The watercolor renderings

Henri Chapron was a visionary. Whenever a car maker would come up with a new model, he had a vision, like a painter, a sculptor would, of the car he would embellish, making either a few or drastic changes. From 1919 to the 1950s, he would build an entire body on a chassis that the manufacturer would send him bare, expecting him to dress it completely.

Professional designers were, then, often working for several coachbuilders at the same time. Henri would ask one of them to transcript the vision he had of a particular project in a watercolor, a painting that he would show his clientele.

Once he approved the project, Henri had his people realize a small drawing of the car he was planning to build “at the scale”. A few examples are shown in the following page.

Then, a big scale drawing of the car would be executed. Big scale drawings of each part manufactured in his workshop that would go on the car were realized. A wooden prototype of the car would follow and would be used to make, by hand, the steel iron parts: fenders, hood, trunk,doors, etc.

Below are shown a few Henri Chapron projects from the 1930s to the 1950s:

Delage D8-120, dessin #5233, “Le Dandy” Delahaye 135 Sport, dessin #3658, “Le Racing”

Delahaye 135 MS, dessin #5427, “La Vedette” Delahaye 135, dessin #5349, “Le Cabriolet”

Henri Chapron copyright found on the back

of the watercolor renderings

If you are interested in acquiring a copy of one of Henri’s watercolor projects, we do offer limited editions of a few different designs. Contact us!

If you are interested by a limited edition prints of Henri Chapron’s renderings, please, contact us!