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"But
if I must mention the real masters of cover-design
in colors up to the present time, let us pause
especially at the names of Grasset, Chéret,
Willette, and Georges Auriol."
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Nearly all the
celebrated painters have been approached by publishers, so
that it would be invidious to cite the names of the Salon
medallists and others who have adorned with a fleurette,
a portrait, or a scene the front cover of a book. Among
the illustrations of this article there is, for example, a
graceful female head signed Dagnan-Bouveret. This
enigmatical and elegant person is the author herself of
"Le Voyage de la Princesse Louli," Mme Charles
Laurent, the wife of a very well known journalist. In the
same way, the Sar Joseph Péladan sometimes has his books
modestly adorned with a drawing by Séon, depicting his
own magian's face, with eyes the Greeks would have called
"Boöpis," and his jovian hair, like the beard
of the colossus of Korsabad.
 But if I must
mention the real masters of cover-design in colors up to
the present time, let us pause especially at the names of
Grasset, Chéret, Willette, and Georges Auriol. Grasset
has signed some covers for stories and important
publications, in which his forceful and somewhat severe
manner appears distinctly. As to Chéret, the case is
somewhat peculiar. Since
the time when he worked for Jules Lévy, he has furnished
covers more particularly for the works of his friends
among men of letters, or of occasional unfortunate writers
who have justly thought that one of his sparkling
chromolithographs would be an attraction, and consequently
a cause of increased sale. He has tired of his posters and
that sort of work generally, and is devoting himself more
and more to
pastel and decorative painting, which he loves
enthusiastically. Nowadays, therefore,
he almost always begins by finding some pretext to refuse
a request. He has urgent work on hand for three months; he
hasn't a minute to himself; in three or four months he
will see, etc.; but his friend returns to the charge:
"Poor so-and-so has a sick wife and children. One of
your covers would make his book sell;" and Chéret
surrenders on the spot, bites his mustache, makes an
effort to conceal his emotion, and finally says: "Oh,
well, let so-and-so come in again in a fortnight, and his
cover will be done."
 But with Willette,
who has published some of the most brilliant and elegant
book decorations, it is quite another tune! If you can
wait a year or two, perhaps you shall have your cover. But
don't try to get it for any offer of money, if the book
and its author do not please this capricious Pierrot. If
your idea has attracted him, as did Jules Jouy's
"Chansons de Bataille," or the present author's
"L'Art du Eire," it need not be two years, nor
one year, nor even a fortnight that you must wait. Some
fine day, or rather fine night, he will set himself to
work, and in the morning he will bring you the drawing for
the same price that Chéret charges—that is to say for 0
francs, 00 centimes. Thus the poor chiefly enjoy Chéret's
favors, and the independent those of Willette; or rather
the poor and the independent secure from both of them
things which millionaires or academicians would beg in
vain.
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Georges Auriol,
the third of those I named, has made a special place
himself by covers in which flowers, which he understands
thoroughly, play the principal part in the decoration.
There are very pretty covers, too, by Steinlen, Caran
d'Ache, Toulouse-Lautrec, and others. And finally the
Décadents and the Symbolists have made a specialty of
singular covers with apparitions, cabalistic signs,
symbols of mourning, or treatment in pure white,
which are a mixture of subtlety and puerility —but
very amusing all the same as a sign of the times. I hardly know what to say (to finish this part of my
essay) is likely to be the future of cover illustration.
But one thing is notable, and that is, that already
certain publishers have found an opportunity to
distinguish themselves by a novelty — by returning to
covers that are entirely plain! Such are the
caprices of fashion! Books and women are going back to the
simple batiste of our grandmothers —and with the same
motive —coquetry!
If
we turn to the covers of songs, pieces of music, and
scores, and to the posters of the music publishers, we
shall find a slightly different state of things. In the
first place the cover - illustration of musical
compositions is of much older date than that of books, and
of a certain luxury and breadth. The romanze of the
good old times—say of Louis Philippe — and the
quadrilles our grandfathers danced, were almost always
ornamented with lithographs (in black and white only, it
is true). Some were of an audacious naiveté, and
provoke a smile nowadays by the fidelity with which they
preserve the costumes, tastes, and elegances of the period—especially
their absurdities. What crinolines and alpine
shepherdesses, what heart-conquering lancers, what superb
gentlemen with long side - whiskers and watch-charms, what
lovely sentimental beings with bands and ringlets!  But
there were masterpieces of romantic art, too,
decorating simple contredanses; I need only recall
the admirable lithographs by Célestin Nanteuil, which
bring very high prices today. Many well-known artists
signed (or drew without their signature) covers for songs
: Daumier, Gavarni, Millet, Daubigny, Français, Ribot,
and others. This decoration, therefore, is in no sense a
novelty, and I should not dwell on it further, if there
were not two rather important points to be noticed in
connection with it.
One is, that of late years the attempt has been made to
make true symphonies of music and painting, by securing a
certain fitness in the choice of composer and illustrator
relatively to one another. Thus Grasset, who is especially
learned in old legend and archaic art, was asked to make
the covers and posters for the works of Wagner, or for
scores filled with the languors of the Orient. So, too, M.
Besnard began the illustration of Beaudelaire's "Fleurs
du Mal," set to music by M. Gr. Charpentier. One
publisher, M. Biardot, went farther than his fellows, and
had Willette illustrate, incident by incident, and almost
phrase by phrase, the score of "L'Enfant prodigue."
It was a tour de force and a bold venture, but in
spite of its success the example has not been followed,
perhaps from fear of being thought merely imitative. Still
it is not unusual to find short musical fantasie diversified
by scenes and sketches; and it will always be possible to
make dainty little things of this sort when a bright
composer and a spirituel draughtsman can be brought
into collaboration. Some of the best experiments of the kind
have been made by the firms of Hengel and Hartmann.
Indeed, musical compositions, and especially the dramatic
situations of the great operas, seem made to suggest
pictures to a painter, like those with which "Lohengrin" and "Tannhauser" have
inspired Georges Rochegrosse (published by Durand &
Schoenewerk), or the "Valkyrie" Grasset. As
for songs, we shall easily find among these the names of
our customary illustrators, i.e., Willette, Auriol,
Chéret, Steinlen, etc.
The second point is that art—and real art—has for a
short time past been made to do duty in setting off the
repertory of songs of the most vulgar order—the
repertory of the cafés-concerts, to call it by its
right name. Is this a sign of the times, and a proof that
art is growing democratic, or democracy artistic, or
neither? At all events, a sign of the times. The vulgar
song of the beuglant, the absurdity made
fashionable by some variety actor with a momentary vogue,
the ridiculous nuisance in which rhyme and reason are both
conspicuous by their absence, or even the suggestive song,
all these have nowadays the most artistic dresses,
attractive masks covering deceptive faces. But there is,
after all, no reason to fear too greatly this
vulgarization of pictorial art; if refined painting has
taken a few steps toward a meeting with the poetry of the
gutter, the poetry of the café-concert is itself
tending toward a greater refinement and a true literary
note, or what promises to become so.
 It would need a considerable digression to show how
certain little conclaves of poets and fantastics, like
the Chat noir, the best known of all, have played
the part of intermediaries between poetry worthy of the
name—the poetry of those who are at least capable of
originality, rhythm, and orthography— and poetry unworthy
of the name, the more or less metrical platitude which has
prevailed in the Parisian music-halls. It is enough to
refer to this tendency, which perhaps deserves a more
detailed study. Certainly, at the rate we are going on, if
Alfred de Musset and Eugéne Delacroix were still alive,
they would be working for the café-concert in a few
years. Alfred de Musset would write songs for Yvette Gruilbert,
and Eugéne Delacroix would make a beautiful cover for
them. Lamartine himself would perhaps write a sentimental
piece to be spoken and "represented" by Mme
Judic, and the publisher would go fearlessly to ask M.
Ingres for a cover design. We are clearly not far from
such a state of things when writers and artists— some of
the most highly esteemed among them —are little by
little finding their way to the music-halls, where there
is success and money.
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