It is in no way astonishing that Mile. Guilbert has strongly attracted Lautrec, and that he has frequently made her the subject of his work. No music-hall performer has, so far, approached this brilliant woman in ability or in artistic prestige. Like Patti and Sarah Bernhardt, she is implored to testify to the merits of every brand of soap or every new perfume; like them her reputation extends beyond the bounds of her native place, and she is the admired of several foreign capitals. If the flower of French art and literature assemble to honour Zola, the proceedings are incomplete without a song from her; if the fastidious De Goncourt is presented with the rosette of the Legion of Honour, what more fitting than that she should deliver a recitation? In some degree she sees the life of modern Paris in the same light as Lautrec; her wonderful delineations are realistic as are his, though their realism is touched with a suspicion of the grotesque. Amongst other things, she has inspired Lautrec to a series of illustrations remarkable alike in drawing and colour; and he has not disdained to design lithographs to adorn the covers of different items of her _repertoire_. Owing to his kindness, I am enabled to reproduce, as the frontispiece to this volume, a sketch for a poster which he designed for her, but which, unfortunately, has never got beyond the experimental stage. It seems to me a specially interesting example of a remarkable talent applied to a very congenial subject. The posters of Lautrec are something more than works of art; they are human documents strangely eloquent of their moment. For this reason, their value may be more permanent than that of the productions either of Cheret or Grasset, delightfully fantastic as are the former, charmingly decorative as are the latter. CHAPTER IV.--IN FRANCE: THE WORK OF WILLETTE, FORAIN, STEINLEN ANQUETIN, BONNARD, IBELS, VALLOTON, DE FEURE, AND McTIVET |It is not for a moment to be pretended that the artists with whom this chapter deals are in any sense members of a single school: they have, indeed, many more points of difference than of similarity. I deal with them together, because, speaking roughly, their designs are saturated with the spirit of the day: their decorations are realistic, rather than fantastic or picturesque. They lean towards Lautrec, rather than towards Cheret or Grasset, but they are in no sense his imitators; some of them, indeed, are actually his predecessors.