A Francodame?

Posted by Barbara on May 12, 2025 in Art, children, Europe, Family, Literature | 2 comments

My tenuous link to the artist and illustrator Sir Quentin Blake goes back to my schooldays, although our paths never actually crossed. He was a teacher at the Lycée Français de Londres, where I was subsequently a pupil. Far more significantly, his work has delighted my family for decades, so when I learned of an evening being hosted at Kings Place in London called ‘Quentin Blake and France’, I jumped at the opportunity.

The event was short and very sweet. It was hosted by the Rimbaud and Verlaine Foundation in conjunction with the Institut Français, but you didn’t need to speak a word of French to get full enjoyment.  Prior to the evening, I did not know of Blake’s love of, and involvement with, France, and that he has published two books with the French publisher Gallimard, including an illustrated selection of his favourite French poems, that includes Rimbaud’s famous poem, ‘Le Dormeur du Val’, http://poesie.webnet.fr/lesgrandsclassiques/poemes/arthur_rimbaud/le_dormeur_du_val.html. *

The evening – or should I say soirée? – was a fascinating mixture of poetry, song and readings, all illustrated with Blake’s pictures, which were projected onto a huge screen behind the podium.  At one point, to accompany a reading of Victor Hugo’s ‘L’Ogre et la Fée’ (The ogre and the fairy), Blake sketched out the characters; as he drew, an overhead projector displayed the unfolding picture on the screen. The audience watched spellbound.  We were treated to renderings of songs by, amongst others, Georges Brassens, Paul Verlaine and Edmond Rostand.  There were poems by La Fontaine, de Bergerac and Fourest.

Blake spoke extensively of his activities in France with French writers and illustrators; in recent years his artworks have increasingly been shown outside books in public spaces, and his work for hospitals and healthcare settings now includes a scheme for the whole of a new maternity hospital in Angers.

In 2004 he was awarded the ‘Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres’ by the French Government for services to literature and in 2007 he was made Officier in the same order.  In 2014 he was admitted to the Legion d’Honneur, an honour accorded to few people who are not French nationals.  Even his website is available in English and French, which is unusual in itself when the subject of the website is British.

For those people who want to see Blake’s illustrations in their original form, the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration will open in Clerkenwell in 2026. It will be the UK’s first and only charity for illustration – art that tells stories. It will offer a continuous series of exhibitions of different aspects of Blake’s work.  It will also feature exhibitions he will be curating of the work of other influential illustrators.

Blake also supports the Nightingale Project, which is a charity that puts art into hospitals.

This was an evening of feel-good French culture that centred on someone whose extraordinary talent has for so many years made thousands of people, young and old, feel very good. We can definitely add him to Verity’s canon of ‘good guys’.

*The English translation can be found here: http://www.mag4.net/Rimbaud/poesies/Sleeper.htm