The story of Tintin, as told in a new exhibition at Somerset House

Tintin: Hergé’s Masterpiece opened yesterday at Somerset House, and the exhibition draws together storyboards, original drawings and newspaper cuttings from the archives of Belgium’s Hergé Museum. It also features scale models of Tintin’s apartment on Rue du Labrador, as well as the Avenue Louise that housed Studios Hergé and Captain Haddock’s country pile, Le château de Moulinsart.

The exhibition is hung on the theme of windows, which feature in many of Tintin’s adventures: frames within frames that act as a form of punctuation. Panes appear in the form of sash windows, portholes, camera viewfinders and binoculars, often the crux that leads Tintin on to journeys and discoveries around the world.

The show was designed by the Hergé Foundation, still based on Avenue Louise. As well as referencing the narrative tool of windowpanes, the exhibition is peppered with fireplaces, endpaper-inspired wallpaper and the grand details of cornicing, chandeliers and curved windows you might expect at the château de Moulinsart. Such attention to detail reiterates the importance of the domestic settings that appear in the Tintin stories, and establishes an immersive communication of Hergé’s narrative principles.

The lives of Hergé and Tintin are documented in a timeline from the writer’s post at newspaper Le Vingtième , post-World War II controversy surrounding his work at newspaper Le Soir , the Tintin magazine and his later life at Studios Hergé. It makes for a great introduction to the life of Tintin, or for the more seasoned reader, a reiteration of the skill and depth to Hergé’s storytelling.