In particular, _Chéret_, one of the most original artists of our time--Chéret, the great king of posters, the monarch of a fabulously charming world, in which everything gleams in blue and red and orange, cannot be passed over in a history of painting. The flowers which he carelessly strews on all sides with his spendthrift hand are not destined for preservation in an historical herbarium; his works are transient flashes of spirit, brilliantly shining, ephemera, but a bold and subtle Parisian art is concealed amid this improvisation. Settled for many years in London, Jules Chéret had there already drawn admirable placards, which are now much sought after by collectors.
In 1866 he introduced this novel branch of industry into France, and gave it--thanks to the invention of machines which admit of the employment of the largest lithographic stones--an artistic development which could not have been anticipated. He has created many thousands of posters. The book-trade, the great shops, and almost all branches of industry owe their success to him. His theatrical posters alone are amongst the most graceful products of modern art: La Fête des Mitrons, La Salle de Frascati, Les Mongolis, Le Chat Botté, L'Athénée Comique, Fantaisies Music-Hall, La Fée Cocotte, Les Tsiganes, Les Folies-Bergères en Voyage, Spectacle Concert de l'Horloge, Skating Rink, Les Pillules du Diable, La Chatte Blanche, Le Petit Faust, La Vie Parisienne, Le Droit du Seigneur, Cendrillon, Orphée aux Enfers, Éden Théâtre, etc. These are mere posters, destined to hang for a few days at the street corners, and yet in graceful ease, sparkling life, and coquettish bloom of colour they surpass many oil paintings which flaunt upon the walls of the Musée Luxembourg.
Amongst the illustrators _Willette_ is perhaps the most charming, the most brilliant in grace, fancy, and spirit. A drawing by him is something living, light, and fresh. Only amongst the Japanese, or the great draughtsmen of the _rococo_ period, does one find plates of a charm similar to Willette's tender poems of the "Chevalier Printemps" or the "Baiser de la Rose." At the same time there is something curiously innocent, something primitive, naïve, something like the song of a bird, in his charming art. No one can laugh with such youthful freshness. No one has such a childlike fancy. Willette possesses the curious gift of looking at the world like a boy of sixteen with eyes that are not jaded for all the beauty of things, with the eyes of a schoolboy in love for the first time. He has drawn angels for Gothic windows, battles, and everything imaginable; nevertheless, woman is supreme over his whole work, ruined and pure as an angel, cursed and adored, and yet always enchanting. She is Manon Lescaut, with her soft eyes and angelically pure sins. She has something of the lovely piquancy of the woman of Brantôme, when she disdainfully laughs out of countenance poor Pierrot, who sings his serenades to her plaintively in the moonlight. One might say that Willette is himself his Pierrot, dazzled with the young bosoms and rosy lips: at one time graceful and laughing, wild as a young fellow who has just escaped from school; at another earnest and angry, like an archangel driving away the sinful; to-day fiery, and to-morrow melancholy; now in love, teasing, blithe, and tender, now gloomy and in mortal trouble. He laughs amid tears and weeps amid laughter, singing the _Dies Iræ_ after a couplet of Offenbach; himself wears a black-and-white garment, and is, at the same time, mystic and sensuous. His plates are as exhilarating as sparkling champagne, and breathe the soft, plaintive spirit of old ballads.
