HERGÉ - Lot 63

HERGÉ HERGÉ TINTIN Casterman, 1957 Original illustration for the small-format coloring book no. 2, accompanied by its certificate of authenticity from the Hergé studios. India ink and white gouache on paper 21 × 27 cm (8.27 × 10.63 in.) After the successful launch of the Tintin newspaper in 1946, the reporter with the quiff became very popular. Although he had already been used for advertising and derivative products since the pre-war years, from the 1950s onwards, his use took on a colossal dimension, culminating in the creation in 1954, by Raymond Leblanc and Guy Decissy, of the Publiart publishing house to accompany the immense popularity of Tintin stamps, which provided the images for the Voir & Savoir collection - imagined by Hergé and implemented with Edgar P. Jacobs and then Jacques Martin - on the model of the Artis-Historia stamps that were so popular at the time. These little "coloring" derivative albums, whose Belgian market leader Gordinne/Hemma Editions dominated the sector at the time, were pure merchandising. They introduced Tintin to the small, popular supermarkets that populated the countryside at the time, a network distinct from urban bookstores. In this scene, taken from Tintin in America, the set design is simplified as much as possible, so that young children can easily grasp the shapes and reproduce the colors: it's clear line squared, so to speak. The accuracy, suppleness and ease of the line attest to the fact that this drawing is by Hergé and not by one of his assistants, as was often the case at the time. Hergé did very few of these. He occasionally redrew scenes from older albums in a more contemporary style, as here or on the blue album endpapers. Once his studio had stabilized, he began to delegate these tasks to his assistants, except for characters like Tintin and Snowy. The handwritten note at the top mentions that the drawing is to be reproduced twice, identically: the first in color and the second in black and white, following the principle of coloring books, which provide a model for the budding artist trying his hand at coloring.