HERGÉ - Lot 62

HERGÉ HERGÉ TINTIN Preparatory illustration dated 1956, for a calendar. Publication of the final illustration in Tintin belge n° 51 of the same year. Graphite on paper 37.2 × 54.1 cm (14.65 × 21.3 in.) There are twelve of them, like the signs of the zodiac... or like the months of the year! Tintin and Snowy were born first, in Le Petit Vingtième in 1929. They lived their first adventure alone, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, and the next two. It wasn't until 1933, in Les Cigares du Pharaon, that the young reporter made the acquaintance of police officers Dupond and Dupont. Since then, they have pursued him with their obtuse but picturesque stupidity. General Alcazar appeared in 1936 in L'Oreille cassée, before reappearing in 1944 in Les 7 Boules de cristal. The singer Bianca Castafiore appeared in Le Sceptre d'Ottokar in 1938, and has since reappeared in numerous episodes. Captain Haddock, who appeared in Le Soir-Jeunesse, met Tintin in 1941, in The Crab with the Golden Claws... and has never left him since. Nestor, the servant of the Château de Moulinsart, was invented in 1942, at the same time as the estate, in Le Secret de La Licorne published in the newspaper Le Soir. Appearing the following year in Le Trésor de Rackham le Rouge, the likeable Professor Tournesol also had the gift of making himself indispensable. Sheikh Mohammed Ben Kalish Ezab and his son, the turbulent Abdallah, met Tintin in 1949, when the newspaper Tintin published Au pays de l'or noir. Séraphin Lampion appeared in 1955 in L'Affaire Tournesol. This pest of the worst kind is the latest addition to a "paper family" whose members come and go as circumstances dictate. These twelve characters, rightly considered by Hergé as the most emblematic of the series, would all appear in Coke en stock, the episode that began appearing in Tintin on October 31, 1956. Here, he takes them on a wild ride, on the pencil sketch of the 1957 calendar destined to appear at the end of the year on the weekly's centerfold. Each of them is set up and detailed individually, whether in terms of dress, attitude or expression. All are in solidarity with the movement, to which we can guess that Tintin gave the initial impetus. Hergé is at his best here. What's more, it's his handwriting, not that of one of his collaborators, that's scattered all around the illustration, attesting to the fact that the work (composition, sketch and finalization) is entirely in his own hand.