Photo taken on January 28, 1989 at the Angoulême comic book festival by sculptor and painter Tchang Tchong-Jen, which inspired Hergé, -
AFP
Tintin dressed in Chinese style emerging from a jar, taunted by a disturbing red dragon: the Artcurial house is auctioning on Thursday the brilliant drawing created by Hergé in 1936 for the cover of the
Blue Lotus
, an "exceptional piece" with a mysterious history , estimated at more than two million euros.
Will this exquisite little drawing in India ink, gouache and watercolor surpass the 2014 record for the design of the cover pages of Tintin albums, sold for 2.51 million euros (costs included) by the same French auction house?
It was then the most expensive original comic book drawing ever to be auctioned.
A mystery around the work
In 2016, a board of
We walked on the moon
was sold for 1.55 million euros.
The
Blue Lotus
is one of the masterpieces of the Belgian designer.
The album marks a turning point in his creation.
It is that of “his narrative and political maturity, for which he documents himself as a true journalist,” notes Artcurial.
The boards appeared in 1934-35 in the review le
Petit-Vingtième
, before the album was published in 1936.
Georges Rémi alias Hergé fell in love with China after meeting a young graduate of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, Tchang Tchong-Jen, with whom he formed a lifelong friendship.
The reproduction of this drawing was too expensive, it will not be chosen to become the cover of the album.
A simplified version is adopted, with a black dragon on a red background and much less detail.
A mystery surrounds this work, auctioned at an online sale because of the epidemic: was it really offered by Hergé to the son of its publisher Louis Casterman, Jean-Paul, then aged seven , as the heirs of the publisher claim?
A gift ?
The child would have folded it in six and kept it in a drawer, from which the sheet of paper would have been pulled out decades later.
Experts question the veracity of this story, as does Hergé's beneficiary: the Briton Nick Rodwell, husband of Fanny, second wife of Hergé and universal legatee, ensures careful protection of the work of Hergé, whose albums have sold a total of 250 million copies.
For Philippe Goddin, one of the best connoisseurs of the work, “by selling the drawing, the Castermans are not guilty of anything.
They believed in the legend passed down to them by their father ”.
But he considers "eminently suspect" the story of Jean-Paul Casterman (died in 2009) when he claimed to have received this drawing as a gift.
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