A STEINLEN POSTER
mirth! He disappears in the fogs of a winter street.
This collaboration of Anatole France and Steinlen is spirituel and successful. “Once more Steinlen was quite carried away” (Monsieur Pelletan says); “I suggested twenty drawings. He has given me fifty-five!” And each illustration is a little masterpiece, admirable in execution and full of sympathy with the class the downtrodden Crainquebille represents.
It is false to suppose that Steinlen does not give to each of his creations the greatest pains. For the little volume called “Le Chien de Brisquet”[A] he made eighty drawings for Anatole France before he got one to his satisfaction, and it was for “Le Chien de Brisquet,” which volume of drawings it will be difficult to surpass, that Steinlen drew and re-drew his canine sketches. “Although,” said Monsieur Pelletan, “I assure you I was quite satisfied with the first drawings!”
A word must be said regarding his feline studies. Cats have been favourite animals with poets and painters: witness Baudelaire, Poe, Coppée, Manet; and Steinlen, too, has found these slender, graceful felines interesting. There is in his representation of this animal a subtle perceiving of the link and of the difference between the brute and the human. It suggests the masters whose paintings of animals have made them famous, Landseer above all. When his book “Le Chat” came out, it was bought at first for children, but could not long be kept in the nurseries. Copies were pilfered for drawing-rooms and studios, where elders claimed these treasures of clever design. Steinlen’s host of drawings are undoubted indications of a power not to be confined in the sphere of the illustration for books. Admirers of Steinlen’s look for great things of him during the next years, claiming that his future is more brilliant in promise than any of his colleagues, Jean Veber excepted.
Steinlen himself is a delightful personality, and distinctly a force. The grasp of his hand, the fire of his eye, his courtesy, charm, and the pleasure it is to hear him speak, render him an unusual companion. His friends, naturally, are legion—he is much beloved; but, as they say in France, he is très sauvage—preferring to let the world go its ways, and to shut himself away with his work in his remote studio.