Page:The illustrators of Montmartre.pdf/99



Austria, the King of the Belgians and King Menelik, all come in for a more or less trying pictorial analysis by Léandre, The drawing of Menelik is a most wonderful piece of work, but unfortunately intended to be humiliating to Italy; and here we may mention that Léandre has always been attracted by general political cartooning, as well as his more frequent local cartoon work, but however much his estimate of the nations, as seen from the Gallic point of view, may tickle outsiders, we feel he is a good Frenchman, and the artistic quality of his work never fails. His double-page drawing in Le Rire of the "Senators going to War against the Chamber" is crowded with caricature portraits of politicians hurrying out to do vigorous battle, each showing by the introduction of some subtle little device his own marked peculiarity or fad.

Léandre has frequently introduced a self-portrait into his sketches, and he is evidently as critical of himself as of others. He always shows us a serio-comic little man with chubby cheeks, bulging, spectacled eyes, and a big inquisitive nose dominating a small turned-up moustache and starveling beard. Some of his own military service adventures he has depicted for us in mock heroic style in "Les Treize Jours de Léandre." Among notable caricature portraits is that of Drumont, the arch Jew-baiter. In a coloured drawing entitled "The Ogre's Repast," we see this noisome person with a chain of Semite "portions" round his neck poising a gory