Refugiés c. 1918

Théophile Alexandre Steinlen made this drawing, Refugiés, with charcoal and crayon on paper. Look at the way Steinlen used simple marks, delicate lines and hatching, to render the figures in the foreground. There is a tenderness in his lines, particularly in the faces of the subjects depicted, their vulnerability is palpable. The background is even more sparse, just a few strokes to suggest a ruined landscape, a ghost of a city. He captures a moment of movement, the act of fleeing, with just a few figures. I wonder what he was thinking when he made it? Was he looking at something? You know, artists are always in conversation with one another. I imagine Steinlen was familiar with the work of Daumier and others who were making powerful, sympathetic images of working people in France. I feel like these artists show us what it means to be human, and that’s something that stays with us, and maybe changes us, in the looking.