Studio: international art (87.1924)

THEOPHILE ALEXANDRE STEIN-
LEN. BY M. VALOTAIRE. a 0
(Translated by Herbert B. Grimsditch,B.A.)

THE news of Steinlen’s death, which
came like a bolt from the blue in
December last, was a painful shock to
his many friends and admirers, and it
was a most sad and pensive train which
escorted him to his last resting place,
mourning him not only as a great artist
but also as a man possessing a noble and
compassionate heart. Now, when his
task is ended, the critic, trying to take in
the full extent of his work, pauses in
amazement before this vast performance,

despite all that was previously known
about it. Draughtsman, lithographer,
etcher, book-illustrator, poster-designer,
painter, and even modeller, Steinlen did
all these things with a benevolence, a
warmth of feeling and an intensity of ex-
pression which render his artistic per-
sonality one of the finest and most in-
dividual of our times. 0 0 0

Born at Lausanne in 1859, of a family
whose modest circumstances by no means
connoted indifference to art, Steinlen early
gave evidence of a sensitive and refined
temperament, delighting in the simple
pleasures afforded by close observation of
nature. He loved animals, too. Then one
day he chanced to read Zola’s
“ L’Assommoir,” and this powerful pic-
ture of a lowly community, bearing the
burden of hereditary vice, groaning under
the crushing weight of cumulative and
inevitable social misery, was a revelation

CHALK DRAWING
BY T. A. STEINLEN

(Leicester Galleries)

123

Vol. LXXXVII. No. 372.—March 1924.