Maurice Leloir is considered a historical painter, watercolorist, engraver, illustrator, playwright and film producer. He was born in Paris on the 1st of November 1851 and died on the 7th of October 1940. Leloir was born into a family of successful artists. He received his formal training with his father historical painter Jean-Baptiste Auguste Leloir (1809-1992), his mother watercolorist Héloïse Colin (1820-1874), daughter of Alexander-Marie Colin (1798-1873) and with his older brother Alexander-Louis Leloir (1843-1884).

Maurice Leloir was elected President of the French Watercolor Society. He was an incredibly successful illustrator. Illustrating works by philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), playwright Jean-Baptiste Molieré (1622-1673), and novelists Honoré de Balzac (1799-1859). He was also talented playwright. Leloir was the founder and president the Costume Society in 1906 and wrote the Dictionary of Costume, which he also illustrated.

The career of Maurice Leloir illustrates the fin de siècle confluence of literature, theater, and cinema. Leloir's "Manon Lescaut, 1892" (Dahesh Museum of Art, NY) is based on the penultimate scene from the Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut, the 1731 novel by Abbé Prévost.

In 1884, Jules Massenet's opera "Manon" premiered in Paris. The success of this lyric drama probably led Leloir, who designed theater posters for Massenet's operas, to illustrate a new edition of the novel published the following year. "Manon Lescaut" by Leloir, after its premiere at the 1892 Paris Salon, was exhibited in 1893 at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the same year in which Giacomo Puccini's "Manon Lescaut" premiered in Turin. The scene, found in the Puccini opera, but not Massenet's, depicts the Chevalier des Grieux with his dead lover Manon in the then wilderness of Louisiana.

Leloir, himself, only crossed the Atlantic in 1928 at the invitation of the silent screen star Douglas Fairbanks to serve as an artistic advisor on the film The Man in the Iron Mask, staring Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford and based on the final novel in Alexandre Dumas' Les mousquetaires trilogy (1844-1850). Leloir's much re-published 1894 illustrations for Les trois mousquetaires, the first novel in the trilogy, had long been accepted, in Hollywood and elsewhere, as the novel's authentic illustrations and Fairbanks conceived his screenplay for The Man in the Iron Mask, as a sequel to his own hugely successful 1921 film The Three Musketeers. Leloir was also commissioned to design theatre scenes for Sarah Bernhardt, André Antoine, Albert Carré and Firmin Gémier.

Leloir was not only a recognized expert on the history of costume, but also one of the field's most important collectors. His 1920 gift to the Musée Carnavalet in Paris of 2000 costumes and accessories forms the core of the present-day Musée Galliera - Musée de la mode de la Ville de Paris.

Books Illustrated:
Brillat-Savarin, Physiologie du goût, Carteret, 1923, en collaboration avec Henri Pille.
Alexandre Dumas, Les Trois mousquetaires, Lévy, 1894.
Diderot, Jacques le fataliste et son maître, 1884.
Lesage, Gil Blas, Charavay, 1899.
Guy de Maupassant, Une vie, Carteret, 1920.
Abbé Prévost, Manon Lescaut, Launette, 1885, 225 ill.
Sterne, Voyage sentimental, 1884. Illustrated by Maurice Leloir
J.J. Rousseau, Les Confessions, new edition, H. Launette & Cie, Paris, 1889, illustrated by Maurice Leloir
Voltaire's Last Visit to Paris, engraving by Maurice Leloir
Dictionnaire du Costume: et de ses accessoires des Armes et des Étoffes des origines à nos jours [dir.] Maurice Leloir; pref. Georges G. Toudouze. - Paris: Librairie Grund, cop. 1992. - 390 p.: il. 29 cm.- ISBN 2-7000-2009-X

Film:
The Iron Mask, 1929. Directed by Allan Dwan. Screenplay by Elton Thomas (pseud. of Douglas Fairbanks). Cinematography by Henry Sharp. Art direction by Burgess Beall, Maurice Leloir. With Douglas Fairbanks, Marguerite de la Motte, Belle Bennett, Dorothy Revier, Rolfe Sedan, William Bakewell, Nigel de Brulier, Leon Barry, Stanley Sandford, Gino Carrado. Sequel to The Three Musketeers (Fred Niblo, 1921), this was Fairbanks' last silent film. He stars again as D'Artagnan, who must call on his old compatriots Athos, Porthos and Aramis in an effort to restore the rightful king to the throne of France. A poignant farewell to the art of the silent cinema.

Museums:
Dahesh, NY "Manon Lescaut"
Listed:
E. Benezit, vol. VI, page. 558
Dictionary of National Biography, London & New York, 1885-1927.
Thieme, U., & Becker, F. Allgemeines Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Leipzig.