Alice in Wonderland and The Book of Enchanted Beasts

As an artist, Adrienne Segur had a passion for the story of Alice by Lewis Carroll. In 1947, she published A Little Pig Went to School, a variation, both literary and artistic, on Carroll's theme. In her Alice in Wonderland illustrations, published in 1949, the face of the little girl has not yet become the smooth regular features we know in her later angelique heroines. But one finds the mouth in color, the small nose, and the round eyes with the long eyelashes of girls' rosy cheeks from A Little Pig Went to School. The wonderful tints used successfully in her first work are darker too, and contribute to making a truly unique work.

It is thanks to the "de luxe" edition style, popular for the time, that we can begin to appreciate the finesse of her line and the poetic harmony of her colors. She became, little by little, an outstanding artist of animal figures, as we see in her layer studies. A work document dating from 1948 illustrates how precise was the manner in which she worked. The work document, done a year earlier than her completion of the Alice illustrations, show a girl surrounded by forest animals, in an earlier from than the one we know of the little girl we see on page 21. This composition, to the little girl, is found later in The Book of Enchanted Beasts, in a new variation spanning two pages with the same theme.

Other Biography Pages

1: Cover Photo      

2: Birth, Marriage to Mounir Hafez, Biographical Information      

3: Evolution of Style      

4: Later Work      

5: Flammarion      

6: Legacy      

7: List of Published Works      

8: Endpiece