This paper reconstructs the identity of the illustrator and diarist who published Majorca. Diary of a Painter (London: Cassell, 1939) under the pseudonym “Francis Caron”. Long regarded as an enigmatic and marginal figure within travel literature, Caron disappeared from the historical record shortly after the book’s publication. Drawing on transnational archival research conducted in Spain, Austria, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Australia, and the United States, the study integrates graphic analysis, unpublished correspondence, migration records, and genealogical evidence to demonstrate that “Francis Caron” was in fact Franz Heinrich Taussig (1906–1989), a Central European Jewish artist whose career was disrupted by exile following the Anschluss. The article situates Majorca. Diary of a Painter within the cultural history of European exile in the late 1930s, examining how forced migration, name changes, editorial mediation, and archival dispersal contributed to the erasure of authorship. By restoring Taussig’s identity and reconstructing his Mediterranean graphic corpus, the paper reframes the book as a document of artistic displacement rather than a minor example of illustrated travel writing. This is a preprint / submitted version. The text may undergo minor revisions prior to journal publication.
María De Guía Vioque Ruiz (Sun,) studied this question.