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The René Follet Collection

The Collection

This collection, donated to the Faculty Library of Arts and Philosophy in 2020, is truly unique. Whereas the personal archives of comics artists are often lost, this was not the case for the personal archive of the Brussels-based artist René Follet.

Consisting of 10 cardboard boxes and 46 archival drawers filled with clippings organised by theme, period, country, and subject, the collection offers a comprehensive overview of the reference materials Follet used for his drawings. Most comics artists of his time traced images using a lightbox. Follet, however, employed a different method: he gathered various images of his subject, studied them closely, and combined them mentally into a new image, which he then transferred to paper. This process resulted in highly distinctive and expressive illustrations.

To preserve the special character and research value of this personal archive, the original furniture and Follet’s own organisational structure have been maintained. The archive thus enables researchers to map the relationships between reference materials and final artworks, as well as to investigate the interaction between artist and creative process. Since 2023, the collection has been the subject of research within the FWO Morgue Files Project. The research is conducted by Felipe Muhr under the supervision of prof. dr. Maaheen Ahmed and dr. Benoît Crucifix.

                  

René Follet (Sint-Lambrechts-Woluwe, 1931 – Brussels, 2020)

René “Ref” Follet was a renowned illustrator and painter who, despite his success, remained somewhat in the background. Working with both brush and pen, he evoked places from across the world and throughout history in an almost impressionistic style, all from his studio in Brussels. For this reason, he has sometimes been referred to as the “sedentary dreamer.”

Over a career spanning sixty years, he exerted a significant influence on the history of Francophone Belgian comics, producing work for Tintin and Spirou, as well as for scouting magazines, calendars, and numerous book illustrations, including Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island (Schateiland, 1949), John Flanders’ Les joyeux contes d’Ingoldsby (1992), and many others.

View two immersive 360° photographs of René Follet (c. 2015) in his Brussels studio, taken by Alain Hamblenne:  1 - 2 

Literature and Documentation