Jean Masurel

The French textile manufacturer Jean Masurel inherited an important collection of modern art, including extensive holdings of Cubist works, from his maternal uncle, Roger Dutilleul. During subsequent decades and influenced by his uncle, Masurel enlarged the collection with his own acquisitions of the same type of work, beginning with his first purchase in 1920, a gouache by Fernand Léger.

Masurel resided at the family château in Mouvaux, a commune near the city of Lille, before permanently moving to Paris in 1976. In 1979 he and his wife, Geneviève, donated a large portion of their collection to the Communauté urbaine de Lille. Included in the donation were numerous Cubist works by Georges Braque, Henri Laurens, Léger, and Pablo Picasso. Other artists represented in the collection were: André Derain, Paul Klee, André Masson, Joan Mirò, and Amedeo Modigliani. Since 1983, those holdings have been housed in the Lille Métropole musée d’art moderne, d’art contemporain et d’art brut. Upon Masurel’s death in 1991, Geneviève and the couple’s five children inherited the remainder of the collection.