Presentation copy inscribed by Segonzac to Maurice Genevoix: “Pour Maurice Genevoix, ces croquis et dessins cursifs, aquarellés — Exécutés au cours de la Guerre 1914 - 1918 — au ‘Bois le Prêtre’, où nous entendions les canonnades des ‘Éparges’ — et aussi sur la Somme et en Artois - avec la très amicale sympathie d'André Dunoyer de Segonzac, sept. 1967.”
A moving testament of mutual esteem between two major figures of French wartime memory: Genevoix and Segonzac. Mobilized as a liaison officer from 1914, the painter shared with the writer the experience of war at Bois-le-Prêtre, in the Somme and near Les Éparges — the very places he renders here in wash drawings, inks and watercolors.
This catalogue was published on the occasion of a major exhibition organized by the Musée des Deux Guerres Mondiales, then affiliated with the Université de Paris (today “La Contemporaine,” based in Nanterre since 2021).
The inscription underscores a fraternal convergence between two artistic sensibilities forged by ordeal, and pays tribute to a rare companionship. A few months later, Segonzac would illustrate Genevoix’s Les Éparges for Éditions Rombaldi, with a preface by Joseph Kessel.
Segonzac was mobilized into the infantry and assigned as a liaison officer for the Battle of the Somme. As a second lieutenant, he commanded the camouflage section of the Third Army at Noyon until the end of the conflict. He produced numerous ink drawings, wash drawings and sketches taken from life, often with great restraint, from which he published a series of 48 etchings in 1919 with the publisher Émile-Paul Frères, one of the most powerful visual testimonies of the Great War. In 1921, he also produced an illustrated edition of Dorgelès’s Les Croix de bois, with ten etchings.