Apart from the spectacular covers of the published albums of Tintin's adventures, there are hardly any large-format originals by Hergé, especially if, like the one shown here, they are reminiscent of the famous covers in question. Hergé used this large-format drawing in ink and graphite pencil to produce a series of four advertising handkerchiefs for ORTF, the main and only official French TV channel in the 1960s. With Captain Haddock's head passing through the painting of his ancestor, the Chevalier de Hadoque, this illustration is by far the finest of the four handkerchiefs produced in the late '50s. Superbly executed in ink, it seems that the character of Haddock, who occupies most of the central part of the illustration, is a recuperation of an earlier project to which Hergé, for the sake of graphic balance, added his emblematic Tintin in an attitude of surprise, with an equally surprised Snowy on the left, perfectly balancing this famous illustration. The French text was realized by transfer onto paper. This visual featuring Captain Haddock is world-famous, for a panel imagined by Hergé in 1942, when the adventure of The Secret of the Unicorn was published during the Second World War.
