178 - Frank Pé

Frank Pé FRANK PÉ ZOO Dupuis Original illustration for a bookplate published by Espace BD. Signed. Indian ink, wash, and gouache on paper 51 × 41.3 cm (20.08 × 16.26 in.) Frank Pé is part of the latest generation of Belgian comic artists who knew and spent time with Franquin. He shared with Franquin an unparalleled talent for drawing animals. You could ask Franquin to draw any animal, and he would do so immediately, “off the top of his head,” without any reference material in front of him—and his animals were not only accurate but also incredibly lifelike. Frank Pé was cut from the same cloth. In his youth, the Belgian cartoonist lived between the Wiertz Museum—dedicated to the excellent Belgian Romantic painter Wiertz, a winner of the Prix de Rome, though a bit of a eccentric—and the Natural History Museum in Brussels, where one can still see, across from Leopold Park, the Bernissart dinosaurs that had inspired Franquin for *Le Voyageur du Mésozoïque*. Frank Pé has always been that kind of artist—romantic and a lover of nature, caught between wonder and reverie. In this portrait of Manon with a zebra—one of the zoo’s residents—it’s all in the gazes: the young woman is highly sensitive and attentive, while the zebra offers the peaceful gaze of a creature torn from the savanna, for whom nothing comes as a surprise anymore. The technique is splendid, with the stark contrast of black and white playing off the subtlety of the wash.