Page:The illustrators of Montmartre.pdf/18



man would out. In 1882 he journeyed to Paris; there to undergo much privation and many hard ships before getting a foothold drawing accepted by  paper "Le Chat Noir" which was to prove the first rung on his ladder to fame.

Rudolph Salis' artistic cabaret of the "Black Cat" was the editorial office of and at the same time a centre of all that was Bohemian and daring this paper, and go-ahead, a forcing ground of impatient talent. These first notable studies by Steinlen were of cats and of children. It was here that our artist met the authors whose work he was later to illustrate; more particularly he struck up a friendship with that fierce poet "cabaretier", Aristide Bruant, whose powerful and terror-striking poems dealt with the

very world that interested Steinlen to the quick, and provided him with the stimulus for many of his finest drawings. They both show us the, to of the us, shabby joys "faubouriens", and their terrible struggles with one another and with Dame Fortune.

Steinlen's field of labour has been in the so-called