Juillard - Lot 63

Juillard ANDRÉ JUILLARD THE 7 LIVES OF THE SPARROWHAWK Glénat Original illustration for the title pages for the first two albums in the series in 1983 and 1984. Signed. India ink on paper 37 × 32.3 cm (14.57 × 12.72 in.) A horseman emerges from the night! At the dawn of the 80s, Glénat was still a young publishing house. Its Circus magazine alternated between a classical spirit and a popular vocation, and in autumn 1982 offered Patrick Cothias and André Juillard's Les 7 Vies de l'Épervier (The 7 Lives of the Sparrowhawk). The publisher published the first album, La Blanche morte, the following year. A striking feature of the album is the large, unseen panoramic image on the title page, treated in chiaroscuro to accentuate the volumes of black and white. An unusual contrast for André, who would soon evolve towards a pure line. We observe a rider and his mount riding through a birch grove. It's winter and cold. The hood pulled down over the unseen face of the stranger reinforces the impression of mystery, of danger no doubt. André plays with the vertical rhythm of the trunks. We are reminded of the engravings by Henri Rivière, one of his favorite artists. Between Impressionism and Japonism... Hokusai is not far off either. In 1984, Glénat released Le Temps des chiens, the second volume of what would become one of his most emblematic series. The illustration on the title page was used again. At the time, there was talk of a revival of historical comics. A slogan was even coined: "History is also Adventure! Launched in 1985, the magazine Vécu took a liking to Juillard's work and soon produced a number of books under the same name. The layout of Les 7 Vies de l'Épervier was modernized, but we lost one of the major assets of the original editions: their pretty endpapers!