TED BENOIT - Lot 86

TED BENOIT BLAKE AND MORTIMER The Francis Blake Affair (T.13), Blake et Mortimer 1996 Original plate no. 41 gouache coloring by Madeleine De Mille. by Madeleine De Mille. Signed. India ink on paper 36.9 × 48.2 cm (14.53 × 18.98 in.) As we saw recently with Floc'h's Blake et Mortimer, who sacrificed all the recitatives, the essential canon of the Jacobsian legacy, each artist has his or her own personal relationship with Jacobs' work. Ted Benoit, perhaps because he was the first to take up this classic, just after Bob De Moor, is undoubtedly the most orthodox: in the way he poses the blacks, in his gestures... But, as a film buff, he is more fluid in his direction. This is clearly visible in the sequence in which he sets the scene in Scotland, before disguising the professor as a dyed-in-the-wool Scottish man: the farmhouse, the landscapes, the secondary characters - all are observed and documented, just as Jacobs would do!