Page:Picture Posters.djvu/122

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102
PICURE POSTERS.

of many collectors. It is significant that already the rarest of them are by no means easy to procure.

The art of Ibels is as little comprised in the poster as that of Steinlen. It is happily characteristic of young artists of the present day, both here and in France, that painting is not the only god of their æsthetic adoration: they experiment in many mediums, and it is really remarkable in how great a number of such experiments they succeed. What is generally true, is especially so of H. G. Ibels. Like Grasset, he has held an exhibition of his pictures at the Salon des Cent; he has made his mark in the galleries of the Champs de Mars; he has designed the covers of several pieces of music, and of a volume of poems by his brother, entitled "Chansons Colorées"; in addition, he is well known as a book illustrator. His point of view is somewhat akin to that of Toulouse Lautrec: he is passionately interested in his own moment, and depicts modern life with similar insistence on its ugly and grotesque aspects. And yet Ibels rarely fails to be decorative, and his style is the outcome of his own artistic personality, rather than the result of study of the work of other men. In his posters he has been conspicuously successful; so much so, that it is difficult to point to a single failure, though, it must be remembered, that as yet his productions have not been very numerous. It is possible