The district of Montmartre is the highest point of the city of Paris, and the name Place du Tertre is probably a reference to the elevation of the street (tertre means knoll, or hillock), though there is said to have been a Dutertre who was an employee of the Montmartre abbey about 1500 and Francis Carco cites "the famous Captain Dutertre, who died in France." In any case, the place du Tertre was the center of the original village of Mont- martre. This view has little in common with the postcards currently avail- able to tourists, taken on bright, sunny days when the square is crowded with people dining at the outdoor cafés and when there 1S a congestion of carts, from which peddlers dispense to sightseers their trite and tawdry wares in exchange for good francs. Indeed the place du Tertre has changed so much in recent decades that this painting now has historical as well as artis- stic value. However the future comes to regard Utrillo as an artist, he will live as an ardent chronicler of a vanished Montmartre.

This Tate Gallery painting shows the place in late fall or on a snowless day in winter. Utrillo's melancholy temperament preferred the desolate seasons to the months of warmth and bloom. In the period when he pro- duced his best pictures, his predilection was for low-keyed colors and the lacy patterns of bare boughs, as in this scene. Here as in many other views, he is fascinated by the lettering on stores and buildings. These signs, very large and tranquil, are introduced for their decorative effect as well as for the contrast between the association suggested by the words themselves- Vins, Liqueurs, Restaurant, 3ò4picerie, Patisserie, Tabac-and the utter emptiness of the square.

In some of Utrillo's paintings the loneliness of the scene is emphasized rather than diminished by the inclusion of a few sticklike figures, so small and inconspicuous that one must make an effort to find them. Even when, in Utrillo's later pictures, figures appear more frequently, they are not engaged in any activity; they merely wait or, at the most, walk. In his entire oeuvre there is only one picture with dramatic content. It is based on a real event, the artist's arrest (in his opinion, unwarranted) on a charge of disturbing the peace.

c.1910