HANSI

French ( 1873 - 1951 )

Hansi ( Jean-Jacques Waltz) "worked with watercolours, lithographs and eaux fortes. He designed posters, even wrought-iron street signs, but is best known for his work for the general public and his drawings commemorating traditional Alsatian life, particularly the family, and children. At first glance his pictures present a navely idealised scene, albeit beautifully executed. Pretty children, gentle mothers, stern-faced veterans. In that form they remain unrivalled and hugely popular. What gave his work and his life wider meaning was its constant, gently mocking, always witty, anti-German pro-French propaganda. There is scarcely a picture that does not exalt French patriotism and many that are an open but subtle caricatures of attempts to Germanise Alsace. The old men going to church wear a medal on their coats - a French medal; somewhere or other there is a series of colours that happens to be blue, white and red; the omnipresent stork just happens to come from France, gazed at with longing by the entire population of the village except the local policeman - a German.