Page:The illustrators of Montmartre.pdf/78



and shoulders, or of a shapely ankle, is frequently accomplished by the merest touch of the chalk — but a touch in exactly the right place, and of exactly the right size.

Wély has contributed te the pages of the Frou Frou, and very frequently to La Vie en Rose. His small illustrations to "Aristophane à Paris," and to "La Maitresse du Prince Jean," which first appeared in the latter journal, are full of ability, humour and vivacity, A drawing entitled Quelques Predictions pour 1902, shows us a delightful little coquette in déshabillé, who is consulting the cards with an old woman fortune-teller, the while a tiny kitten plays with a ball of worsted. "They are so life-like and so subtly depicted that we almost expect to see them move on the paper. Passe temps du jeune Age, is one of the most astoundingly able and beautiful studies of the nude that one can recall by any artist, and also appears in La Vie en Rose.

The type of man usually introduced into our artist's drawings is not conspicuous for its beauty; it generally depicts a bit of a scamp, a don viveur, who is used artistically as a foil to some fresh and dainty young person of the opposite sex.

Several pages in colour, which appeared in the Vie en Rose, evinced a charmingly refined sense in that direction; while some illustrated covers for Le Rabelais, each most successfully dealing with