Marie-Madeleine Franc-Nohain
French, 1878-1942
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Madeleine-Amélie Dauphin, also known as Madeleine-Amélie Franc-Nohain was a French illustrator. She specialized in children's literature.
Marie-Madeleine Dauphin was one of two daughters of Languedoc musician and poet Léopold Dauphin (1847-1925), who settled in Paris in the 1870s before returning to his native region, and Marguerite Pigot (1852-1917).
Her sister, Jane, married Adolphe Boschot, a musicographer and author of works on Hector Berlioz.
Marie-Madeleine Dauphin married the writer Maurice Étienne Legrand, known as Franc-Nohain, on March 3, 1899, taking his pen name to sign her works. They had two sons, the lyricist and entertainer Jean Nohain (known as Jaboune) (1900-1981), godson of Alfred Jarry, and the actor Claude Dauphin (1903-1978), as well as a daughter, Francine (1914-1970), who was also an illustrator.
She published a few drawings in 1898-1899 in the magazine L'Aube méridionale, to which her father contributed. She contributed a watercolor to Gustave Goetschy's magazine Paris-Noël for four consecutive years, from 1896 to 1900, under the name Madeleine Dauphin for the first three, then two plates of six vignettes in the form of a comic strip with text written by her husband in 1900 and 1901.
In 1914, Éditions Grasset published her first album, Le Journal de bébé, in two versions: blue for boys and pink for girls. Her album was republished in 1927, then in 1980 by Nestlé and in 1987 by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Between the wars, she illustrated numerous children's books for Plon, Flammarion, Larousse, Desclée de Brouwer and, above all, Mame. Marie-Madeleine was a regular contributor to the Benjamines section of the newspaper Benjamin, created by her son Jean.
At the start of World War II, Marie-Madeleine Dauphin took refuge in Genillé, near Tours, with her daughter and daughter-in-law in 1940. In 1942, she fell seriously ill, was hospitalized locally, and died in the 7th arrondissement of Paris. She was buried in the Père-Lachaise cemetery (89th division), where she rests with her husband and children.