HERGÉ (1907-1983)

Lot 43
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Estimation :
300000 - 500000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 524 800EUR
HERGÉ (1907-1983)
Tintin - The Broken Ear India ink on paper for page 46 of the original color edition of the album published in 1943 by Casterman. Hergé has reworked the black & white version of the plate for the transition to the color version. The texts of the speech bubbles in particular, partly masked by the white Gouache, let glimpse the original dialogues with their particular lettering. This work, quite exceptional, is emblematic of the album from which it comes, its eighth box being very close to the cover of the album both in its black & white version and in its color version. Folds in the center, slight lacks in the lower right and left corners and two small holes next to the pagination. 45,7 x 33 cm. A certificate of the Hergé Foundation is attached. TINTIN AT THE ARUMBAYAS This plate of The Broken Ear is exceptional: according to many sources, it is indeed the only plate on the market of the 62 original pages that compose the album The Broken Ear (in its version published in color by Casterman in 1943). This is a good reason to be interested in it, but it is not the only one. Made in 1935-1937 This adventure, the sixth of a series that will count twenty-four, was published in black and white in the Petit Vingtième (the weekly supplement of the Belgian daily Le Vingtième Siècle) from December 5, 1935 to February 25, 1937. This serial publication was followed at the end of 1937 by the publication of the album in its original state: in black and white, with four color hors-texte. The images that make up the upper half of the plate proposed here were originally published in the number 44 of the Petit Vingtième, dated November 5, 1936. Those that make up the lower half of the plate were published in issue 45 the following Thursday. Certainly wanting to highlight this passage, important to him, Hergé had put on the cover of issue 44 a reprise (more detailed and published in two-color) of the vignette that showed the dugout passing in front of a dead tree, with this eloquent title : Towards the country of the Arumbayas... We know that it is precisely this composition that he will put on the cover of the 1937 album (redrawn and colored). And that he will amplify it again in 1943, by redrawing it again, with lost edges, before putting it in colors for the cover of the definitive album. This is another reason to affirm the exceptional character of this plate. Adjustments in 1943 In 1943, conforming to the new standard of 62 pages that he had accepted a few months earlier, Hergé worked to reduce the contents of two plates from the 1937 version to a single plate. The images that were previously spread over three strips are now spread over four, hence the imposing size of the plates of the new version, of which this one is a part. Their content does not change: Hergé is content to arrange differently, on a new support, the vignettes that he had previously cut out of his original plates. Each of these boxes has an extra few millimeters in height, while a very slight adjustment is sometimes necessary in width. Thus the third image of the second strip has been very slightly trimmed, as well as the first and third of the following one... but the first image of the last strip has been given a little more space, on the right. In the end, plate 46 ends on an interesting point of suspension: Tintin's report of the disappearance of the Indian he had hired to be his guide. Why this blue wash? We can see that a slight bluish tint covers certain parts of the drawings, and this over the whole of the plate. This is a remnant of the indications made by Hergé in 1936, on his original plates, to indicate to the photoengravers of the newspaper the parts that should have a mechanical screen. Because if the plates were published in black and white, they were judiciously adorned with gray areas that gave them either accents (the indication of a tanned skin, the color of some clothes or the contrasts of the foliage...), or luminous effects (the entry in the half-light, the fall of the day...). We can consider today that this play of the watercolor, original and of the author's hand, confers an additional seduction to the plates which are decorated with it. A silent plate, and for good reason... If, in 1943, the White Gouache covered the original dialogues, it is not only because translations were already envisaged, requiring the removal of all text from the plates, including sound effects, but it was also because the author wished to unify the shapes of his phylacteries. Now rectangular, some with slightly reworked corners,
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