Paul Renouard has devoted himself to newspaper illustration, but with what surprising prodigality of spirit and knowledge!  The readers of the “Graphic” will know.  This masterly virtuoso of the pencil might give drawing-lessons to many members of the Institute!  The feeling for the life of crowds, psychology of types, spirited and rapid notation, astonishing ease in overcoming difficulties—­these are his undeniable gifts.  And again we must recognise in Renouard the example of Degas and Manet.  His exceptional fecundity only helps to give more authority to his pencil.  Renouard’s drawings at the Exhibition of 1900 were, perhaps, more beautiful than the rest of his work.  There was notably a series of studies made from the first platform of the Eiffel Tower, an accumulation of wonders of perspectives framing scenes of such animation and caprice as to take away one’s breath.

Finally, Auguste Lepere appears as the Debucourt of our time.  As painter, pastellist and wood-engraver he has produced since 1870, and has won for himself the first place among French engravers.  It would be difficult to recount the volumes, albums and covers on which the fancy of his burin has played; but it is particularly in wood-engraving that he stands without rival.  Not only has he produced masterpieces of it, but he has passionately devoted himself to raising this admirable art, the glory of the beautiful books of olden days, and to give back to it the lustre which had been eclipsed by mechanical processes.  Lepere has started some publications for this purpose; he has had pupils of great merit, and he must be considered the master of the whole generation of modern wood-engravers, just as Cheret is the undisputed master of the poster.  Lepere’s ruling quality is strength.  He seems to have rediscovered the mediaeval limners’ secrets of cutting the wood, giving the necessary richness to the ink, creating a whole scale of half-tones, and specially of adapting the design to typographic printing, and making of it, so to say, an ornament and a decorative extension for the type.  Lepere is a wood-engraver with whom none of his contemporaries can be compared; as regards his imagination, it is that of an altogether curious artist.  He excels in composing and expressing the life, the animation, the soul of the streets and the picturesque side of the populace.  Herein he is much inspired by Manet and, if we go back to the real tradition, by Guys, Debucourt, the younger Moreau and by Gabriel de Saint-Aubin.  He is decidedly a Realist of French lineage, who owes nothing to the Academy and its formulas.