Hommage à Dunoyer de Segonzac
Signed presentation inscription: “Pour Maurice Genevoix, cet [Hommage à Dunoyer de Segonzac] en cette Ville de Blois – dans cette Touraine, patrie de Pierre de Ronsard. En très amical Hommage, A. Dunoyer de Segonzac, sept. 1967.”
A touching testament to the mutual esteem between Genevoix and Segonzac, who collaborated together that very year: Segonzac illustrated, for Éditions Rombaldi and with a preface by Joseph Kessel, one of the texts from Ceux de 14, Les Éparges.
The connection was born of shared experience: Segonzac himself had been mobilized in the infantry and served as a liaison officer during the First World War. As a sous-lieutenant, he commanded the camouflage section of the Third Army at Noyon until the end of the conflict. He produced numerous ink drawings, washes and sketches taken from life, often with great restraint, a series of which he published as 48 etchings in 1919 with the publisher Émile-Paul Frères. This series stands as one of the most powerful visual testimonies of the Great War. In 1921 he also produced an illustrated edition of Dorgelès’s Croix de bois, with ten etchings.