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Paul Balluriau
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Balluriau is best known as the artist who has supplemented Steinlen's realism in the pages of the Gil Blas Illustré with drawings full of fancy and imagination. Just as we shall call Morin the Watteau, so he may be styled the Boucher of the modern French press.
His work, however, has not been confined to the pages of Gil Blas, for his gay and irresponsible (we had almost said reckless and unfettered) sketches have been noticeable in many another journal of far less steady gait. Nor has he restricted himself entirely to allegorical or eighteenth-century pastoral subjects. Occasionally he bursts forth as a strong modern realist, walking sturdily in Steinlen's steps.
Balluriau has that thorough knowledge of the human figure which enables him to draw it with freedom and certainty, and makes him a painter of classical allegories par excellence.
Further, he has a broad, open style, and a very charming and delicate sense of colour. His favourite medium is apparently the chalk point, which he handles vigorously ; occasionally, however, he varies his method by using pen and ink. For ten years past his brilliant work has graced the pages of Gil Blas Illustré. He is essentially the artist of lovers ; and no better choice of an illustrator for that paper's series, "Les Poètes de l'Amour," than that of Paul Balluriau could have been made. To judge by these illustrations Cupid has handed over all the resultant knowledge of his long experience to Balluriau ; for there is very little about the outward signs of love and passion which he has not carefully noted, thereafter to render in his drawings. From the first shy gesture to the tender murmur of adoration, and thence, through the whole gamut, to the frenzied passion of uncontrollable love—we find the recording crayon of Balluriau to be ever present.
The settings in which he places his graceful lovers, his Bacchanalian dances, his fauns and his nymphs, are suitably idyllic and beautiful. Innumerable are the backgrounds of fair lawns shaded by great trees, of lovely bowers, and of secluded nooks in some great park in Dreamland. Perhaps there is some serio-comic difficulty to be settled, and we see two charming little ladies, in high powdered coiffures and bared to the waist, fighting a duel with swords under the trees. Or perhaps it is twilight, and some deep and placid stream murmuring beneath the darkling trees carries on its bosom a fairy bark and its cargo of love. Then it is the mysterious hour of moonrise, and in the shadow of the garden wall, which climbs serpent-like up hill and down dale, we shall find our lovers serenely happy, but hushed by the beauty of the waking night.
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