If any image from the 1920s could be said to feature something out of the ordinary, this would be a strong contender. Not only is the car one of the eccentric but remarkably successful creations of the fertile mind of Gabriel Voisin, but the owner is the equally unusual and dramatically successful dancer and singer Josephine Baker.
Gabriel Voisin (1880-1973) was a French aviation pioneer. It is often forgotten, in the history that rightly gives to the Wright brothers the honour of the first powered flight, that Voisin created Europe’s first manned, engine-powered, heavier-than-air aircraft capable of a sustained (1 km), circular, controlled flight, which was made by Henry Farman on 13 January 1908 near Paris. Many of Voisin’s military aircraft were used in World War I.
After the war, Voisin turned to luxury car manufacture. His approach to car design was uncompromisingly individual: extensive use of light alloys, minimalism (for example, his smaller 4-cylinder engine in the C4 of 1921 had only two bearings instead of five in his larger C1 and C3 cars), and, perhaps less surprising, constant allegiance to the Knight sleeve valve. Voisin developed his characteristic ‘rational’ coachwork style in collaboration with André Noel, who focused upon lightness, central weight distribution, capacious luggage boxes and distinctively angular lines.
The C11 of 1926 was Voisin’s first six-cylinder car, with a 2326cc engine having the same bore and stroke as the four-cylinder C7 of 1550cc. It was Voisin’s most successful car, the C11 and its successors probably selling around 4,000 units up to 1936.
Josephine Baker was one of many famous owners of Voisins. Freda Josephine Baker (née McDonald; 1906-1975) was born in America but was naturalised in France in 1937 with the name Joséphine Baker. She was the first black woman to star in a major motion picture, the 1927 French silent film Siren of the Tropics, directed by Mario Nalpas and Henri Étiévant. She was one of the most celebrated performers at the Folies Bergère in Paris.
Baker helped the French Resistance during World War II. After the war, she was awarded the Resistance Medal by the French Committee of National Liberation, the Croix de Guerre by the French military, and was named a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur by General Charles de Gaulle. Baker refused to perform for segregated audiences in the United States and is also noted for her contributions to the civil rights movement.
Other famous Voisin owners were Maurice Chevalier, Rudolph Valentino (who had three), Anatole France, H.G. Wells and, perhaps more obviously, Le Corbusier, a friend of Voisin who designed the door handles on the early Voisins and often featured a Voisin in his architectural sketches.
Image courtesy of The Richard Roberts Archive: www.richardrobertsarchive.org.uk
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