[AFFAIRE DREYFUS] Musée des horreurs - Affiche originale lithographiée en couleurs - n°21 "Del-Lâchoda devant l'Angleterre 11xbre 1898"

Original lithographed color poster depicting Théophile Delcassé as a circus poodle.
Transverse folds and minor marginal tears without loss.

Distributed between October 1899 and December 1900 in a France inflamed by the Dreyfus Affair, these immense color caricature portraits are the work of Victor Lenepveu who announced the publication of 150 then 200 drawings and ultimately produced only about fifty. Despite the 1881 press freedom law allowing the distribution of politically subversive imagery, the publication of this nightmarish pantheon was interrupted by order of the Ministry of the Interior.

The fragility of the paper and the imposing format of these extremely violent posters, as well as their almost immediate seizure by the police, contributed to the disappearance of these caricatures which nevertheless strongly marked public opinion.

These horrors benefited from wide promotion by antisemitic newspapers which announced a fantasized print run of 300,000 copies, thus insinuating the success of antisemitic ideas among the population.

On October 1, 1899, L'Intransigeant announced the publication of the Musée des horreurs in its columns: "A very witty artist, whose pencil stroke is intensely comic, M. V. Lenepveu, had the happy idea of inaugurating a series of portraits of the most famous sellouts of the Dreyfusard rabble. The title of this series 'Musée des Horreurs' is sufficiently suggestive and clearly indicates what it promises. [...] It is the Hayard house that will put on sale, starting today, number 1 of this hilarious series." First a street vendor then a bookseller-publisher, Napoléon Hayard (known as Léon Hayard) specialized in the commercialization of anti-Dreyfusard and antisemitic ephemera and placards.

However, only very rare examples in fine condition of these pamphlet caricatures that participated in the social and political fracture of France survive today. Published during the full expansion of the written press - at the same time as Émile Zola's famous "J'accuse...!" - these propaganda documents had a significant impact particularly on young generations and prefigure the ideological violence of the 20th century.