Lot n° 82
Estimation :
120000 - 150000
EUR
Result with fees
Result
: 146 800EUR
HERGÉ
HERGÉ
TINTIN
Original illustration for the cover of eleven paperback collections of the newspaper Tintin published in 1955 and 1956
Indian ink and white gouache on paper
28 x 40 cm (11.02 x 15.75 in.)
TINTIN, HIS FRIENDS AND "HIS" NEWSPAPER
A Historic Poster
When the first issue of the newspaper that would bear his name was published on September 26, 1946, Tintin and his most faithful companions had been mobilized for several days to promote it. Indeed, they appear together on a poster that could be described as historic, since it marks a significant, even decisive, step in Hergé's career. The hero of the Temple of the Sun walks towards his public smiling. He carries a stack of copies of "his" newspaper under his arm. With the other hand, he proudly displays the front page. Snowy walks beside him, content to show off his favourite bone. Behind them, Captain Haddock and the policemen Smith and Smith seem captivated by the contents of the magazine they are discovering. As for Professor Tournesol, whose distraction is no longer to be underlined, we understand that he must have been just as distracted, to the point of not having noticed the obstacle that Hergé had set up in his way: a street lamp that he could not fail to hit.
Different prints, two printers, one author
Collectors know that this poster was printed in different editions, some by Joseph Van Cortenbergh, a specialist in rotogravure and the exclusive printer of the newspaper Tintin (and its Dutch version Kuifje), others by the Brussels printer L. & H. Verstegen, who was probably called the "Tintin Printer". Verstegen, who was probably called in to help. The first are signed by Hergé and the second are published after Hergé. At that time, Hergé could count on the part-time collaboration of his friend Edgar P. Jacobs, who had just begun to publish the first Blake and Mortimer adventure, The Secret of Swordfish, in the newspaper. While it is certain that the composition of the poster and the drawing of the various characters are exclusively by Hergé, we are less certain about the small-scale reproductions of the elements of the inaugural issue that they show. It is possible that these "miniatures" were drawn by Jacobs, on the one hand because it is well known that he collaborated on the cover of this first issue and on the other hand because he is the author of the last page, where The Secret of Swordfish begins.
The spectacular revival in 1955
Less than ten years later, considering that the drawing of his poster had lost none of its impact, Hergé took up the content and the spirit to promote the sale of collections of the weekly magazine Tintin. But what collections are we talking about exactly? The success of the weekly magazine from its launch was such that it quickly spread to different countries, and in particular to France, where its founder Raymond Leblanc signed an agreement with Georges Dargaud in 1948 to publish a French version. In addition, the "unsold" copies of the magazine were so rare that as the magazine's circulation increased, care was taken to keep them in stock.
of the magazine, we took care to reserve a part of them to make hardback collections. Bound by Casterman on behalf of the Lombard publishing house, the latter contained about fifteen issues and were published a few months later. Rarer than the latter, softcover collections, containing only five or six issues, were distributed under a cover illustrated by Hergé from 1954. For this purpose, the artist took up, almost line for line, his "historical" composition of 1946, by replacing the booklet exhibited by his characters with another, more recent one.
Other differences, Hergé gave Tintin (whose eye got brighter for the occasion) a new pair of shoes, with side buckles, as he himself must have worn at the time. Haddock also lost his laces. Sunflower, for his part, has been given an extra pair of stars twirling around his skull. As for the elements of the newspaper that Tintin, Haddock, Smith, Smith and Sunflower hold in their hands, if it was no longer a question of sticking to the (now mythical) inaugural issue, it was a matter of
the (now mythical) inaugural issue, it was necessary to choose a cover that made a lasting impression. Hence the decision to use the thrilling episode We walked on the Moon. Thus, a credible cover was "invented" and miniaturized from that of the last album published, Objectif Lune, which shows Tournesol's jeep pulling out in front of the rocket that will take him to the Moon with them. As for the last page of the newspaper, shown three times in a (necessarily) simplified but nevertheless recognizable way, it is the one from the Belgian edition number 17 dated April 27, 1950. There is every reason to suppose that Hergé
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