A STEINLEN POSTER
suffering, has formed his points of view and left its mark on his nature. He is a Bohemian, and values slightly luxuries and ways of modern worldly life. He is familiar with the haunts of the thieves in the dangerous parts of Paris: he may well take his life in his hands—he is beloved and known, he is safe. He knows the interiors where starvation and cold and crime are side by side. He has helped generously, who can say how many? directly from his own purse and indirectly through the wide sympathy he has aroused.
No peculiarities of the fluctuating mass which is the very life of the city, which is the agglomerate expression of pleasure, pain, vice, crime, good, evil, sadness, joy, are lost upon Steinlen. He seems to be en rapport with those people whom we call our brothers and treat as our inferiors and our enemies. The tricks, the attitudes, the expressions, the behaviour of the passers-by are familiar to him. With a few clever strokes of brush or pencil he has given us the piquante ouvrière, the modest apprentice, in a graceful, unconscious pose as she poises on her hip the hat-box she is carrying to a customer. In this jeune fille representative, in the toss of her head, the curve of her arm, the swish of her neat skirts high above her well-shod feet, in this jaunty creature, scrupulous as to tidiness, is a certain phase of Paris drawn with crystalline distinctness. This girl of the people is dangerous, charming, and to her the boulevardier is an enemy. Paris is epitomised by this one flaring street-wall decoration. So much for the jeunesse, gay, laborious, and generally self-respecting. We do not often see Steinlen so gay.
In his studio in the Rue Caulaincourt, walking to and fro, he converses delightfully with his friends. He is a workman, his muscular hands are full of force, his build powerful, although he is compact and small. He suggests endurance, and the patience that is the result of hand-to-hand tussle with existence, and tender understanding of the needs of one’s neighbour. His eyes are keen, penetrating, and kind, his features strong. He has a golden voice, as the French say, caressing and indolent. Its measured cadence, its slow, agreeable flow contrasts strongly with the man himself. He wears the coarse velveteens of the labourer, cuffs close around his muscular wrists. His trousers are voluminous, and on his feet flap loose Indian slippers. His appearance, and the fact that his studio is in one of the poorest quarters of Paris, his whole attitude and life, suggest, not a
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