Mervin Jules studied art at Baltimore City College, and on scholarship at the Maryland Institute of Fine and Applied Arts where he graduated in 1934.  In 1937, he enrolled at the Art Students League with Thomas Hart Benton.  He had his first one-man exhibition in November, 1937 in New York City, and in this show had small tempera panels, and a series of Pennsylvania coal-country theme gouache paintings.

In 1939, Jules' satirical painting To-Morrow Will be Beautiful was exhibited at the Carnegie International and the San Francisco World Fair. Jules' work is in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Museum of Modern Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and many others including the collection of the University of North Carolina.