Will - Lot 53

Will WILL LITTLE CHRISTMAS Les Étranges Amis de Noël, Dupuis Artwork for the Collection du Carrousel album, with graphic research, whose final version published in 1966. Signed. Gouache and colored inks on paper 22 × 29 cm (8.66 × 11.42 in.) This is a magnificent document, as Will's career as a graphic artist is often overlooked alongside his work on comics. Of all Jijé's collaborators, with whom the illustrator of Tif et Tondu cut his teeth, Will is the one who most inherits the style of the painters of the interwar period: Rouault, Matisse, Dufy... whose gesture and graphic simplicity, as well as luminous treatment of color, he captures. To this he added his skills as a visual artist. Jijé was a friend of Lucien De Roeck (they had studied together) and Corneille Hannoset (member of the CoBra group), the star graphic designers of Expo 58. All this is reflected in the artistic approach of Will, who, on the advice of Franquin who moved to Lombard with Modeste and Pompon, was art director of the Journal Tintin from 1958 to 1962. With all this background, Will drew a pre-model for an adventure of Petit Noël, a character created by Franquin, in the new Collection du Carrousel. Here, Will creates the entire model. Franquin would then integrate his characters into the sets himself, in a joint pencil layout. This document is all the more important as only two original drawings of Petit Noël are known to exist on the market.