Page:The illustrators of Montmartre.pdf/63

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LOUIS MORIN
45

matters as the "Courrier Francais Hall," "Phe Ball of the Medical Students," and the final two Quat'z'arts Balls — at which latter the Paris art students and their models used, until the heavy hand of the law fell upon them, to vie with one another in producing the most artistic and audacious groups of revellers in (and without) fancy dress ever seen. Another chapter is devoted to a "Night Fête at Venice" in the olden time, with its scenes of love and revelry, Yet another, illustrated with silhouettes such as helped to make the success of the Chat Noir Theatre, deals with the influence of that institution on latter-day Art and Poetry. "Then follows an article on "Spanish and Eastern dances," illustrated with gracefully whirling votaries of the terpsichorean art; next comes a chapter on "Modern Sculpture," decorated with irresistibly comic drawings of models posing in excruciating attitudes to satisfy the modern sculptor's supposed craving for originality.

The amount of ingenuity, facility, and anatomical sureness shown in this little set astounds one,

Most of the drawings have evidently been done with every flexible pen, capable alike of giving a line that with but slight pressure passes from great delicacy to corresponding strength.

The Vie en Rose contained many contributions from Morin; occasionally he essayed a drawing executed with the bold thick line then in vogue, but anything approaching brutality in method or subject