Painter Maurice Utrillo was born on December 26, 1883, in Paris, France. He died on November 5, 1955. He was the illegitimate son of painter Suzanne Valadon, who had modeled for Degas and Renoir. However, his mother, absorbed in her own work, lacked affection, and Utrillo's loneliness led him to turn to alcohol for refuge. By the age of 20, he had been repeatedly admitted to and discharged from psychiatric hospitals due to alcohol-related problems. However, at the doctor's suggestion, he began painting. He eventually met landscape painter Alphonse Quisé and began his career as a painter. Many of his works capture the Parisian landscapes stretching from Montmartre, where he was born and raised, and many are based on postcards of Parisian streetscapes. In 1909, he began to use a lot of white in his work, which later led to his highly acclaimed "white period."

After that, there was a period when he painted colorful works, but in 1935 he married Lucie Pauwels, the widow of a Belgian banker, and spent his final years peacefully with her.