Mathilde Arbey was born in 1890 in Paris, where she trained at the École des Beaux-Arts under Jean-Paul Laurens and the Impressionist Fernand Sabatté. She illustrated books and painted colorful landscapes in the South of France, Italy, Morocco and Tunisia. She regularly exhibited in Paris. In the 1930s she exhibited her genre pieces and Tunisian and Moroccan landscapes at the Salon de la Société Coloniale des Artistes Français in Paris.