If the name Maurice De Becque doesn’t ring a bell, that’s ok. The history of printed illustration goes back to the invention of the printing press itself, and masters like Gustave Dore, Aubrey Beardsley, Arthur Rackham and Winsor McCay are the hall-of-famers we all know. But French illustrator Maurice De Becque stands apart as an artist of great skill with an almost prophetic style. While many of the greats seemed to want to replicate other forms — such as painting or etching — on the printed page, De Becque embraced heavy line work and flat colors. The result is a style that could be described as… comic-booky?
We’re not here to give some art-historical lecture about Maurice De Becque’s work — we’ll just say we’ve seen some illustration from various eras, and this stuff is just striking. It’s from a book called Legendes Bretonnes, published in 1921. And in fact it’s probably more accurate to say that it is the use of color (rather than the lines) that is striking.
Enjoy the remarkable art of Legendes Bretonnes. These images come from the Internet Archive Book Images Flickr page. You can find the whole book (in French) at OpenLibrary.
The Definitive brand in fantasy, science fiction, and horror.
