Marcel MOULY

Marcel Mouly – Biography, Original Lithographs and Prints

Marcel Mouly (born in Paris on 6 February 1918, died on 7 January 2008) was a French painter and lithographer of the post-war School of Paris. Largely self-taught, he learnt the grammar of Cubism in the studio of the sculptor Jacques Lipchitz and married it to the pure, high-keyed colour of Fauvism. Still lifes with guitars, interiors, harbours and sailing boats are his recurring motifs. The French State bought his Femme à la lampe in 1947, and from the mid-1950s colour lithography became a central part of his output, carrying his work to collectors well beyond France.

Le Coin des Arts follows Marcel Mouly’s work and offers his original lithographs whenever fine impressions become available, chosen for the quality of printing, edition, provenance and condition. To be told when a new work arrives, simply “follow the artist” on this page.

Odd jobs and evening classes in Montparnasse

Mouly came to drawing by a back door: at school, the drawing class was first imposed on him as a punishment, and he turned out to have a gift for it. He left school at thirteen and worked as a beach vendor, a dentist’s apprentice and a delivery boy for a wine merchant. In 1935, still making deliveries by day, he enrolled in evening classes in Montparnasse. Called up for military service in 1938, he returned to civilian life after the fall of France in June 1940.

Wrongly imprisoned, then apprenticed to Cubism

Sharing a studio in Auteuil with the painter Bernard La Fourcade, he travelled to Normandy in 1942. Lacking the travel papers demanded under the Occupation, the two men were questioned and, back in Paris, arrested and wrongly held as spies. His biographers relate that it was in solitary confinement that he resolved to devote his life to painting. Released in 1943, he rented, with Édouard Pignon, the Boulogne studio of Jacques Lipchitz, then in exile in the United States, and became his protégé. In 1945 his canvases hung at the Salon d’Automne alongside works by Henri Matisse.

La Ruche and a purchase by the French State

In 1946 he moved into La Ruche, the artists’ colony in Paris’s 15th arrondissement once home to Chagall, Léger and Zadkine, and showed at the Salon de Mai. That year he painted Femme à la lampe, a tall oil on canvas (162 × 97 cm) bought by the State in 1947 and now in the Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou (AM 2689 P). His first solo exhibition followed in 1949 at the Librairie Bergamasque in Paris.

Marcel Mouly in British collections and salerooms

Mouly’s Mediterranean light reached Britain early. The University of Warwick Art Collection owns Amalfi Blue (1958), an oil in which the whitewashed houses of the Amalfi coast are broken into Cubist planes of Fauve colour. His paintings appear regularly at London auctions: at Bonhams Knightsbridge on 4 September 2019, Les Tisserands rouges, an oil signed and dated 1952, sold for £1,530. The sale catalogue cited as literature Richard Hart’s English-language monograph Marcel Mouly: Light and Colour, in which the picture is reproduced in colour. Further afield, the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane purchased his lithograph Bowl of fruit in 1976.

Later years and an international following

From the 1960s his subjects narrowed to harbours, boats at anchor, markets, chess players and musical still lifes. In the 1990s and 2000s he exhibited at the Shanghai Museum (1996), at Kwai Fung Hin Gallery in Hong Kong (1997), at Opera Gallery in Paris (1999 and 2006), which published a monograph in 2000, and widely in the United States. He died a month before his ninetieth birthday.

Mouly’s printmaking: the lithograph as painting

Mouly took up lithography in the mid-1950s and handled the stone as a painter: flat areas of saturated colour, outlined in black, lock together as on canvas. Impressions are recorded on Rives and Arches wove papers (Lovers at the Beach, 1966, on vélin de Rives). Editions usually run from 120 to 300, plus artist’s proofs (E.A.); later editions such as Petit Luberon II (2003) or L’Orage (2007) are typically of 300. In 1990 Atelier Gourdon in Paris issued a monograph with a suite of signed lithographs. To our knowledge, no catalogue raisonné of his prints has been published and the printing workshop is seldom stated, so a sheet is identified by title, date, size, paper and edition. See also what is an original print.

Collecting Marcel Mouly’s lithographs: a buyer’s guide

Original or reproduction. Some Mouly images circulate as reproductions, occasionally on good paper, and some sheets carry a signature printed in the image. Under a loupe, an original lithograph shows solid ink with no dot screen.

Edition and numbering. Check that the number matches the stated edition (120, 150, 180, 225, 300) and that proofs are marked E.A.

Signature. Mouly signed ‘M. Mouly’ in pencil, usually lower right. A printed signature is not the same thing.

Technique. A few late editions are described as screenprints; ask for the exact medium in writing.

Provenance and condition. With no catalogue raisonné, keep invoices and certificates. Mouly’s reds and blues fade in daylight, so choose UV-filtering glazing when framing. Our guarantees are set out on the authenticity page.

Alongside Mouly, the gallery offers prints by painters who joined colour and structure: Édouard Pignon, Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Jean Carzou and Antoni Clavé. Explore the School of Paris and our engravings and lithographs.

Sources and further reading

Richard Hart, Marcel Mouly: Light and Colour · Joseph Jacobs, Albert Scaglione (ed.), M. Mouly: Retour de les Fauves, Park West Gallery, 1992 · M. Mouly, Opera Gallery, Paris, 2000 · University of Warwick Art Collection – Marcel Mouly · Bonhams – Les Tisserands rouges · Centre Pompidou – Femme à la lampe · Queensland Art Gallery – Bowl of fruit