Joseph Hémard

Joseph Hémard, a popular French book illustrator, was born in Les Mureaux, France, a small town on the Seine, northwest of Paris, on 2 August 1880.

He also designed costumes and sets for several operas, patterns for printed textiles, bookbindings, posters and even a facade for a bar in the 1925 Paris Exposition of Decorative Art.

[3] Hémard also provided illustrations – typically humorous cartoon-like drawings – for many unlikely non-fiction works including a variety of technical and reference books.

These included drawings for Le Formulaire Magistral, a technical pharmacological manual with formulas for preparing medications, as well as a French grammar and an arithmetic textbook, both of which he also authored, all published in 1927.

[7] Hémard wrote a brief autobiographical essay, published by Babou and Kahane in French in 1928 and in English translation in 1929, which is largely devoid of factual detail.