René Gaillard, Pages de gloire: libération de Paris, 18–27 août 1944: 21 aquarelles de René Gaillard, lieutenant F.F.I.

Paris: Hachette, 1944

A large-format album of watercolours by Gaillard, a lieutenant in the Forces françaises de l’intérieur (FFI), published in December 1944. The romanticism of the images is equalled by the language of the captions. For ‘La Pistolière’ Gaillard writes, ‘Barely 20 years old, with her large beautiful eyes made for others to dream about. With brown curls that wave gently in the fresh morning breeze … her graceful fist clenches the butt of the pistol which seems disproportionately large in her young fingers … she has had several weeks in a Gestapo gaol. … Coolly, without emotion, but with resolve, she indeed accounts for “them“. Nine, ten, eleven … on the other side of the barricade, one by one, the green uniforms are starred with red stains.’

Extended captions