FINDING THE GUIANA GIRL

by Jeff Ward (FCPS #3142)

In designing a postage stamp, the artist often uses a model of some sort. With a scenic design, the artist may work from a painting or photograph, or work from nature by traveling to a particular location. If people are included in the design, the artist may work from paintings, sculptures, photographs or live models.

In the case of United States stamps, the origin or model for the various stamp designs is known in many, if not most cases. But this is seldom true with the smaller, more remote stamp-issuing entities of the world. As a collector of French Guiana, I have been unable to find much information in the available literature regarding the origins of the designs used for this French colony. It was therefore very rewarding to recently discover the source of one of the more attractive French Guiana designs: the high value (1 franc and above) issues of the 1929 postage due series. (These stamps were also overprinted in 1932 for use in Inini.) The design, in vertical format, features a woman standing with arms akimbo, wearing clothing that we can assume represents typical or traditional local dress. The Scott catalog identifies the design as "Guiana Girl," in Yvert it is "Creole." The designer and engraver is identified in the bottom margin of each stamp as A. Mignon.

The discovery item is a recently acquired black-and-white picture post card (Figure 2). The card was mailed from the French Guiana capital of Cayenne and is franked with one copy each of the one and four centime anteater stamps first issued in 1905. But the most important feature of the card is the photograph itself.

It is obvious that Mr. Mignon modeled his design from this very photograph. Almost all the detail in the photograph, down to the folds of cloth and the bracelets on the lady's wrists, are part of the stamp design. The only major difference is the background. In the photograph, there is dense, tropical foliage directly behind the woman, indicating that the photograph was probably taken outdoors. In the stamp design, the artist gives the picture a more open feel by omitting most of the plants, making the background light, and adding a couple of distant palm trees.

Another less significant difference is the checked pattern of the skirt. The pattern is less detailed in the stamp, probably because portraying the level of detail in the photograph would have required a great deal of effort without adding much to the quality of the design.

Although we now know where Mr. Mignon got his design, as with many mysteries, answering one question leads directly to new ones. In general, it would be interesting to know the circumstances under which the photograph was taken. Who is the woman identified simply as "Cayennaise" (a woman from Cayenne), when was the photograph taken, and by whom?

The postmark and stamps on the post card provide some evidence of when the photograph was taken. The postmark provides the year of mailing, but only the first three digits, 190, are completely legible. Because the anteater stamps were first issued in 1905, the date cannot be earlier than that. The rightmost digit is partially legible and my best guess is that it is a 9, making the year of mailing 1909.

Additional clues are available from the fact that the card is one of a numbered series of picture post cards produced by a company in Nancy, France. Each card features a different black-and-white photograph of people or scenery in French Guiana. I have a total of eight such cards, each showing (with some minor variations) the company logo and the inscription "Mme. Georges Evrard, phot."

The illustrated card is #6. I also have #s 1, 14, 41, 50, 56, 75, and 85. The earliest postmark date on any of these cards is February 1904, for #41. If we assume that the cards were produced sequentially, #6 would have existed at least as early as the beginning of 1904 and probably well before that. A reasonable guess is that the photograph was taken around 1900. This gives adequate time for taking the photograph, producing the post card, and placing it on sale. If this is correct, the post card was first made 25-30 years before Mignon used it as a model.

The key to answering the other questions is the identity of Mme. (Mrs.) Georges Evrard. The subjects of the other photographs in my collection include the convict baths at Devil's Island, a gold mining camp in the interior, a lighthouse eight miles out at sea, and an Indian tribe near the village of Iracoubo. If she took each of these photographs, as seems to be the case, then she either spent a great deal of time in French Guiana or actually lived there. Therefore, we must at least consider the possibility that the photograph of "Cayennaise" is a self-portrait. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find out anything about Mrs. Georges Evrard so far. But the truth is out there somewhere. Stay tuned.