Paule Vézelay (née Marjorie Watson-Williams) studied at Bristol School of Art, London School of Art and Chelsea Polytechnic. She first exhibited in London in 1921 and joined the LG the next year. In 1926, she moved to Paris and adopted the name Paule Vézelay, which – despite the moniker’s distinctly French nature – she claimed was “for purely aesthetic reasons”. Closely associated with André Masson (1896–1987) (with whom she lived for four years), Jean Arp (1886–1966) and Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889–1943) during this period, by the early 1930s Vézelay’s work had become increasingly abstract and she joined Abstraction-Création in 1934. One of only a few British members, she was committed to international, non-representational art.