his drawings are irresistibly humorous, and are always excellent works of art.
Caran d'Ache was born in Moscow, of French parents, but when twenty years of age he came to Paris, where his innate talent soon evinced itself.
While undergoing his military service in the early eighties his unquenchable passion for drawing was put by the authorities to their practical use, in making studies of past and current military uniforms for the War Office. The costumes of the glorious Napoleonic era and of Germany were made a speciality, and the knowledge thus acquired was carefully retained by the young artist, and served him in good stead in his later years.
Caran d'Ache, like every thorough-going Frenchman, preserves his love for the army, incidents in whose life he is never tired of depicting with that spirited brilliance we have come to know so well. And the military officer's smartness of bearing has stuck to him, for he is recognised as an "ultra chic" a very dandy among the illustrators, and an eccentric one at that. Yet at the same time he refuses to associate himself with the smart set in Paris; he has too much of the artist temperament for that.
He was early attracted to the "Chat Noir" on the Butte of Montmartre, and Rudolph Salis — that keen exploiter or genial art patron, which you will — was not long in appreciating the talent of his client. Soon we hear of him achieving an artistic
