confidence that many seasoned experts, with their noses to the canvas, were regularly abused.

In 1935, Maurice Utrillo signed a contract with the art dealer Pétridès which reserved his entire production for sale.  This agreement was renewed several times, then, temporary difficulties having arisen, the painter Jean Pinson-Berthet, owner of a small gallery, Faubourg Saint-Honoré, was brought in 1945 to share the benefit of the Pétridès contract. This lasted two years until Utrillo dismissed Pinson-Berthet following various disagreements.

Shortly after this break, we noted the arrival on the market of twenty-four paintings by Utrillo, which Pétridès declared fake. An investigation led to the discovery in Troc, in Loir-et-Cher, in a country house belonging to Pinson-Berthet of a freshly painted canvas signed Utrillo and two sketches; a street in Montmartre and the house of Mimi Pinson.

Pinson Berthet fled, leaving a letter in which he protested his innocence. He declared that he was the victim of a cabal, born from his troubles with Utrillo's wife, Lucie Valore (who, according to him, completed and signed her husband's paintings) and from his difficulties with Mr. Pétridès " who a sales monopoly is assured, so much so that it is in his interest to declare all the paintings that do not pass through his hands as apocryphal.

Defended by Maurice Garçon, Utrillo saw this case judged in 1950, before the Paris Criminal Court.