With a whole lot of help from my friends!

Thanks to the kind and helpful assistance from Bjoern Larsen and Henrik Wilfred Christensen, two of the members of the Danish Jules Verne Society, I can now add a row of ten more Tenggren-illustrated books to my library. Let alone my own excitement, it was invaluable for my Tenggren research to be able to study them more closely.

The ten Jules Verne books illustrated by Gustaf Tenggren in 1919 and
published in 1922 by Jespersen's publishing Company, Copenhagen.
I'm so grateful to the members The Danish Jules Verne Society that
discovered the illustrations and helped me to get the books!

I think that this commission for Jespersen’s publishing company was a great challenge for Gustaf Tenggren when he received it in 1919. To judge from the consistency of style, the row of next to 60 drawings were executed during a concentrated period. It forced Tenggren to be quite efficient and to develop a drawing style that would fit both the printing process and the limited budget. This edition was meant to be an inexpensive one, which implied bulkier inlay paper and a more fragile cardboard binding.
Nevertheless, it’s an impressive piece of work to have been executed by a 23-year old artist, just let out of Valands School of Art, and on the verge to a 50-year career within illustration in USA.

20,000 leagues under the sea, cover painting by Gustaf Tenggren

The Children of Captain Grant, cover painting by Gustaf Tenggren

The advertisement for the book series tells us that Tenggren also made front covers for some of the books. It seems that these are the two first in the row, “20,000 leagues under the sea” and “The children of Captain Grant”, since the rest have covers already used earlier. Maybe it was due to loss of time that he didn’t complete the covers; he was also busy making the illustrations for Grimm’s Fairy Tales” for the same company.
As an example, here come the six illustrations for “The Children of Captain Grant”, probably published on the Internet for the first time. Enjoy!

Rare Tenggren books discovered

It was long known that Gustaf Tenggren spent time in Copenhagen in 1919 before he left for USA in July 1920. He had a commission for E. Jespersen's Publishing Company to make 32 illustrations fro Grimm's Fairy Tales. They were completed in 1920 and published in Denmark in 1923. Also in 1919, he painted a portrait of the daughter of publisher Halfdan Jespersen. The rest of his doings in Denmark that year has been benighted - until now.
Thanks to the illustrious Jules Verne Society in Denmark (Det Danske Jules Verne-selskab) and their fabulous website, 10 more titles has been added to Tenggren's row of book commissions. They were published in 1922 and contains a total of 59 black-and-white drawings, plus possibly some covers in full color. Most of the covers were reused from the previous editions but two  (20,000 leagues under the sea and The children of captain Grant) were new and might have been painted by Tenggren.

Cover for Illustration for
20,000 leagues under the sea, Jespersen's forlag 1922

Illustration for 20,000 leagues under the sea.

Illustration for 20,000 leagues under the sea.

I got on track when I read a letter from Gustaf Tenggren to a publisher, listing his illustrated work and mentioning these early illustrations. The 10 books had already been published in several illustrated editions before, but Tenggren was hired to re-draw the original french illustrations, perhaps of printing technical reasons. Despite his youth, being only 23 years at the time, he managed to produce a nice row of drawings, obviously without exceeding his very talented predecessors. None of the illustrations are signed, which is very unlike Tenggren. Maybe that is the reason these illustrations has been relatively unknown until now.

An advertisement announcing the publishing for
the series of  Jules Verne books in 1922.

List of the 10 Jules Verne books illustrated by Gustaf Tenggren in 1919 and published in 1922.

1. "En Verdensomsejling under Havet" (20,000 leagues under the sea) 6 B-W illustrations. 
2. "Kaptajn Grants Børn" (The Children of Captain Grant), 6 B-W illustrations.
3. "Den hemmelighedsfulde Ø" (The Mysterious Island) 5 B-W illustrations
4. "Det rullende Hus" (The Steam House) 6 B-W illustrations. 
5. "Fem Uger i Ballon" (Five Weeks in a Balloon), 6 B-W illustrations. 
6. "Jorden rundt i 80 Dage" (Around the World in 80 Days) 6 B-W illustrations.
7. "Kaptajnen paa 15 Aar" (A Captain at Fifteen) 5 B-W illustrations.
8. "Kejserens Kurér" (Michael Strogoff) 6 B-W illustrations.
9. "Rejsen til Maanen" (From the Earth to the Moon), 6 B-W illustrations.
10. "Keraban Stivnakke" (Kéraban the Inflexible) 7 B-W illustrations.

A detailed overview can be studied at The Danish Jules Verne Society's homepage.
Thank you for your kind help in retrieving this!