An officer of Jewish descent in the French artillery, Captain Alred Dreyfus (1859-1939) was accused and convicted of betraying military secrets to the Germans. This act of treason earned him a lifetime prison sentence on Devil's Island in 1894. There was just one problem: Dreyfus was innocent; he was framed by the real traitor, Major Esterhazy. And though evidence was uncovered attesting to Dreyfus' innocence, it was suppressed by the military, leading to the most divisive, anti-Semitic occurrences in French history. Finally pardoned in 1906 by the Cour de Cassation, he became a symbol of injustice for liberal intellectuals who vigorously opposed the right-wing reactionary forces of the military and the church. "V. Lenepveu's Musée des Horreurs, a series of fifty-one political posters defaming prominent statesmen, journalists, Dreyfusards, and Jews, appeared weekly in Paris, starting in the fall of 1899, after the retrial at Rennes. The series was stopped by an order of the Ministry of the Interior about one year later" (Dreyfus, p. 244). This is the complete collection of the 50 images, printed by the artist himself, and each linen-backed. The denigrating bestial menagerie naturally include vile caricatures, but also target prominent figures involved in the case. It's an astounding testimonial to the power of art—regardless of the lunacy of the creator's convictions.
Imp. Lenepveu, Paris
literature: Dreyfus, 169-177; DFP-II, 518-551; La Propagande, p. 59; PAI-XXXI, 504