CARAN D'ACHE.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIII, Issue 59, 5 March 1909, Page 3

CARAN D'ACHE.

(By Frank Morton,)

The New Zealand papers have had strangely little to say concerning Caran d'Aehe, whose, death is announced. This silence is tho strange* by reason of the fact that Caran d'Aehe was the greatest comic artist of the Avorldj and easily one of the greatest caricaturists. A Frenchman (albeit Russian by accident of birth), Emmanuel Poire had nothing in his work of what we godly British are pleased to condemn as French viciousness. We British have a habifc of assuming that there is no humour toequal British humour, but none of our artists has approached Oaran d'Aehe as a humourist. With a splendid gift of satire, he was always humane and gay; he lashed abuses none the less effectively because his lash had silk in the plait. Though most of his work was deliberately comic, though much was almost madly grotesque, he was none the less proficient in what we (the omniscient British) are pleased to distinguish as "serious" art. His facility was prodigious, his mastery of line superb. In even the most extravagant of his caricatures there lurks a striking likeness. He was the only great French satirist who caricatured the Kaiser kindly, and it is in the record that the Kaiser entertained an enthusiastic admiration of his caricaturist's art.

M. Lucien Puech wrote some years ago : —Caran d'Ache ! I don't knowwhy I am not content to write his name merely^ without adding a word. After all, what can I teach you concerning him? That he is,the first caricaturist of the day? But yon know that as well as I do. "What appears much more astonishing is that he continues to have always the same verve, and that twice weekly still he is able to supply two pages of the most enthralling fantasy to tho readers of the Journal and of Figaro. He is actuality made man. The tiniest .little incident furnishes him an opportunity to give the world a series of drawings not only witty but impregnated with a charming philosophy.

Thpre you have no extravagance of praise, but a very moderate statement of the truth: Caran d'Ache was emphatically one of those rare men whom, having not seen, we loved.