Somewhere in Burgundy, we went to a book sale. There was a very unique book with beautiful, delicate yet modern illustrations: Il était une fois, vieux contes français de Charles Perrault.
That is where I found out about Adrienne Segur. Wikipedia gave me a short biography. This website is the best I found in english about her. And here is an article (fr) about an exhibition honouring Adrienne’s work: link 2 .
But internet is not very talkative when it comes to her life and work, which is a shame because she must have had a very interesting and rich life !
Adrienne Segur (23 November 1901 – 11 August 1981) was a French children’s book illustrator. Segur’s illustrations were made known by the publishing house Flammarion in the 1950s and 1960s and appeared particularly in The Fairy Tale Book, the English translation of Il Etait Une Fois published in 1958 by Golden Books, Simon and Schuster.
Segur was born in Athens, Greece, in the family of French writer Nicolas Segur. Around 1932 she married the Egyptian poet and thinker Mounir Hafez. (…) In 1936–1939, Segur was the director of the children’s column in Le Figaro where she made all the illustrations. Segur died in Paris, France in 1981.
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