Marcel Thomas (1909-2000) - portrait de Louis de Funès - cachet de l'expert Gérard Gagnepain au verso

Very fine photograph of Marcel Thomas, depicting Louis de Funès (1914-1983), a French actor regarded as one of the greatest comedians of French cinema. He is notably famous for La Grande Vadrouille, Le Corniaud, Les Aventures de Rabbi Jacob, and the Gendarmes series.

Marcel Thomas is a French photographer with an unconventional career. It was after World War II that he settled in Paris, working in dressmaking. From 1947 to 1990, thanks to the help of doorman friends in the great Parisian hotels, he photographed, with their consent, hundreds of French and international stars. He would approach them with a friend who asked for an autograph, then proposed that his companion take photographs of them; hence the 'posed' rather than 'stolen' aspect of the shots.

Marcel Thomas took these photos as an amateur and did not sell them, but he accumulated several thousand. Shortly before his death in August 2000, he bequeathed his photos to his friend, the writer Gérard Gagnepain, whom he entrusted with making his collection known.