Rating and value of paintings by Marcel Mouly

If you own a work by or based on the artist Marcel Mouly and would like to know its value, our state-approved experts and auctioneers will guide you.

Our specialists will carry out a free appraisal of your work, and provide you with a precise estimate of its value on the current market.

Then, if you wish to sell your work, we will direct you to the best possible arrangement to obtain the optimum price.

Artist's rating and value

On the art market, works by Marcel Mouly are quite common. Associated with the Fauvist group, works from this movement are the most sought-after by 20th-century collectors, particularly those depicting nature.

Also prized, his works that are not categorized as Fauvist can fetch tens of thousands of euros at auction.  Marcel Mouly's works sell for between €10 and €47,550 on the art market, a substantial gap but one that says a lot about the value that can be attributed to these works.

In 2008, his oil on canvas La rue espagnole à Peniscola sold for €47,550 while it was estimated at between €31,000 and €47,000, suggesting a significant upside potential for his works.  

Order of value from the most basic to the most prestigious

The artist's style and technique

Marcel Mouly's works are characterized by synthetic, compressed compositions (i.e., the horizon line is drawn at the height of the painting), a sacrifice of detail and a simplification of light.

The link between color and light is established through the flat color or the fragmented brushstroke, leaving the canvas in reserve. This presence of reserve in the painting aims to evoke light and the dazzle it produces on the viewer in a sparing manner. He was an essential member of the Fauvist group.

Marcel Mouly, a forgotten figure of Fauvism

Marcel Mouly (1918-2008) was a 20th-century Fauvist painter.

Born in Paris, Marcel Mouly produced his first drawings in 1931, inspired by the port of Le Havre. To help his parents, who were of modest means, he dropped out of school at the age of 13 to take on several jobs that would enable him to support his family financially. At the same time, he continued to paint.

From 1935, he attended André Auclair's evening classes on Boulevard du Montparnasse. His progress was interrupted by his military service in the Navy, where he was seriously wounded. Hospitalized, he struggled to recover and worked at a succession of food trades until the outbreak of the Second World War.

In 1942, the Gestapo caught him drawing in a war zone. Suspected of being a spy, he was imprisoned in Fresnes for three months. At the same time, he met Édouard Pignon, a painter from the Nouvelle École de Paris, with whom he would work for some time.

After the 1945 armistice, he finally had the opportunity to exhibit and promote his work, first at the Salon d'Automne and then at the Salon de Mai. His paintings can be found alongside artists such as Jean le Moal, Maurice Estève, or Fernand Léger.

Marcel Mouly is renowned for working relentlessly, painting every day. He sometimes cut short the daily routine of his studio with trips all over France, where he produced drawings and sketches to feed his canvases.

From 1950 onwards, his fame enabled him to hold regular solo exhibitions, mostly in Paris. In 1956 and 1957, he was awarded the Prix de la Critique.

He died in 2008 in Clamart.

Focus on La vie calme avec la chaise, Marcel Mouly, 1996

In La vie calme avec la chaise, Marcel Mouly, true to his fauve style, focuses on a compact, collected composition, where lines and colors play a prominent role.

The scene, which might seem banal at first glance - a chair, a few bottles and some fruit - is transformed under his brush into a colorful symphony.

Mouly opts here for a platter of frank, bright colors, such as red, yellow and blue, which do not seek to imitate reality, but rather to exalt the light and intensity of the objects.

The simplification of light is striking. Contrary to the pictorial tradition that seeks to reproduce the subtle interplay of light and shadow, Mouly adopts a more radical approach: shadows disappear almost completely, in favor of a diffuse, homogeneous light, evoked by the bright colors.

The strong contrast between these colors creates a kind of brilliance, a dazzling effect that comes close to Fauvist experiments, particularly those by Matisse or Derain, where pure color becomes a vector of light in its own right.

The compositional lines in this painting are sharp, even angular, a characteristic that recalls the influence of Cubism. The chair, the central element of the composition, is not depicted from a realistic perspective. It seems almost decomposed, its lines blending into those of the bottles and other elements.

This choice by Mouly shows his interest in the simplification of forms and the fragmentation of space, a process inherited from cubist masters such as Picasso.

However, unlike the latter, Mouly retains a certain legibility in his compositions: each object remains identifiable, despite the apparent deconstruction of forms.

The painting also plays with the notion of reserve. The spaces left empty, notably around the chair and the bottles, accentuate this sensation of bright light, as if the objects themselves were bathed in an unreal clarity.

These reserves, though sparing, are skilfully placed to offer the viewer visual breathing space and reinforce the dynamism of the whole. This process is reminiscent of André Derain's work, where light is not directly represented, but suggested by flat tints and striking contrasts.

In La vie calme avec la chaise, Marcel Mouly demonstrates his mastery of the balance between form and color. The composition, though deliberately simplified, offers a visual richness in which every line and every colored flat contributes to the construction of a scene both familiar and transfigured by the expressive use of color.

In this painting, Mouly shows all the strength of Fauvism, sublimated by a Cubist influence that structures his vision.

The role of Fauvism in the 20th century

Fauvism, a short-lived but essential artistic movement of the early 20th century, played a determining role in the evolution of modern art.

By freeing color from its descriptive functions, Fauvist painters, under the impetus of figures such as Henri Matisse and André Derain, introduced a new way of conceiving painting, where color became the pure expression of sensation.

This movement, though short-lived, paved the way for a deeper exploration of artistic subjectivity. Fauvism thus laid the foundations for many of the artistic revolutions that followed, notably abstraction and cubism, as exemplified by the work of Marcel Mouly.

In La vie calme avec la chaise, Mouly takes up this Fauvist heritage through his flat tints of vibrant color, while incorporating a Cubist influence marked by the fragmentation of forms.

The major contribution of Fauvism lies in this ability to simplify form to better make room for the expressive power of color.

By breaking with academic conventions and seeking the essence of the object or scene represented, the Fauvists created an unprecedented pictorial language, a bridge between the figurative and the abstract.

This language went on to nourish other currents such as Expressionism and Informal Art, confirming Fauvism as a crucial turning point in the history of twentieth-century art, where visual emotion takes precedence over the faithful representation of reality.

Marcel Mouly's imprint on his period

Marcel Mouly made a lasting mark on his period, notably through his hybrid works that blended Fauvism and Cubism, providing a perfect introduction to the pictorial and artistic upheavals taking place in the twentieth century.

Today, many of his works are exhibited in museums in France and around the world, but private collectors play the greatest role in preserving his work.

A relatively unknown Fauvist today, his work is nevertheless particularly appreciated by modern art collectors. He is also a leading exponent of the twentieth-century art movement. Categorized as a Fauvist, he was nonetheless open to other influences and never remained locked into his own pictorial movement during his career.

The artist's signature

Not all of Marcel Mouly's works are signed.

Although there are variations, here is a first example of his signature :

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