From Yvone Bazin de Jessey's picture book.

While staying at my granmother's, I discovered a picture book belonging to her own mother. The pictures were of course all in black and white, so I invented colors for them.

 The family was none too poor, apparently - I figured these were dresses for special days, but according to my grandmother they were always dressed that way. Here, two nameless, but pretty ladies.

The end of the album was dated 1914, so I assume this was somewhere at the beginning of the XXth century.

 This lady was called "La Chauvin". On the picture she had a tired, hard working face, and wiry arms, but she smiled a sort of forced smile. I am not sure if her hair was very blonde or white. Her uncanny resemblance to my great-grandmother apparently caused some people to suspect that she might simply have been her half sister.

Would this be the reason why the family kept her?

 I know nothing else of this mysterious woman but I felt drawn to the straight, tense silhouette kneeling in the mud by the river.








Same album -two nameless men guiding a mule. They looked so proud on the picture, I had to draw them.