2020 Essays

Élisabeth and Berthe Thuillier

Salmon, Stéphanie; Malthête, Jacques

Élisabeth Thuillier is best known by film historians for having colored Georges Méliès’s films and films produced by Pathé. In his overview essay on “French Film Colorists” written for this publication, Joshua Yumibe notes that Méliès “outsourced his hand-coloring work from 1897 to 1912 to a Vincennes firm in Paris run by Elisabeth Thuillier who managed a workforce of over 200 female colorists. Her daughter Marie-Berthe Thuillier, known as Berthe Thuillier, probably worked with Élisabeth and then took over the workshop after her death in either 1904 or 1907.