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Emile Bayard

Emile Bayard was born in La Ferté-sous-Jouarre in 1837. He began publishing cartoons in newspapers at the age of 15, occasionally using the pen name Abel de Miray. As an illustator, he never used photographic documents and always tried to have a meeting with the author. He died in Cairo in 1891.


"Emile Bayard was Victor Hugo's favorite illustrator, famous in his own lifetime for his brilliant portraits of Fantine, Eponine, Valjean and Javert, but best known today by people all over the world for "his" Cosette, used originally on the sleeve of the French 'Les Mis' record in 1980, and now famous as the Les Misérables logo. " From www.lesmis.com

"The first space art appeared in 1865 with the illustrations by Emile Bayard and A. de Neuvill for Jules Verne's novel, From the Earth to the Moon. There had been imaginary views of other worlds, and even of space flight before this. But until Verne's book appeared, these views all had been heavily colored by mysticism rather than science."

From Space Art by Ron Miller, 1978.


SPLASHDOWN, as described in Verne's From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon, closely matches events that actually transpired during recovery of the astronauts of Apollo 11 after their return from the surface of the moon in 1969.

From Scientific American, April 1997


Emile Bayard also illustrated Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and Alphonse Daudet's Immortal



Valjean closing Fantine's eyes

Cosette sweeping the floor of the Thenardier Inn

Valjean rescuing Cosette from Thenardier

Grantaire relaxing against a stone column

illustration of Shakespeare's As You Like It

illustration of a Valykyrie from mythology