Book illustrations

BOOK ILLUSTRATIONS

Paul Welsch took his first steps by launching into the illustration of the newspaper of his high school in Hanover in 1909. Alongside articles of very schoolboy humor which caricature the life of the school, we find a drawing where Welsch depicts himself in an arm-wrestling game with his art teacher: "More colour! A lot more colour!". Another one is ironic about taking exams.




The artist illustrated his first book in 1920: The Bourgeois of Witzheim by André Maurois published by Bernard Grasset. The work celebrates the happiness of recovering Alsace as a part of France again. The drawings which illustrate the text are in the same vein as Hansi.




Amis et Amiles, two tales from the Middle Ages adapted by Fernand Fleuret, we published in November 1923 by Chiberre publishing company in Paris. The illustrations benefit from the mastery of the wood engraving technique acquired in previous years. Thick lines surround the elements of the drawing like a stained-glass window. The set is a good modern equivalent of medieval illuminations.

Taking advantage of his studies at Paris Institute of Political Science, Welsch began a long collaboration in 1924 with Armand Megglé, then the director of the French national committee of foreign trade advisors. He started with Atlas, an economic and tourist guide to the regions of France and Algeria - the 15th economic region of Paris. Some drawings were later included in The poetry of Paris by Paul Fort, published by Marjolaine publishing company in 1930.




Maurice Betz has published more than one article on Paul Welsch in La Vie en Alsace review. Quite naturally, the latter illustrated one of his novels, Red and White, for its second edition in 1928 in Collection de la Vie en Alsace. It is the story of the hero being torn between German friendship and French patriotism that many Alsatians, including Paul Welsch himself, had experienced.

Without being part of the Megglé cycle, Beau Brummell, published by the Société Française d'Edition in 1930, stacked all the odds in its favour to be commissioned by the State, undoubtedly at the instigation of Armand Megglé himself. This propaganda work written in English, with designs of a very 1930s stylized elegance, is a showcase of the best French products (Chanel, Boucheron, Cartier and so on).



In connection with the International Colonial Exhibition in Paris in 1932 for which he was commissioned a large mural, Paul Welsch illustrated three books by Armand Megglé: French West Africa, French Equatorial Africa and Syria (1931) to which was added a Small Atlas of French Lands introduced by the same Megglé.

Welsch worked on a set of illustrations on Tunisia, which will not surprise anyone bearing in mind his stay there in 1920. This project was clearly not successful. Was it for the book that Armand Megglé devoted to this country or simply for a mere article?

 In 1934 Paul Welsch was asked by the establishments C. & A. Holweg in Strasbourg to illustrate an advertising brochure boasting a simultaneous printing process based on clichés and aniline ink. The artist's drawings - which show all the  distance that separates them from the 1912 Building Site - served to demonstrate the effectiveness of the process.

We do not know whether the edition of Baudelaire's Petits poèmes en prose was completed. In the archives left by Paul Welsch, the printing seems to have been completed (there is the cover page dated 1947, bearing the name of the publisher: éditions A. et P. Jarach, Paris). Some pages can be found in their final version but the complete work is impossible to find. The lithographs, in black and white, are of a rare pessimism in the artist's work.

As for Maurice Betz, the writer and poet Claude Odilé closely followed the career of Paul Welsch, of which he gave a faithful account in Alsatian reviews and newspapers. The artist illustrates the collection of poems The Pillar of Angels and Other Legends of Alsace published by Des Arceaux publishing company in September 1948. The lithographs, always in black and white, are less desperate than in the Petits poèmes en prose but keep this  post-war gravity.

In 1952, Les Francs-Bibliophiles published Sketches of Provence by André Suarès decorated with thirty-six colour woodcuts, a first for the artist. Paul Welsch devoted himself entirely to it for eighteen months, abandoning all other types of works. The Sketches of Provence are poetic evocations of the South, in particular of the region of  Toulon, and favour the visual aspect, which is quite conducive to illustration.

Paul Welsch once again uses the technique of colour wood engraving for La Bonne chanson by Verlaine published by Bibliophiles de l'Est in 1954, just after the artist's death. Welsch had time to finish his work. The final printing details were  handled by his friend Clairin. Compared to the Sketches of Provence, the wood engravings of La Bonne chanson have a more ethereal texture, entirely suited to Verlaine's poetry.

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