'Une Joyeuse Partie de Cycle' (Le Globe Illustré, 27 August 1899).
Victor T'Sas, who signed with both his own name and the pseudonym "Vias", was a late 19th-century and early 20th-century Belgian painter, illustrator, advertising artist and comic pioneer. In the early decades of his career, he made several pantomime and text comics for the illustrated magazines Le Globe Illustré and Le Patriote Illustré. After World War I, he made similar picture stories for Pourquoi Pas? and the publishing company Brepols.
Life and career
Victor Marie Joseph T'Sas was born in 1866 in Doornik (Tournai) in the coastal province of West Flanders. He came from a family of painters, including his father. Three of Victor's brothers later also took up this profession. While born in Doornik, T'Sas moved closer to the Belgian capital of Brussels in adulthood, spending most of his life in Anderlecht, Sint-Gillis and Vorst. In 1890, he got married.
Early in his career, between the late 1880s and early 1900s, T'Sas livened up covers and interior pages of the Belgian news magazines Le Globe Illustré (starting in August 1889) and Le Patriote Illustré. Besides illustrations, he also created picture stories, some one-shot gag pages, others illustrated visualizations of news items. Other artists who published in Le Globe Illustré at the time were Henri Bodart, Henri Cassiers, Léon Dardenne and Jean Eschbach.
Poster art by Victor T'Sas.
By 1903, T'Sas mostly made a living of designing advertising posters for theatrical plays and tourist attractions, for instance his magnificent promotional illustrations for activities in the Belgian towns of Aarlon (Aarlen), Ostend (Oostende) and Bredene. In 1909, he also created artwork for the Dutch National Railways. His art additionally promoted the tire company Houben, the manure firm Bataille and the Daublain-Vandam brasserie in Sivry. After World War I, T'Sas picked up his pencil again to make additional humorous illustrations and picture stories for the weekly Pourquoi Pas? and publishing company Brepols. The artist died in 1942 in Vorst, at the age of 75.
'Les Perfides de la Photographie' (Le Globe Illustré, 15 May 1897).
Comics for Le Globe Illustré
In Le Globe Illustré issue #47 of 1894, T'Sas made a picture story inspired by the sequential photographs of Étienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904). Marey had taken several photos documenting the movements of animals. In T'Sas picture story 'Le Chat Qui Tombe' ("The Falling Cat"), the artist visualizes how a cat manages to flip itself on its paws before reaching the ground. Even when photography was still a young artform, T'Sas seems to have been skeptical about the veracity of its images. In the 15 May 1897 issue, he made a two-page gag comic 'Les Perfides de la Photographie' ("The Dishonesty of Photography"), depicting a horse and carriage seemingly galloping on a steep hill. But in the second panel it is revealed that the image was tilted: the carriage wasn't going uphill, but downhill. 'Les Perfides de la Photographie' is not only notable for its satirical tone, but also as one of the few picture stories by T'Sas to use text captions. Most of his other comics are presented without dialogue.
In the 25 December 1898 issue, his pantomime comic 'Une Gibelotte de Noël… Manquée' ("Failed Christmas Rabbit Stew") starred a hunter who catches a rabbit and puts it in his bag. Instead of immediately wringing his prey's neck, the man decides to have a little picnic first. The rabbit, still in the bag, escapes and manages to dash away in a hole, where his strange appearance bewilders the other rabbits. To the 27 August issue of the following year, T'Sas contributed 'Une Joyeuse Partie de Cycle' ("A Happy Bike Ride"). The gag features a cyclist sleeping near the road, when a farmer boy and two farmer girls borrow his bike for a while to take a ride. When one of them drives over a rocky road, he falls and breaks the vehicle. When the cyclist awakes, he finds his bike broken and clumsily put back together.
Another pantomime comic by Vias ran in the Le Globe Illustré issue of 4 February 1900, titled 'La Peine du Talion' ("The Punishment of Retaliation"). It depicts a monkey taunting a parrot by pulling out one of his feathers and climbing on top of his perch. The bird gets his revenge by biting off the monkey's tail. T'Sas' final gag comic for Le Globe Illustré was a three-panel pantomime comic printed in the June 1901 issue.
' Un Député Musulman à la Chambre Française' (Le Patriote Illustré, 24 January 1897), depicting the real-life visit of Philippe Grenier to French parliament.
Comics for Le Patriote Illustré
For the 24 January 1897 issue of Le Patriote Illustré, T'Sas created a more realistically-drawn picture story, based on the real-life visit of Philippe Grenier to the French Parliament that same year. Grenier was a French physician and politician who, after visiting Algeria in the 1890s, became very critical of the French colonial oppression in this country. Sympathizing with the local population, Grenier converted to Islam in 1894 and started wearing traditional Algerian turbans, robes and boots. He was elected to the French Parliament and became the first Muslim delegate in the country's history. Because of his "exotic" clothing, he was a strange sight to most Europeans. Several people mocked and branded him "unpatriotic" for criticizing France's colonial empire.
In his picture story for Le Patriote Illustré, 'Un Député Musulman à la Chambre Française' ("A Muslim Delegate in the French Chamber"), T'Sas portrays Grenier in three sequential scenes. In the first panel, Grenier is seen praying to Mecca on the stairs of Parliament. He repeats this in the Parliamentary hall. In the final panel, Grenier shakes hands with other politicians, either before or after giving a speech. The same event was also the cover illustration of Le Petit Parisien (10 January 1897) and Le Petit Journal (24 January 1897), but engraved by different illustrators. Most European readers at the time were only vaguely familiar with Islam, so this portrayal of a Muslim kneeling down in prayer was still an uncommon sight. Almost two centuries earlier, 17th-century Dutch engraver Johannes van den Aveele had also visualized a Muslim prayer in a picture story, 'Relation Nouvelle d'un Voyage de Constantinople' (1681).
'Een Avontuurtje van John', Dutch-language version (Brepols, 1919).
Comics for Brepols
In 1919, T' Sas also drew a text comic for a picture story print by the publishing company Brepols. The Dutch title is 'Een Avontuurtje van John', while the French translation reads 'Une Aventure de John'. Despite the comic's rather bombastic announcement of an "adventure", the actual plot is only a small-scale incident and the aforementioned John a terrier. The dog is given the responsibility of getting groceries for a housewife, with her order placed in a basket, which the mutt has to carry to the store and bring back full. Everything goes well until John gets into a fight with another dog and leaves the basket with groceries behind. A little boy notices the basket and takes it. When John returns from his fight he is shocked to discover that his groceries have been stolen and returns home crying. To soften the drama, John finds another empty basket and brings this one to his mistress. All ends well, though, when the boy from earlier brings the full basket home.
Legacy and influence
While Victor T'Sas played a significant role in the history of Belgian comics, his stories had no genuine impact on the development of the medium in his home country. His contributions sank back in the obscurity from where they never quite emerged. Part of the problem is that T'Sas signed his work with two different signatures, his pseudonym being particularly difficult to decipher. Some of his work, usually his serious art, bore his full name. His other drawings, usually his humorous illustrations and comics, were signed as "Vias", a contraction of the first two letters of his first name and the last two letters of his last. Some historians have erroneously claimed his signature was "Teas" or "Vlas". For over a century, the identity of "Vias" was a mystery to most researchers, until in 2023 Herwig Kempenaers finally discovered that Victor T'Sas and Vias were one and the same artist. His research was made public in issue #9 (June 2023) of the Belgian comic news magazine Zandstraal/Le Dessableur, a publications of the Brussels Comic Art Museum.
Selection of signatures by Victor T'Sas (courtesy of Zandstraal #9, 2023).