100 Years of Illustration

Jules Guerin at the St. Louis Fair, 1904

While we can show only four of Guérin's illustrations in color here, from the lead article in Scribner's Monthly Magazine for April 1904 by Montgomery Schuyler, this exhibition was formally known as
The Louisiana Purchase Exposition. You can read about the fair at the Wikipedia link, or search for other sources of information.

I have read and reread the learned text of the distinguished architectural critic and once again I have to say that it would do a great disservice to the genius of Jules Guérin to bore you with the comparisons made between this fair and others of the time, with not a word about the splendid illustrations. More's the pity.

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The Colonnade of the Varied Industries Building

Education Building, reflected in the Grand Basin, early evening

Electricity Building by Moonlight

Façade of Transportation Building at night.

I'll close this tribute to the work of Jules Guérin without adding anything further. You have now seen enough of his renderings to appreciate his genius. I can only marvel at his courage to undertake such monumental assignments, and then to bring them off as spectacularly as he did.

Jules Guerin's Castles of the Loire, France 1905-1906 -- more

Please excuse me for not paying closer attention. I thought I would have enough time to write some text for these images but I had a photo show and a gallery talk at a local museum yesterday.

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From The Century Magazine for June of 1905. The Chateau of Amboise -- view from the bridge over the Loire [River]

Entrance to the chateau of Blois (façade of Louis XII)

Chateau of Blois, viewed from a street of the town

Chateau of Cheverny -- from the garden

Chateau of Chaumont -- view from the right bank of the Loire [river].

Jules Guerin's Castles of the Loire, France 1905-1906

British writer Richard Whiteing was the author of a lead article in The Century Magazine for April 1905 entitled The Chateaux of the Loire and The Chateaux of Touraine in the June issue.

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The piece begins: "Our breakfast at the modest hotel at Chinon was particularly enjoyable. To be fair, this imports no very great praise of the hotel. Even provincial France is losing the secret of the French cuisine bourgeoise. They cook in the provinces now much as they cook in Paris, and this again implies no compliment to the capital. . . . our coffee was served on the terraced bank of the Vienne. There was plenty of foliage between us and the sun, still rather uncomfortably near its meridian, though on the right side for the wayfarer. The day was glorious; the breakfast was a breakfast in one of the most beautiful towns of old Touraine; and old Touraine has the richest remains of those historic chateaux of the Loire which I had come to see."

This is Guérin's rendering of the castle of Chinon, for many years the stronghold of English invaders where it dominated all of Touraine.

The chateau of Luynes

The chateau of Langeais.

Approach to the gate of the chateau of Langeais. My young wife and I were there 51 years ago and I remember being very much impressed with the power of the buildings. Whereas other chateaux of the Loire are situated to be seen at a distance, Langeais is a presence to be reckoned with. It is seen up close and impressive. While walking through its narrow streets at dusk we had to duck into the shelter of doorways as the U.S. Army came highballing through town towing monstrously large canvas-draped ordnance that reminded us we were in the middle of the Cold War responding to the recent launch of the Soviet Sputnik.

Chateau of Loches.

Loches: the tower of Fulk Nerra