France, French Alps–Côte d’Azur and Pyrenees–Basque Coast SNCF travel brochures (1959)
I have steadily grown to rather like French railway publicity from the 1950s and early 1960s before they, like British Rail, moved away from commissioned artworks to photography for both posters and publicity. This 1959 brochure/leaflet, one of a standard ‘series’ on the regions of France and issued by SNCF – Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Français, and the cover is a very fine and striking image of one of the operator’s electric locomotives hauling a long distance train, the Alps in the background.
It is by “AB” – Albert Brenet (1903–2005) a long-lived French artist who worked primarily in gouache and is known for his maritime paintings, as well as railway work such as this. I think (and hopefully someone knowledgable will confirm) that this may be based on one of the SNCF’s Class CC7100 locomotives, as they had this straight ornamentation whereas the BB class had the “V” pattern although this has the upper lights that were not on CC’s!
The cover shows three styles from the Vendôme typeface family; noir (black, 1953), gras italique (bold italic), and romain (1951).
Another brochure from the same series, with the same typographic setup. The cover is a very fine and striking image of one of the operator's trains on the French Basque Coast.
