Musée des horreurs - Affiche originale lithographiée en couleurs - n°3 "A la niche !"

Original lithographed color poster representing Louis Lépine as a dog. Behind him is drawn an imposing sign on which is indicated: "Liberté ! Egalité ! Fraternité !!! Ordre d'arrêter et de conduire immédiatement au poste tous les vendeurs du Musée des horreurs" ["Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!!! Order to arrest and immediately conduct to the station all sellers of the Musée des horreurs"], in reference to the arrests of street vendors selling the publication.
Transverse folds, one tear without loss to left margin partially filled by a paper stamp.
Distributed between October 1899 and December 1900 in a France inflamed by the Dreyfus Affair, these immense colored satirical portraits are the work of Victor Lenepveu who announced the publication of 150 then 200 drawings and finally produced only about fifty. Despite the press freedom law of 1881 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 very 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.
On October 1^st, 1899, L'Intransigeant announced the publication of the Musée des horreurs in its columns: « Un dessinateur de beaucoup d'esprit, au coup de crayon d'un comique intense, M. V. Lenepveu, a eu l'heureuse idée d'inaugurer une série de portraits des vendus les plus célèbres de la tourbe dreyfusarde. Le titre de cette série « Musée des Horreurs » est suffisamment suggestif et indique bien ce qu'il promet. [...] C'est la maison Hayard qui mettra en vente, à partir d'aujourd'hui, le numéro 1 de cette désopilante série. » ["A very witty draftsman, with an intensely comic pencil stroke, M. V. Lenepveu, has had the happy idea of inaugurating a series of portraits of the most famous sellouts of the Dreyfusard mob. 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 bookseller-publisher, Napoléon Hayard (known as Léon Hayard) specialized in the commercialization of anti-Dreyfusard and antisemitic ephemera and broadsides.
These horreurs benefited from wide promotion by antisemitic newspapers which announced a fantasized print run of 300,000 copies, thus insinuating the success of antisemitic ideas in the population.
However, only very rare copies in fine condition of these pamphlet caricatures that participated in the social and political fracture of France survive today. Published at the height of the written press boom - at the same time as Emile Zola's famous "J'accuse !" - these propaganda documents notably had a significant impact on young generations and prefigured the ideological violence of the 20^th century.