Tintin Forums

I'm trying to identify this image - I assume it's from The Blue Lotus, but it doesn't seem to appear in any of the copies I've seen.

Was this perhaps a colour plate used in some of the black & white issues?

Rather than being one of the colour plates in a black-and-white album, I think that this was done for a colouring book, sometime in the mid-nineteen forties.

I seem to remember that it is features in the Chronologies, but it's not one of the volumes that I have to hand, and isn't included in the three volume Art of Hergé English-language version, which show the colouring books with sample images from Tintin in America, and a date of 1944. Perhaps someone with a copy of the Chronologies volume covering that period could check?

There are several variations around that scene which crop up, that I've seen from time-to-time, and it's interesting to see the banner with the red scalloped edge reappearing in several!

Jock is quite right – that drawing is reproduced in volume 5 of the French Chonologies series, on page 77 (ref 1944/078), alongside several other illustrations for a three-volume colouring book series for Casterman.

A copy of one of the colouring books sold a couple of years ago on the Catawiki auction site; the listing is still available to view. You can see photos of the internal pages, including the Blue Lotus image, here (scroll down to the bottom or click 'View this lot'.)

Ah, thanks for looking, Richard - good to know I am not completely losing my marbles!

And good work in digging up that link to the colouing book - given that the date on that copy is in the fifties, it looks like there must have been more than one edition!

bearpig
This picture, color is very interesting. Compared to other versions, the color is not so attractive.