The Illustrators of Montmartre/Chapter 9
IX
LOUIS MALTESTE
AMONG the workers on the French illustrated papers none produces a steadier flow of thoroughly conscientious, sound work than Louis Malteste.
His are no chance effects, no tours de force of mere eccentricity or charlatanism, but are the outcome of knowledge, hard work and assurance.
He is a splendid draughtsman, unerring and direct, a seeker and finder of individual character, who does not attempt to electrify the world with his audacity, or his at-any-cost originality; for he is content to delineate for us, in masterly fashion, specimens of humanity as they appear to the man of keen discernment.
At the time of the loathsome trials of Dreyfus, Malteste was one of several artists who specially distinguished themselves by splendid sketches of the actors concerned therein, In the writer's possession is a collection of these spirited and life-like drawings. They are doubly admirable when one considers under what disadvantages they were produced. The task of the artist, told off to a sweltering, ever-crowded court-house, surcharged with violent excitement, and commissioned to make portrait groups of interested persons, who are incessantly changing their positions, is none toe easy. Yet these drawings show no hesitation; in each case some fleeting gesture or attitude is caught in a vigorous drawing, and fixed for ever.
No wonder then that publishers such as Hachette, and the weekly illustrated papers Le Monde Illustré, L' Illustration, &c., should have availed themselves of his talent; or that when he turned his crayon to more fanciful subjects he should have found a ready outlet in the pages of such papers as La Vie en Rose, Le Rire, L' assiette au Beurre, and many others, wherein to let fly that gauloiserie which flows in the veins of even the most serious Frenchman.
Most of the drawings in La Vie en Rose are excellent works in chalk of actions governed by sudden impulse; and, in technique, strongly recall the admirable drawings of the English draughtsman, Gunning King, whose work Malteste has probably never seen, It is most likely, however, that the style of both artists has largely resulted from profound and well-placed admiration of the work of the veteran Renouard.
There is in La Vie en Rose an amusing series of drawings by Malteste of coachmen of all grades — each a strong piece of work, full of character, and well placed on the page. Another series in colour consists of fancy portraits of potentates; here again Malteste has distinguished himself, as witness the Léopold, Roi des Belges, a harmony in white, yellow, and brown. Malteste shows himself as a tender colourist in the excellent drawing of a milking scene, entitled La Traite des Blanches; another farm scene, Le Fléau, is as excellent an example of black and white work, and only surpassed by the chalk drawing Psychologue, a superb delineation of two ragged, storm-beaten rag pickers toiling homewards with their baskets.
His little studies of queer bits of gnarled humanity are splendid; witness his Femmes Fidèles, La Femme qui prise, his droll lady who declares There is nothing hike good swig, his Woman with a Dog, his Woman with the Cats, or the group called Types of Electors in the Ville Lumière. We recognise all those electors at first sight; there is the heavy, obstinate man, who gets his way by force of sheer dead-weight, there the suave complaisant "good-sort," there the pugnacious, quixotic fellow, who adores a riotous meeting, there the pensive philosopher, and so on. There is no mistaking the true character of any one of them; to a companion page of Femmes Infidèles the same remarks apply.
A noteworthy quality in Malteste's work is the invariably excellent drawing of the hands. To any but the surest draughtsmen hands are a veritable bête noire, to be avoided whenever possible,
Besides his reputation as an illustrator, Malteste has made his mark as a painter of note, and in collaboration with Gelis-Didot has executed a charming poster for L' Absinthe Parisienne; while his poster for the Thêatre Antoine is one of the finest things of its kind yet produced,
DE TOULOUSE LAUTREC
