Studio: international art (87.1924)

THEOPHILE ALEXANDRE STEINLEN

to him. He conceived the desire to see
this life, of which he could find no counter-
part in the strict Swiss circles wherein he
moved, and henceforward Paris became
his goal. He finished his studies at the
classical Gymnasium and the Lausanne
Academy, preparing for examinations
against the grain, but to set against this
he indulged his passion for drawing by
piling up sketches on sketches, thus mark-
ing out his true path for the future. When
the necessity of earning a living arose, he
was sent by his family to work for a
manufacturer friend of theirs at Mulhouse,
where his business was to make designs
for fabrics ; and here he was first initiated
into those circles of working-men which
he was afterwards to delineate so power-
fully. But Paris was an obsession with
him, and in 1881 he arrived there, armed

with a letter of recommendation to an
obscure painter in Montmartre named
Chardiny. He was not long in finding a
post as a trade designer in a workshop
for printed fabrics. 000a
Steinlen was, then, in his practical
beginnings, simply an artisan, like so
many other great artists, whose natural
gifts seem to have come to fruition through
hard necessity and rough manual toil.
He always retained, impressed on his
inmost being, a vivid recollection of this
time spent among the poor ; and in look-
ing through his work we find on every
hand the reflection of their hardships,
their miseries and their revolts. For in
this work there is nothing of the dis-
interested observer or the indifferent
dilettante. Steinlen always puts his art
at the service of a cause or an ideal, with

WASH DRAWING
BY T. A. STEINLEN

(By courtesy of
Madame Inghelbrecht)

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