Frank L. Emanuel

“ Morin herein shows himself a superb draughtsman, his excited little figures career about the pages, their shapely forms palpitating and quivering with the joie de vivre. The artist’s quick eye has detected the slightest inflection in the body’s outline, caused by some momentary and wayward impulse, and crystallises the beautiful thing for his own joy and for ours. ”

“ CHARLES LÉANDRE Léandre must be a terror to the members of the official classes in Paris, for they must live from day to day in mortal fear lest they shall have fallen a prey to his deft pencil. He must ever persuade them of their own irresistible comicality, and thereafter they must always feel more like Léandre’s caricatures than like themselves, and must inevitably act likewise. ”

“ Be the studio in Paris, in London, in Munich, be it even in Timbuctoo, from some discreet corner will be drawn a treasured copy or two of Gil Blas Illustré illustrated by Steinlen—forthwith to be discussed, and as surely lauded without stint.
This is not to imply that Steinlen is what is termed “a painter’s painter” and nothing more; for the artist we are now considering is one of the few who are sufficiently great to have captured the warmest appreciation from the public at large, as well as from the critical ranks of his fellow workers. ”

“ Then again there are idyllic scenes on the sordid Paris fortifications, or yet further afield. Trompe la Mort shows us a crowd of humble folk scandal-mongering in hushed tones, their tittle-tattle provoked to its utmost by the climax indicated in the background by a sombre hearse. Another drawing transports us to the midst of a crowd in quite a different frame of mind. ”

“ Lautrec was deservedly popular with his fellow students; his excellent wit, delivered in a strident voice, and punctuated with the gesticulations of a pair of extraordinarily short arms, always proved entertaining to those in the midst of whose company he happened to be.
His best work is probably to be found amongst his posters and portraits. His illustrations, except in his earliest work, as seen in Paris Illustré, more frequently show those crude vagaries of form and colour, which would point to an unevenly balanced judgment. ”

“ The curious thing about Vallotton’s drawings is that we do not miss the half-tones; the unbroken blacks are so skilfully managed that we do not feel the want of Nature’s intervening tones between pure black and pure white. His convention in no wise shocks one, but gives keen artistic pleasure.
This question of the accepting of conventions must strike one as a very remarkable matter. The human face, in reality covered with a smooth, soft skin, delicately gradated in tone and colour, is quite completely and satisfactorily conveyed to us by Vallotton, in a cunning arrangement of black splotches ”

“ The embrace of the sentimental young student in the felt hat and caped overcoat, who has just met the darling of his heart in the Bois de Boulogne, is every whit as tender and graceful as is that of the perruqued galant of the eighteenth century, arrayed in pink satins, who, behind a sculptured satyr, has stolen a kiss from his coy and dainty partner in the last minuet on the sward. ”

“ He makes us feel that his criminals are what nature and cruel circumstances have led them to be. Never does he descend to the narrow-minded, short-sighted, spiteful views of current events, discernible in the work of so many of his talented confrères. The firm tenderness of his nature reveals itself in the very lines of his drawings, which, as if to counterbalance the brilliant vivacity of the work of so many French illustrators, display a sturdy thoroughness and sanity. ”

“ A hue and cry has been raised, and an infuriated mob is tearing down the street at the heels of its hapless prey. Next we see one of the many drawings dealing with a side of life which in less safe hands might be offensive. An unctuous old harpy waylays two fresh little workgirls, and insidiously lays the seeds which, to her profit, shall lead to their downfall. Steinlen occasionally, if rarely, makes drawings of which humour is the motive power. ”

“ M. Huard—equally with several others of the illustrators mentioned in this little volume—has been honoured by having an entire number of “L’Album” devoted to his work. Therein we learn that to the few Huard is known as a most able oil and pastel painter of seafaring folk; and the etchings and chalk drawings reproduced convince us that it is a well-earned reputation. The double-page centre drawing of the number consists of a masterly Return from Mass, in which we see the good souls repairing homewards in the moonlight, soothed and contented in mind and in spirit. ”

“ If ever an artist’s fingertips were the ready, unquestioning servants of a lively brain, those fingertips are Morin’s; in its effervescent spirit and gaiety, the quality of his brain is essentially Gallic. ”

“ STEINLEN
Gil Blas Illustré
EN PROMENADE
(Pen drawing)
15
II
CARAN D’ACHE Emmanuel Poiré, better known by his Russian pseudonym of Caran d’Ache (pencil) , is a public benefactor, in that he has considerably added to the gaiety of nations; and if it be true that one laughs and grows fat, then he must also be responsible for much of the extra weight that those nations carry with them.
The man upon whom one may count to make one merry is sure to be popular. Caran d’Ache, as we have already hinted, has made whole nations merry, and he is a popular favourite. ”

“ Indeed, Lautrec occasionally asserted with some bitterness in after days that it was these studies that had inspired Steinlen to make the character-drawings through which he had become famous—Steinlen having previously made cats and children his chief study.
However this may be, one has not much patience with such claims. Real plagiarism is a detestable thing, but surely there is room for more than one artist in the field of the life of the poor, or of the amusements of a huge city like Paris, without being suspected of that offence. ”

“ A pathetic drawing is that of the poor workwoman, who has tramped out to the sordid wastes of the fortifs, or fortifications of Paris; and, in her enjoyment of the faint echo of the real country, there to be found, exclaims—“If I were rich I’d come here every day!”
Huard has drawn for L’Assiette au Beurre, L’Image, Le Rire, and Cocorico some remarkable military subjects, in which he has depicted the French soldier to the life. ”

“ Frequently Balluriau will carry us back to a century of delicate silks and satins; and in the broad sunlight will show a band of amorous beaux and belles, full of the joie de vivre, and about to start a game of blind man’s buff. His figures live within their old-time costumes; he draws handsome men and beautiful women, for the ugly or the grotesque rarely attract him. ”

“ CHARLES HUARD Huard has done for the denizens of the godly, deadly dull French villages and provincial towns of France what Steinlen has done for Paris—and he has done it exceedingly well. It is difficult to conceive how these worthy people, so fully convinced of their own importance, so proud of their deviltries and or their little wickednesses, and so full of tittle-tattle about their neighbours could have been better introduced to us. ”

“ Inflated, yet nervous, they fidget about, awaiting impatiently the proudest moment of their lives. We know them all; the mayor with his address is there, surrounded by his satellites of the Municipal Council, all arrayed in heirloom dress suits, members of the Gymnastic Society are there—some lithe, some burly—then there are ces braves pompiers, and the stern gendarmes; and behind them, dressed in their best, but shut out from view and from seeing, are the townspeople in their thousands. No matter, they are about to receive a main topic of conversation for many a weary year to come. ”

“ We feel the joy the artist must have evinced in regulating the pressure he put on the crayon, so as to give each line its exact breadth, and depth of tone. The pleasure he takes in manipulating his medium is always manifest in his work. The complete modelling of a dainty neck60 and shoulders, or of a shapely ankle, is frequently accomplished by the merest touch of the chalk—but a touch in exactly the right place, and of exactly the right size.
Wély has contributed to the pages of the Frou Frou; and very frequently to La Vie en Rose. ”

“ No less incongruous than these streets are their inhabitants,—chiefly composed of armies upon armies of toiling workers, while there is nevertheless an effervescing sediment or substratum of those who live by violence and crime. The less successful of those who trade on the weaknesses and follies of a vicious city are forced by circumstances to live in these cheaper suburbs, just as are the poorest of the honest classes; and this is so despite the fact that throughout Paris the upper stories of all flats are occupied by the lower, or at any rate the poorer, classes. ”

“ The roar and clatter of the great city reach his window but fitfully, as the sounds are hurried hither and thither on the wings of wayward breezes, the while great stretches of urban landscape are plunged into purple shadow or bathed in golden sunlight as the fleeting clouds chase one another across the great dome of sky. ”

“ A draughtsman of elegant appearance, surrounded with bric-a-brac, is here seen in his censer-perfumed studio, reclining on an enormous rose-coloured cushion; his cigarette is in one hand, and the crayon which is limning a female form in the other. Two adoring little models watch and guard him; while a procession of respectful art47 patrons stream in humbly to offer their thousand-franc notes for the sketches he is tossing off. ”

“ The students from the Quartier Latin, moreover, came to share their joyous, reckless hours of leisure between their own beloved neighbourhood of the Boul’ Mich’, and the far-away Mount of the Windmills—Montmartre.
Peasants, workgirls, the starving, the insane, the destitute, those who are fighting misery and those who are making it, garrotters, thieves, murderers, and a large assortment of parasitical ruffians as well, have all found a sympathetic student and recorder in Steinlen. ”

“ The horse he delights and excels in is a magnificent, proud, high-mettled beast, whom he puts at some breakneck charge, or causes to career about in high-strung excitement. Caran d’Ache’s army horses are not surpassed even by those of such acknowledged masters as Meissonier and Détaille. The Studio published some splendid equine studies of his a year or so ago, which must have been a revelation to those who had previously looked on Caran d’Ache as a comic artist and nothing more. ”

“ That the tragic side of life touches Léandre deeply is evident, if only from a couple of drawings which appeared in L’Assiette au Beurre. The first is entitled “Saison des eaux—chacun va aux eaux suivant ses moyens”; and we see a starving, distracted mother, plunging to eternity in the foul depths of a canal, while her tiny children, all unconscious of their fate, clutch her skirts and are being hurled to death with her. ”

“ Who does not know the Great Expectations set, wherein the expectant nephew, to his joy, is telegraphed for by his dying uncle; and how the latter miraculously gets stronger and plumper day by day, just as the erstwhile buoyant and vigorous nephew’s growing disappointment drags him visibly nearer and nearer to an untimely grave. ”

“ The humour of a drawing called Plages, in55 which a rather vulgar Paris tripper to the seaside, paddling with her friends, exclaims in astonished appreciation—“By Jove, sand like at Charenton” (shall we translate Putney?) , is apparent to all. In these, as in all his sketches, whether drawn from a low Paris “pub,” or from an innocent village café, indoors or out, the entire truth to nature of the type chosen, the very cut and hang of every garment is absolutely convincing, and unerringly put in with a few bold touches of the pen. ”

“ The adjective which best labels his work is charming; and here it may be well to state that the more emancipated any one is the greater the number of Wély’s drawings he is able to admit to his collection, to charm again and again. For Wély is the artist of adventures—the adventures of the bedroom. He is a humorist, and not a58 caricaturist. He has too much love of human beauty to caricature the human face and figure, and it is possible that for the same reason he never produces a coarse drawing ”

“ At the time of the loathsome trials of Dreyfus, Malteste was one of several artists who specially distinguished themselves by splendid sketches of the actors concerned therein. In the writer’s possession is a collection of these spirited and life-like drawings.64 They are doubly admirable when one considers under what disadvantages they were produced. The task of the artist, told off to a sweltering, over-crowded court-house, surcharged with violent excitement, and commissioned to make portrait groups of interested persons, who are incessantly changing their positions, is none too easy. ”

“ The “painters’ painter” is, as a rule, if nothing else, a master of technique, one whose work shows2 on the face of it the sheer joy evinced in the skilful manipulation of the medium employed—the exceptions to this rule being the men whose work reflects some subtle or involved workings of the brain, and whose great thoughts are felt to outweigh the shortcomings of faulty technique. ”

“ A splendid set of drawings is included in the group Au café. We can see that they are so many resumés of the hurried sketches, for ever being made in the sketch-books which are Huard’s never-failing companions. The handling, whether in pen and ink or in chalk, is always frank and bold, and occasionally is like that of Raffaëlli. ”