Thursday 14 September 2017

The Day Before Yesterday,

We were watching,


 a television series based on stories written by H. G. Wells, so today We thought We would post a few pictures from another famous science fiction writer, the illustrations of JulesVerne classic, From the Earth to the Moon (De la terre à la lune),

  which left the Baltimore Gun Club’s bullet-shaped projectile, along with its three passengers and dog, hurtling through space,

 the set of images, arguably the very first to depict space travel on a scientific basis, were the work of the French illustrators Émile-Antoine Bayard and Alphonse de Neuville

 the illustrations appeared some 5 years after the novel was first published, 

 but for his fans,

they were a real glimpse of perhaps Things To Come,


as an aside despite the brilliance and vision of these illustrations, it is for a wholly more terrestrial image for which Bayard is best known today, a sketch of the sad-eyed Cosette, which he completed for the original edition of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables (1865), and which for the last four decades or so, Tricolour-infused, has adorned playbills and theatre hoardings the world over in service of Claude-Michel Schönberg’s hugely popular musical, “Les Mis”, to see more of his work have a look here.


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