Édouard Collin: From the Liberté Posters to Provence

Most people who know the name Édouard Collin (1906–1983) know it from a poster: the liner Liberté cutting a blue sea, the French Line lettering underneath. Fewer know that the same hand won the Grand Prix de Rome for painting and spent its last decades drawing the streets of the South. A small charcoal of an avenue of plane trees, lot 25 of our Modern Masters: 20th Century Art sale, shows that later Collin.

Meudon, Maurice Denis, Rome

Édouard Pierre Collin was born in Meudon on 11 December 1906 and studied under Pierre Laurens and Maurice Denis. He exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français from 1929 and in 1932 won the Grand Prix de Rome for painting. Between the wars he designed posters for Renault and the Red Cross and sets for the theatre, and after the Liberation he was a founder member of the Salon de Mai, the salon of free expression.

The French Line years

In the 1950s came the work that made him famous outside the art world: the posters of the Liberté and the French Line for the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, together with menus, labels, fans and advertisements. He received the Palmes Académiques in 1966. Painter, lithographer, engraver, illustrator and poster artist all at once, he never chose between easel and graphic design; the same sure, economical line runs through both.

The South

Collin settled in the South, and Marseille, the Provençal towns and the Mediterranean coast became the subjects of his later paintings and drawings. He died in Marseille on 4 August 1983. His posters are held by the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and his paintings by French regional museums; the drawings, like the one in our sale, are the most affordable way into his work. More on his artist page.

At Aurora & Athena

Avenue with Plane Trees in a Provençal Town, c. 1940s, charcoal on paper, 13 × 20 cm, framed under glass, signed at the lower left, is offered on 17 October 2026 with an estimate of 150 – 300 €. Photographs, condition summary and bidding on the lot page.