Among them Steinlen has settled, perched high over the myriad glittering roofs and towers and domes of Paris, which lies seething far below. 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.
Most of the artists to be referred to in this little volume are intimately connected with this same breezy, turbulent suburb, and also with the before-mentioned “Chat Noir”. This cabaret, founded and carried on by Salis, himself an artist, for years attracted le tout Paris by means of its réunions of the most up-to-date artists, authors, and actors, and its unique theatre. Along with its sprightly, risky weekly paper it would form matter for a weighty volume of itself. 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. He understands them, he has a big heart, and he pities them all, and what is more he makes us, willy-nilly, pity them also. He delights in showing us that one little touch of remaining nature that makes the whole world akin, and will out in his most abandoned wretch. 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 notable feature about his work is that—although he depicts the most depraved and immoral, as well as the most poverty-stricken of his fellow citizens—it cannot be said to be low or vulgar.
His drawings of simple peasant life have all the air of having been undertaken as a relaxation from the contemplation of more lurid subjects. He sallies forth among his chance models, sketch-book in hand, ready to put down notes of salient features and expressive poses, later to be incorporated in the wonderfully complete drawings which are shown to the public.
Steinlen is a prolific worker. First in importance among the many publications whose pages he has enriched comes the Gil Blas Illustré. It was Steinlen who initiated the idea of this Paris daily paper issuing a halfpenny supplement on Sundays containing feuilletons and poetry, illustrated with drawings to be reproduced in two or more colours. Since the year 1891, and until recently, the front and frequently other pages of this paper have consisted of splendid drawings by him, as a rule depicting some terrible or pathetic episode in the lives of the faubouriens or faubouriennes to whom we have already alluded. In every case a background, equally masterly and full of local character, has been introduced. This series of essentially modern subjects was occasionally varied by the appearance of a drawing such as the Chevalier à la Fée or Les Digitales, inspired by some mediæval incident or legend. These Steinlen would treat in an entirely different but equally successful manner—the style employed somewhat resembling that of another masterly designer, namely, Eugène Grasset. Of his more usual style to pick out such splendid drawings as his suicide in À l’eau, the terrible street fight in the Voix du Sang or Le Vagabond, L’Immolation, Pour les Amoureux et pour les Oiseaux, Marchand de Marrons or 14 Juillet, is but to recall hundreds of others equally worthy of special attention.
In 1895 the Gil Blas employed more colours in its reproductions, and Steinlen rose to the occasion with some daring colour schemes exemplified in La Terre Chante au Crépuscule, Le Poil de Carotte and many another drawing. Towards 1896 the range of his subjects noticeably widened.
Among other publications to which he has contributed one recalls Le Chambard, in which appeared splendid lithographs from his own hand, La Feuille, L’Assiette au Beurre, La Vie en Rose, Le Canard Sauvage, etc. In the following music albums will be found some further superb lithographs by Steinlen, namely, Chanson de Montmartre, Chansons du Quartier Latin, and Chanson de Femmes. Among the books he has illustrated are: Les Gaitès Bourgeois, Prison fin de Siècle, Dans la Rue, and Dans la Vie—the latter in colour.
Description of a few of his notable drawings, culled here and there, may help us to a better understanding of their quality.
First, then, he shows us the gallery of some dark, putrid Assembly Hall; the air is thick with garlic, and oaths, and gas, whose garish light illuminates a disreputable mob of frenzied anarchists, who are applauding with delirious gusto the sentiments of “Down with everything,” “Death to every one.”