“My method of work is not different to that of the other masters,” Besnard says. “I first make a design in wash and then colour it liberally, put in all the vibration that I see and feel in nature.” (He has chosen his definition happily, Vibration is a distinct quality of his work). “I am really glad you do not think I represent a school! I feel myself a solitary as far as my art goes.... I love motion, and action, and variety, and yet withal I am a dreamer, completely lost in my conception and in my mental preparation for my work. For this reason, perhaps because I am so constantly absorbed in the world of imagination, my taste in literature is for modern things--for immediate things, if I may so say. I rise at seven in the morning, and am at work at nine. I paint until luncheon, and rarely do good work in the afternoons. I take my inspirations, the ideas for my pictures, from everything that surrounds me. I cannot tell from where they come, but I am always seeking to accurately arrange my ideas and render my conceptions and my translations of them harmonious.” In the summer Besnard goes to Savoie, where in the long vacations he does almost no work, repairing his forces, resting and giving himself to the enjoyment of his tranquil, domestic life. “I think I may say that I love light above all things.” And in no modern paintings is the luminous quality more evident. Certain of his paintings possess the mellowness of the Dutch school. There is a likeness to Rubens in his treatment of flesh, in the exuberance and splendid animalism of his women, whereas in the half-tones and sombre scheme (take, for instance, “Le Regard”), Franz Hals and Porbus are recalled. Light is his motive in the ceiling of the Hôtel de Ville. It radiates in the crucible of fire in the Sorbonne ceiling, whilst the decoration of the Français, Apollo the Sun god, again repeats the insistent idea. Besnard’s predilection for prismatic, dazzling effect is unique; a special sense for colour combined with magnificent technique and accurate drawing, explain the power of his painting and his high rank in the criticism of the present. Besnard is in the vigorous prime of his life and production. His redundant creative force is enormous and he will, it is to be hoped and believed, abundantly add to France’s treasures of modern art. STEINLEN One cannot think of Steinlen, Willette, Guillaume, Rivière, Léandre, and their colleagues in the same school, without having before one’s eyes an image of the multi-populous, seething quarter of Paris wherein these clever nineteenth-century seers and priests of a certain cult lived and moved, without remembering Montmartre, and the famous cabaret _Le Chat Noir_, once on the Boulevard Rochechouart.