Page:The illustrators of Montmartre.pdf/48



broad, open style, and a yery charming and delicate sensc of colour. His favourite medium is apparently the chalk point, which he handles vigorously; occasionally, however, he varies his method by using pen and ink.

For ten years past his brilliant work has graced the pages of Gil Blas illustré. He is essentially the artist of lovers; and no better choice of an illustrator for that paper's series, "Les Poétes de Amour," than that of Paul Balluriau could have been made.

To judge by these illustrations Cupid has handed ever all the resultant knowledge of his long experience to Balluriau; for there is very little about the outward signs of love and passion which he has not carefully noted, thereafter to render in his drawings. From the first shy gesture to the tender murmur of adoration, and thence, through the whole gamut, to the frenzied passion of uncontrollable love — we find the recording crayon of Balluriau to be ever present.

The settings in which he places his graceful lovers, his Bacchanalian dances, his fauns and his nymphs, are suitably idyllic and beautiful.

Innumerable are the backgrounds of fair lawns shaded by great trees, of lovely bowers, and of secluded nooks in some great park in Dreamland.

Perhaps there is some scrio-comic difficulty to be settled, and we see two charming little ladies, in high powdered coiffures and bared to the waist, fighting a duel with swords under the trees, Or perhaps it is