While undergoing his military service in the early eighties his unquenchable passion for drawing was put by the authorities to their practical use, in making studies of past and current military uniforms for the War Office. The costumes of the glorious Napoleonic era and of Germany were made a speciality, and the knowledge thus acquired was carefully retained by the young artist, and served him in good stead in his later years. Caran d’Ache, like every thorough-going Frenchman, preserves his love for the army, incidents in whose life he is never tired of depicting with that spirited brilliance we have come to know so well. And the military officer’s smartness of bearing has stuck to him, for he is recognised as an “_ultra chic_”,--a very dandy among the illustrators, and an eccentric one at that. Yet at the same time he refuses to associate himself with the smart set in Paris; he has too much of the artist temperament for that. He was early attracted to the “Chat Noir” on the Butte of Montmartre, and Rudolph Salis--that keen exploiter or genial art patron, which you will--was not long in appreciating the talent of his client. Soon we hear of him achieving an artistic triumph with his astoundingly perfect shadow pantomime, _L’Epopée_, at the little “Chat Noir” Theatre. Caran d’Ache had spared no trouble to make his silhouettes and the effects in which they were set as perfect as possible. No greater pains could have been taken preliminary to the painting of a series of Salon pictures; and he reaped fame as his reward. “_L’Epopée_” dealt with Napoleon’s succession of military triumphs. Opportunity was thus early given to M. Poiré to display his astonishing knowledge of the horse in all its varied attitudes. The horse he delights and excels in is a magnificent, proud, high-mettled beast, whom he puts at some breakneck charge, or causes to career about in high-strung excitement. Caran d’Ache’s army horses are not surpassed even by those of such acknowledged masters as Meissonier and Détaille. _The Studio_ published some splendid equine studies of his a year or so ago, which must have been a revelation to those who had previously looked on Caran d’Ache as a comic artist and nothing more.