1912 Gamy Pochoir View of a Hydro Airplane Over the English Channel

This is a 1912 Marguerite 'Gamy' Montaut pochoir view of André Beaumont flying a Donnet-Lévêque hydro airplane over the English Channel. Beaumont is illustrated flying the plane while French battleships steam in the opposite direction.

Beaumont's Flight

On August 9-10, 1912, Beaumont, an accomplished pilot, flew the Donnet-Lévêque from Paris along the Seine River to Le Havre and then followed the coastline to Boulogne-sur-Mer. The flight was promoted in the French magazine La Vie au Grand Air, with photographs of the flight and a portrait of Beaumont occupying several pages.

André Beaumont

André Beaumont (February 8, 1880 - August 11, 1937), the pseudonym of Jean Louis Conneau, was a French aviator. He earned a diploma from the École Supérieure d'Aéronautique in 1910, the same year he received his civil pilot's license from the Blériot flying school. In 1911, Beaumont made his name by winning Europe's three most rigorous aeronautical contests. He won the race from Paris to Rome (1,465 kilometers) in May. Then he won the first Circuit d'Europe (Tour of Europe: Paris-Liege-Spa-Utrecht-Brussels-Calais-London-Calais-Paris) in June in a Blériot monoplane. Of the forty aviators who participated in the Circuit d'Europe, only nine finished. Finally, he won the Round Britain Race through England and Scotland in July. He was named technical director at hydro airplane manufacturer Donnet-Lévêque in June 1912. In 1913, he cofounded Franco-British Aviation, an aircraft manufacturer that built flying boats. He commanded flying boat squadrons during World War I.

Pochoir

Pochoir is an artistic printing process used in conjunction with other mediums, such as lithography, photography, or engraving. It begins with a découpeur, who studies the original piece meant to be reproduced, analyzing the range of colors. Then, the découpeur creates stencils (between eight and fifteen for basic works and more than forty for complex compositions) from materials such as copper, aluminum, or zinc. The stencils were then passed to coloristes who applied watercolors or gouache in layers. Given the idiosyncrasies of coloristes, even down to the strength of brush strokes, no two pochoirs are identical.

Publication History and Census

This view was created by Marguerite 'Gamy' Montaut and published by Mabileau and Company in 1912. While this piece is not cataloged in OCLC and does not appear to be part of any institutional collections, it does appear on the market from time to time.