Chez Les Turcs
Year: 1915
Description: In the Turkish homeland and looking at a dead Prussian Soldier. One Turk says to the other, "How well the Allies Shoot!"
Provenance: La Baïonnette, Issue #2 Têtes de Turcs, 15 July 1915
A View of the Marne
Year: 1915
Description: In 1914, the German advance on Paris was halted on the Marne. After the French beat them back, the line consolidated in the east where both sides dug in for the stalemate which would characterize the Western Front.
With the conflict at a safe distance from Paris, civilians had an opportunity to visit the battle field. Hermann-Paul visited this moonscape several times starting in the fall of 1914 where he documented the battle's aftermath.
This pencil drawing was embellished with ink and water color. It was sold by the Hermann-Paul estate without documentation. It probably dates to the spring on 1915 because the battle field is free of bodies and the tourist has a clean path upon which to walk.
Provenance: Private Collection
Berger-le-vrault
Year: 1916
Description: At the beginning of the Great War, Germany attacked France throught neutral Belgium. The campaign was waged with more than bullets. A propaganda war erupted in which the Allies depicted German atrocity while the Germans depicted cheerful lives under their administrative authority. Here, Hermann-Paul rebuts those claims. A torn landscape is masked by an artificial background. A German solider poses for a photograph with a young Belgian girl. He says to her, "Laugh or I'll have you shot!"
Provenance: unknown
L'Epouvantail
Year: 1916
Description: Barbed wire was invented in the US in 1867. It was designed to contain livestock within a rancher's boundaries. It was soon adapted by the world's militaries as a defensive mechanism. In the First World War, many a soldier was killed when he became tangled in wire. In this piece, a dead German infantry man was unable to fall to his final resting place. Crows flee as their dark bodies silhouette against an ominous sky. Hermann-Paul entitled this piece "L'Epouvantail" or the Scare Crow. Hermann-Paul was 51 when the war erupted in Europe. It's unclear from whence he witnessed the imagery that he relied upon for his depiction of the war. For his work, he generally relied on first hand observation so while he may have worked from photographs, it's likely he neared the front or toured abandoned battlefields.
Provenance: La Baionnette n°70 du 2 Novembre 1916
La Guirlande
Year: 1920
Description: This is crayon illustration for La Guirlande (The Garland), a short-lived quarterly art review which ran from 1919 to 1921. Here, an elderly man receives a garland and seems perplexed as to what he should do with it.
Provenance: La Guirlande
The Tomb of Lord Byron
Year: 1923
Description: This large ink drawing depicts a woman as she reads the inscription on the tomb of Lord Byron at St Mary Magdelene Church in Hucknall. It reads, "There is that within me that shall tire, Torture and time and breath when I expire." This drawing is dated based on the style of dress she wears and the window of time in which Hermann-Paul was likely in Britain.
Provenance: L'Estampe Originale
La croix de Camargue
Year: 1924
Description: Later in life, Hermann-Paul spent a lot of time in Camargue in the South of France. In 1924, a provencal aristicrat commissioned this cross
Provenance: Private commission
