Maurice Asselin

(b Orléans, 24 June 1882; d Neuilly-sur-Seine, nr Paris, 30 Oct 1947). French painter and printmaker. He studied design and painting at the Collège Sainte-Croix in Orléans and from 1903 at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he was a pupil of Fernand Cormon. Although he greatly admired Cézanne and was friendly with the Fauves, he sought to develop a personal style characterized by subdued colours, sensitive brushwork and a strong sense of composition and design. As an oil painter, watercolourist and lithographer he produced landscapes (e.g. Landscape at Neuilly , 1924; Algiers, Mus. N. B.-A.), portraits and genre scenes such as Coffee in the Garden (1922; Paris, Mus. A. Mod. Ville Paris). He also worked as a book illustrator, particularly in the 1920s; among his works in this medium were editions of Francis Carco’s Rien qu’une femme and Mort de quelqu’un by Jules Romains.