An illustrator who blended whimsy and shadow in his palette

By George Kalogerakis

The lovely art created by Pierre Le-Tan, who died on Tuesday in Paris at 69, was full of whimsy, lightness, humor, and—like so many genuinely uplifting things—also a trace of melancholy. There’s a beautiful full moon, a snowy scene, a rainbow … but each one is seen through a window. His drawings are usually unpopulated; there are a lot of still lifes. Even his street scenes are quiet, somehow solitary. The work is delicate, with exquisite detail and crosshatching, and it gets under your skin in the best way.

Le-Tan, whose mother was French and whose father was the Vietnamese painter Lê Phổ, was born in 1950 in Neuilly-sur-Seine and later lived in New York and Paris. Between the first of his many covers for READ ON