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Theophile Alexandre Steinlen
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Eagerly sought after by collectors, the evocative and beautifully rendered drawings of Gil Blas Illustre invite the reader to view turn-of-the-century Paris through the eyes of a witty, sophisticated, compassionate and sharp-eyed Steinlen. Created during a ten-year span (1891-1900) when Steinlen was the artistic mainstay of the celebrated Paris weekly Gil Bias Illustré, his drawings embellished the magazine's covers and illustrated a wide variety of songs, poems and stories.
The varied scope of his subject matter suited Steinlen's talents especially well. Like his great contemporary Toulouse-Lautrec (whose work was a strong influence), Steinlen was thoroughly at home in the bistros and cabarets of Montmartre, depicting artists, models, actors, singers and musicians with the authority born of intimate knowledge. Steinlen, however, was also well acquainted both with other parts of the city and other levels of society, enabling him to portray laborers, streetwalkers, farmers and aristocrats with equal facility.
In these striking illustrations of the stories, songs and poems that appeared in Gil Bias Illustré (whose contributors included such literary lights as Zola, Maupassant, Verlaine and Daudet), Steinlen specialized in recording small revealing moments of la comédie humaine: abandoned children feeding a stray cat (superbly drawn cats are a Steinlen trademark); a drunken husband returning home; the start of a love affair; visiting a brothel; a thief s remorse; construction workers viewing a funeral, and numerous other commonplace occurrences. Transformed by Steinlen's social conscience, sly satire and singular perception of human nature, such everyday incidents offer a revealing glimpse, not only of fin-de-siecle Paris, but of the passions and concerns that animate all people.
It comes as no surprise then, that the artist most closely associated with Gil Blas Illustré -with most of the covers to his credit, and with contributions appearing between July 5, 1891 (the second numbered issue) and December 28, 1900-was Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen. It is for the sake of the Steinlen covers and song illustrations that copies of Gil Blas Illustré are still avidly collected, and it was during his years on that magazine that Steinlen attained the peak of his form. The name of one instantly recalls the name of the other.
Born in Lausanne, in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, Steinlen arrived in Paris in 1882, he soon became an integral and vital part of Montmartre's artistic bo-hemia. His first lithographs, in 1884, were illustrations for songs by the populist cabaretier Aristide Bruant; by an odd coincidence, his first picture in Gil Blas Illustré also accompanied a Bruant song. In 1885, Steinlen commenced his important poster production, which eventually included such famous works as "Motocycles Comiot" and "Lait pur stérilisé de la Vingeanne." Murals and book illustrations were also part of the artist's activities, but his chief occupation between 1882 and 1913 was as artistic contributor and adviser to over thirty magazines, some of which he founded and directed. Gil Blas Illustré was a major Steinlen outlet, for both quantity and quality.
Some of Steinlen's work elsewhere emphasized particular aspects of his art more strongly - pleas for social justice in his drawings for the journal L'Assiette au Beurre, somber studies of harrowed humanity in his World War posters-but the diversified nature of the stories, poems and songs he was illustrating for Gil Blas gave the broadest possible scope to his art. In Montmartre exteriors and interiors, Steinen is truly in his element, but he is equally familiar with countless other aspects of Parisian life. His interiors range from exclusive clubs and salons to hovels and garrets; his exteriors, from busy shopping streets to shabby alleys —all populated by vividly observed humanity. The artist is especially successful in capturing all types of atmospheric phenomena and effects of natural or artificial light. Some of the stories allow him to introduce his "trademarks," the cats he loved and drew so well.
Numerous Steinlen scenes, especially those in dance halls, theaters and brothels, are strongly reminiscent of his great contemporary Toulouse-Lautrec, whose art was a major influence on Steinlen, along with that of Degas, Rodin and other notables of the Post-Impressionist generation. Steinlen rarely achieved the supreme heights of Toulouse-Lautrec in boldness of vision and incisiveness of draftsmanship, but on the other hand he was much broader in outlook and richer in human warmth.
In Gil Blas Illustré, Steinlen's social consciousness emerges in scenes of laborers, vagabonds and abused children; it is interesting to note that whereas the text of the poem "The Tortured Plants" (Vol. 10, No. 24, June 15, 1900) refers only to the plants themselves, the artist has introduced as his principal figure a human being who is tortured by the toil involved in their cultivation. In the same vein, he often ennobles the figures and milieu of common people who are presented much more crassly or satirically by the authors of the stories, as in "Love's Hell" (Vol 10, No. 11; March 16, 1900), where the brasserie was meant to be a really low dive.
Steinlen takes other liberties with the text. Sometimes he provides the people and settings out of whole cloth; for instance, the poem "You That Loved Me Once" (Vol. 6, No. 48; November 27, 1896) is completely generalized, without action or plot, and the picture is entirely the artist's invention - one possible view of a lovers' meeting out of the infinity of possibilities. Similarly, the song "You'll Exit
Feet First" (Vol. 5, No. 24; June 16, 1895) merely states that all people die, no matter how rich, famous, etc.; the brilliantly executed scene of laborers watching a funeral cortège from their lofty perch is Steinlen's personal contribution. In the text of "A Conquest in Sicily" (Vol. 8, No. 25; June 24, 1898) there is no indication that the poet telling the story is a foolish bore or that his fellow dinner guests are anything but attentive! The only possible connection between the seaside composition for "Eye Worship" (Vol. 7, No. 32; August 6, 1897) and the text seems to be that the story is part of a series called Contes au bord de la mer. For a few other illustrations the connection is even more tenuous if it exists at all.
Total lack of connection between text and picture is very rare, but it is exceedingly characteristic of Steinlen to avoid the exciting climax, or other action-filled part, of a story and to give instead a quiet view of the locale and characters at a neutral moment. When a gory murder or suicide has taken place, he almost invariably depicts horrified or curious onlookers after the event-as in "Head and Heart" (Vol. 6, No. 52; December 25, 1896), "The Attachment of Property" (Vol. 9, No. 10; March 10, 1899), "Plantureau's Prospectuses" (Vol. 9, No. 12; March 24, 1899) and "Guillotines" (Vol. 10, No. 37; September 14, 1900). Similarly, Steinlen never depicts the explicit eroticism of a large number of the stories; the crucial act of adultery in "Empty Superstition" (Vol. 10, No. 34; August 24, 1900) takes place behind closed and guarded doors. Though it does depict the precise climax of the anecdote, the illustration for "Two Birds with One Stone" (Vol. 8, No. 39; September 30, 1898) is an outstanding example of relegating emotional stress to the remote background of a picture that makes its real impact on the viewer by its strong formal composition.
Text Source:
-Theophile-Alexandre Stainlen: Steinlen’s Drawings – Plates from “Gil Blas Illustre”. New York; Dover, 1980.
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