Cult but controversial: Belgian cartoonist Herge

The Artcurial auction "The World of Herge," held on November 20, features 122 lots, including this 1969 drawing paying tribute to the Apollo XI moon landing. Another highlight is an original ink drawing from "Tintin: Land of Black Gold." The auction record for the most expensive work of comic book art is a Herge drawing that sold for €3.2 million ($3.8 million) in January 2021.

If Brussels is recognized as the capital of European comics, it is thanks to the pioneering work of cartoonist George Remi, who wrote under the name Herge. In 2016 and 2017, the Grand Palais Museum in Paris held a huge retrospective on the creator of various cartoon series, including Tintin.

Herge is best known for creating Tintin, a young reporter traveling around the world for his work. Herge produced 24 volumes of his adventures; the last manuscript was unfinished but was posthumously published in 1986. These books, popular among readers of all ages, have been translated into more than 110 languages. Over 250 million books have been sold worldwide.

Born in 1907, Remi started signing his illustrations as Herge, the phonetic transcription of his initials, RG, in 1924. In 1928, he became editor of the Petit Vingtieme, a weekly supplement for the Belgian paper Vingtieme Siecle, in which the adventures of Tintin were first published.

The first volume of Tintin's adventures was initially published from 1929 to 1930 in the weekly. In this anti-communist propaganda, Tintin was sent off to the Soviet Union with his dog, Snowy, where he was hunted down by the secret police while doing research on Josef Stalin's government.

For his second adventure, in 1931, Tintin was sent to the Belgian Congo. Shown here is a page of the album that Herge later redrew and colored for the books published by Casterman, like all his other early works. This volume was later criticized for its racist colonial views. Countries such as Belgium, Sweden, the UK and the US tried to have it banned or restrict its availability to children.

Even though his early books drew on stereotypes for comedic purposes, Herge was fascinated by ancient civilizations. While studying in Brussels, he met the Chinese artist Zhang Chongren, who helped Herge depict China in "The Blue Lotus." Pictured is a cover of the Petit Vingtieme, where it was first published in 1934. From then on, Herge would depict foreign societies more sensitively.

Herge did extensive research to make his spacecraft as realistic as possible for the books "Destination Moon" and "Explorers on the Moon," initially published in 1950 as strips in the weekly "Tintin" and as volumes in 1953 — years before human space travel was achieved. Shown here is a mock-up of the rocket that appears in those stories, created by the visionary cartoonist.

In 1940, Belgium was invaded by the Nazis. The weekly that published Herge's work was banned. The cartoonist moved on to another paper, Le Soir, which was under Nazi control. Although Herge did not collaborate actively, an interview in the Paris exhibition showed how his passivity under the occupation remained "a stain on his career," curator Jerome Neutres told news agency AFP.

A little-known side of the cartoonist was also on show at the Herge exhibition. He was also a painter and an art collector. This photo features some of his paintings, revealing influences from artists such as Miro, Holbein and Rembrandt. However, painting remained a hobby for Herge.

In 1979, US pop artist Andy Warhol was commissioned by Herge to produce a series of four portraits of him. That same year, Tintin celebrated his 50th anniversary — though the reporter never aged over the years.

The cartoonist was also a graphic designer. His advertising work, as seen in these posters, featured a high level of formal creativity. Beyond Tintin, Herge was also the creator of several other characters, such as Quick and Flupke, as well as Jo, Zette and Jocko, whose adventures were told in five volumes. The prolific artist died in 1983.