HÉMON (Louis). CORNEAU (Eugène). Maria Chapdelaine. A Tale o - Lot 107

HÉMON (Louis). CORNEAU (Eugène). Maria Chapdelaine. A Tale of French Canada. Illustrator's personal copy, containing 14 original color drawings. Paris, Rombaldi, 1939. 2 vol. in-8 (20 × 16 cm), stapled, uncut, in cardboard folders and slipcase. Illustrated with 5 color-engraved hors texte compositions, and enlarged here with 14 original pencil, gouache and watercolor drawings by Eugène Corneau. One of the numbered copies on Voiron laid paper, here n°XXIV nominative printed especially for the illustrator, Eugène Corneau. A small master from Berry at the turn of the century, Eugène Corneau first exhibited in 1918. He began engraving in 1920, when he became a founding member of the Jeune Peinture française group, and a member of the Société des peintres-graveurs français and the Société de l'estampe. In residence with Albert Marquet in La Goulette in 1925, he helped decorate the main room of the Algerian Pavilion at the Colonial Exhibition in 1931 and 1937, and taught at the Algiers School of Fine Arts. Maria Chapdelaine is a novel written in 1913 by French writer Louis Hémon, while living in Quebec. It tells the story of a family trying to settle in the countryside. It has been the subject of several film adaptations, and is considered one of French Canada's literary masterpieces.