La très illustre compagnie du meaning

French painter

"Steinlen" redirects here. For the racehorse, see Steinlen (horse).

Théophile Alexandre Steinlen (November 10, – December 13, ), was a Swiss-born FrenchArt Nouveau painter and printmaker. He was politically engaged and collaborated with anarchist and socialist press.^[1]

Biography

Born in Lausanne, Switzerland,^[2] Steinlen studied at the University of Lausanne before taking a job as a designer trainee at a textile mill in Mulhouse in eastern France.

In his early twenties he was still developing his skills as a painter when he and his wife Emilie were encouraged by the painter François Bocion to move to the artistic community in the Montmartre Quarter of Paris.^[3] Once there, Steinlen was befriended by the painter Adolphe Willette who introduced him to the artistic crowd at Le Chat Noir that led to his commissions to do poster art for the cabaret owner/entertainer, Aristide Bruant and other commercial enterprises.

In the early s, Steinlen's paintings of rural landscapes, flowers, and nudes were being shown at the Salon des Indépendants. His lithograph titled Les Chanteurs des Rues was the frontispiece to a work entitled Chansons de Montmartre published by Éditions Flammarion with sixteen original lithographs that illustrated the Belle Époque songs of Paul Delmet.

Alexandre steinlen biography Steinlen was an emblematic artist of the late 19th century in Montmartre. He also drew, painted, illustrated, designed posters, and sculpted and had anarchist leanings. He preferred drawing and pastel to depicting everyday life on the street and the small trades. He studied theology at the University in Lausanne for two years, but abandoned the idea of becoming a pastor and turned to an artistic career. He was trained for industrial ornamental design in Mulhouse.

Five of his posters were published in Les Maîtres de l'Affiche.

His permanent home, Montmartre and its environs, was a favorite subject throughout Steinlen's life and he often painted scenes of some of the harsher aspects of life in the area. His daughter Colette was featured in much of his work.^[4] In addition to paintings and drawings, he also did sculpture on a limited basis, most notably figures of cats that he had great affection for as seen in many of his paintings.^[3] Steinlen included cats in many of his illustrations, and even published a book of his designs, Dessins Sans Paroles Des Chats.^[5]

Steinlen became a regular contributor to Le Rire and Gil Blas magazines plus numerous other publications including L'Assiette au Beurre and Les Humouristes, a short-lived magazine he and a dozen other artists jointly founded in ^[6] Between and , he produced hundreds of illustrations, a number of which were done under a pseudonym so as to avoid political problems because of their harsh criticisms of social ills.

His art influenced the work of other artists, including Pablo Picasso.^[7][2]

Théophile Steinlen died in in Paris and was buried in the Cimetière Saint-Vincent in Montmartre. Today, his works can be found at many museums around the world including at the Hermitage Museum in St.

Petersburg, Russia.

Le chat noir film

Art nouveau textiles

Lechatnoir

Steinlen black cat

and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., United States. A stone monument by Pierre Vannier was created for Steinlen in ; it is located in Square Joël Le Tac in Paris.^[8]

Selected works

• Cocorico ()

• La tournée du Chat Noir de Rodolphe Salis ()

• Mothu et Doria ()

• Lait Pur Stérilisé de la Vingeanne ()

• Café à Léon ()

• 25 Juin - Journée Serbe ()

References

External links