that they are charming, though charming in manner entirely different; Lautrec's productions, alluring and powerful as they are, can by no stretch of the word be so described. He does not seek to attract you by joyousness of colour or grace of pattern, but rather to compel your attention by the force of his realism or the curiosity of his grotesqueness. For his posters are at once realistic and grotesque; they are delineations of life as seen by a man who, possessing the most acute powers of observation, is poignantly impressed by the incongruities of modern life, the physical peculiarities of modern men. He has some points of similarity with Hogarth, with Rowlandson; and the like, but his art is quite non-moral; he has no mission to depict vice as either hideous or ridiculous. His extraordinary "Reine de Joie," perhaps the most powerful, and certainly the least agreeable, of his posters, is a statement of fact rather than a criticism. This great bill, owing to the vehemence of the expression on the faces of the three people it represents, to the wonderful vigour of its line, to its extraordinarily effective, though simple, colour, is one of the most powerful designs of the kind ever accomplished. It may be doubted whether any book has been advertised in so unforgettable a manner as _La Reine de Joie_. For the Paris _cafe chantant_ artiste who possesses the charming name of Jane Avril, this designer has devised a grotesque decoration, which could not fail imperiously to call attention to her talents as a dancer. Inspired it may be by her name, it may be [Illustration: 0084] by a happy accident, Lautrec has employed a scheme of colour in which are found the pale [Illustration: 0086]