Vintage Poster Archives
Mauzan Hare and Tortoise 1920s | Vintage Motor Racing Poster
Mauzan Hare and Tortoise 1920s | Vintage Motor Racing Poster
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A brown hare, tongue lolling, crouches over the cockpit of a long-bonneted crimson racing car, chrome exhausts slung low along the flanks. Directly ahead, a tortoise rides a garden snail with its arms flung wide, the slowest animal doubled by the slowest vehicle, while a starting-flag pole marks the absurdity of the contest. A small dog somersaults from the rear wheel; a yellow duckling scatters from the tyres. The pale blue-grey horizon is flat and indifferent. The red border frame holds the whole scene with the composure of a proper sporting print.
Achille Lucien Mauzan (1883–1952) produced more than 2,000 poster and illustration commissions across France, Italy, and Argentina. This watercolour, dated to the early 1920s on visual and stylistic grounds, reworks Aesop's fable into a contemporary motor-racing contest. Mauzan was working during the decade when road racing had become a genuine popular spectacle, the Targa Florio, the early Le Mans series, the Mille Miglia's precursors, and the humour here depends entirely on an audience that knew what a racing car meant.
The composition belongs to a tradition of interwar animal satire that used the new speed culture as a vehicle for old stories. Mauzan's particular contribution is the snail: where a conventional illustrator might have the tortoise simply running, Mauzan gives him an improbable mount and leaves the comedy to take care of itself. The fluid watercolour washes and assured characterisation are consistent with his documented output between 1919 and 1926, before his Buenos Aires period.
Reproduced from an archival source as a fine art print on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper. The warm cream ground and Mauzan's confident brushwork reproduce faithfully at this paper weight. Draws an audience familiar with vintage motor racing art, interwar illustration, or the longer history of Aesop in visual culture.
