Suzanne Valadon – Family Portrait (1912)

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”, is how Leo Tolstoy starts his 1878 novel Anna Karenina about a married Russian countess who is shunned by society after she falls in love with another man. In his masterpiece, Tolstoy poignantly shows the hypocrisy and discrepancy between how unfaithful […]

Maurice Utrillo – Sacré-Coeur de Montmartre, and the rue Saint-Rustique (1937)

At the turn of the 20th century, artists were flocking in droves to Montmartre, the bohemian district of Paris where the rents were cheap, the wine was overflowing and the paintbrushes never dried. Some gave up their countries to reach this artistic Mecca, including Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani and Piet Mondrian. Montmartre, with its iconic […]