PARIS—Through September 15, the Pinacothèque de Paris is presenting the first major exhibition devoted to the mother and son artists Suzanne Valadon and Maurice Utrillo. Valadon fled provincial France for Paris, where she became the adored model of Degas, Puvis de Chavannes, Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec, among others. She was 18 and unwed when she gave birth to Maurice, in 1883. (Maurice’s father is believed to be Utrillo y Morlius, a Renaissance man from Barcelona.) Degas encouraged Valadon’s artistic ambitions, and her son followed in her footsteps, producing 6,000 canvases. The approximately 100 paintings on view "show two uncommon per-sonalities," says the historian Jean Fabris, the exhibition’s curator. Highlights include Utrillo’s La petite communiante, Église de Deuil, 1912 — oils painted with plaster mixed with white zinc and cement. "He was a constructor, a mason," Fabris says, adding that his technique, "produced a certain light, whites with a nuance of pink and blue." But Fabris reserves some of his highest praise for Valadon’s 1921 Portrait of Maurice Utrillo, which he says is "magnifique, Cézannian in construction."

"La Vie Bohème" originally appeared in the March 2009 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's March 2009 Table of Contents.