A review of Huard’s work leads one to regret that he does not render his survey of provincial types more complete, by occasionally including studies of that manly and womanly beauty which exists in even the most forsaken community, to leaven the predominant ugliness. However, it may be that such forms of rustic beauty do not attract Huard, and we must rest grateful for his view of such types as do interest him deeply.
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. A few pages further on we come to two piou-pious, or “tommies,” enjoying their Plaisir du Dimanche: they are seated, and one of them smokes a cheap cigar. The comment runs, “You wanted to come here so as to show yourself off smoking a cigar; but we could have had much more fun at the station watching the trains go through.”
Le Rire has published a quantity of Huard’s work, the strength and vigour of which never seems to fail. The subjects are frequently drawn from the quays of Paris, or from cafés and restaurants patronised by visitors from the provinces to the gay city. The humour of a drawing called Plages, in 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.
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. Here, we have him disclosing to a comrade on the quay his modest dreams of fortune—there, he is discussing rations with his colonel, and in another splendid double-page drawing we see him at night, shouting some rude refrain, and painting the town scarlet generally; but the finest of all is perhaps a vivid drawing in colour of a squad on a drill ground,—red caps, white suits, and a yellow background,—the whole making a most striking page. Huard is very successful with these coloured illustrations, many of which appear in Le Rire, and charm us with their quaint breadth and simplicity of treatment. Nothing in this way could be better than the old concièrge and his dumpy wife, who are painting a cast of the “Venus of Milo” with canary yellow, and decide that it is much prettier like that, and much less indecent.
For the exhibition of La Demi Douzaine, the little group of artists among whom he exhibits his marine work, Huard has done an excellent poster.
By J. Wély. ([p. 57])