Pour Fernand Mourlot en bon souvenir

Pen and coloured crayon on paper, 1973, executed on the half title page of:  Marteau, Robert. Les Vitraux de Chagall 1957-1970. Paris:  A. C. Mazo Éditeur, 1972.  Dedication by Chagall Pour Fernand Mourlot en bon souvenir.  Provenance: the Mourlot family.

Fernand Mourlot was a legendary lithographic printer, favoured by the entire generation of the giants of the Paris School from the 1920s to the postwar years: Picasso, Matisse and Miro’ among them. Chagall established a permanent relationship with the Atelier Mourlot after his return from New York at the end of WW2, being schooled in all the finer points of lithographic printing by Charles Sorlier, chief lithographer there. Chagall valued the work of Atelier Mourlot so much that after he began printing there, he never used any other printer for his lithographs. Fernand Mourlot is also the author of the catalogue raisonnes of the lithographs of Picasso, Miro’ and of course Chagall.