[Original]
[Original]
originality. The sport of bicycling seems to have fascinated the Parisienne completely, and Forain has made a charming design, in which she is depicted in complete enjoyment of the fashionable pastime. The colour scheme is restrained and delicate, and the production, which exists in two sizes, should certainly be found amongst the treasures of every amateur of the affiche.
The somewhat risky pages of the Gil Bias Illustré have for a considerable time been noticeable to artists, chiefly on account of a series of coloured illustrations by Steinlen. His relentless veracity in depicting the life of the lower classes of the Paris of to-day is almost without rival. No detail of squalor seems to escape him; without a tinge of remorse he proceeds to inform us of the meanest incidents in the tragedy of the poor or vicious quarters of the great city. By reason of a certain emphasis of colour and crudeness of design the art of Steinlen is admirably adapted to the production of such human documents. But it cannot be maintained that, whatever their technical merits, these studies of human misery are other than unpleasant-even painful. It is, therefore, altogether agreeable, when one turns to his essays in the art of the poster, to find his work graceful rather than tragic, urbane rather than mordant. Forsaking his mission of realistic illustration, he becomes gay, dainty, and fanciful as the best of his fellows. Even in a higher degree than the majority of them, he makes his design appropriate to the thing advertised. His decorations are spiced with a certain actuality, and, in being so, insist more effectively on the particular article the merits of which it is their business to proclaim. No better example of this could, I think, be put forward than the "Lait pur de la Vingeannestérilisé," a design which, in view of the material to be advertised, is conceived in the happiest vein. The pretty little girl drinking the milk, so much coveted of the cats which surround her, is less interesting than the animals themselves. The draughtsmanship of the latter is excellent, while there is a hint of that humanity of expression about the creatures which has produced for the work of Landseer so immense a popularity. Not less admirable, and of still greater interest, is the poster designed to advertise the performances of Yvette Guilbert at the Ambassadeurs. Amongst the numerous artists to whom the Sarah Bernharct of the music-halls has given commissions none has been more successful than Steinlen. The poster represents the singer behind the footlights in an attitude pre-eminently characteristic. The thing does not amount to a caricature, as does the hitherto unpublished delineation of Toulouse-Lautrec, but is merely a slightly exaggerated portrait. It is remarkably suggestive of a most alluring and delightful
