Paul de Sémant

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Paul de Sémant , actually Paul Cousturier (born November 18, 1855 in the Indre-et-Loire department , France , † 1915 ) was a French author and illustrator of adventure novels and children's books .

All the women of France will spin their distaffs to pay my ransom

Bertrand du Guesclin and two of his companions disguise themselves as woodcutters to capture the Castle of Grand-Fougeray 1354

Bertrand du Guesclin French military commander

Joan of Arc

Life

Amazingly little is known about Paul de Sémant's career. He was born on November 18, 1855 in the Indre-et-Loire department in France. De Sémant was the editor of La Bombe magazine , which, to the dismay of the government at the time, supported General Georges Ernest Jean Marie Boulanger , who was feared in government circles that he was planning a coup. La Bombe published some of de Sémant's work. In 1890, de Sémant even ran as a candidate for the Boulangists against the radical Ernest Rousselle in his constituency , but was defeated in the second ballot because of allegations of corruption. Apart from his political engagement, de Sémant preferred to illustrate historical events, with his focus on heroes of French history. In addition, de Sémant wrote several adventure novels, mostly set in Africa , about his heroes Gaëtan Faradel and Dache. Paul de Sémant died in 1915 at the age of 59.

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Paul de Sémant was an illustrator and caricaturist as well as a writer.

Cartoons for La Bombe

The year 1889 marked the centenary of the French Revolution , which La Bombe took as an opportunity to publish caricatures that made a connection between the current political situation and that at the time of the revolution. On April 7, 1889, a cartoon supporting General Boulanger first appeared in La Bombe : Trop dure, trop haute . On June 2, L'Arme au pied followed , a caricature that suggested a close relationship between Italy's Prime Minister Francesco Crispi and the German Emperor Wilhelm I. La Bombe reached the climax of its campaign on the anniversary of the storm on the Bastille , July 14th 1889. La Prize de la Bastille shows General Boulanger as the heroic leader of the storm on the Bastille with the raised tricolor in his right hand and with his left hand Pointing to the walls of the Bastille. On July 28, the magazine printed an open letter de Sémants in which the artist complained of illegal harassment against the sellers of La Bombe and the confiscation of issues of the magazine by the police. Two more issues of the magazine were subsequently confiscated by the police in September 1889 - one for the cartoon Vive Boulanger and one for A bas Ferry, vive Boulanger , who denigrated Ministers Ernest Constans and Yves Guyot .

More illustrations and cartoons

Apart from La Bombe and his political commitment, Paul de Sémant mainly illustrated historical scenes. His favorite personalities, whose deeds he captured in the form of color lithographs on paper, included the Breton military leader and connétable of France Bertrand du Guesclin , the French national heroine Jeanne d'Arc and the French general Pierre du Terrail , Chevalier de Bayard. The pictures de Sémants are characterized by a rather subtle use of color . The images are mainly determined by outlines and shading . Colored areas serve more as accents and highlights.

Books

Gaëtan Faradel novels

The hero of several adventure novels de Sémants set in Africa, who illustrated his books himself, is Gaëtan Faradel. The novels about Faradel depict Africa on the one hand in a materialistic way as a continent on which wealth can be gained through colonialism , and on the other hand rather romantically transfigured as a haven of hidden treasures. In the latter, de Sémants is based on works such as Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Christo and Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island . The first Faradel novel deals with a railway project advocated by the press at the time, the Trans-continental North-South-Africain . In other stories, Faradel and his friend obtain a large yield of ivory by destroying a herd of elephants or finding a gold mine.

Dache stories

The stories about de Sémant's other book protagonist, Dache, are aimed at a younger audience, but are also predominantly set in Africa. The stories vary from humorous to conveying an instructive moral. The orphan Dache, who was raised by a Zouave regiment , fights for France against Russians , Austrians and Prussians . Most of the books focus on colonialism in Africa, with the natives as well as the other peoples processed in the stories are stereotypical caricatures of their time.