Musée des horreurs – Original colour lithographed poster – n° 4 “Le Roi des Porcs” Imprimerie Lenepveu | Paris [November 1898] | 49,8 x 65,2 cm | one poster
Original colour lithographed poster depicting Émile Zola in the shape of a pig, sitting on a tub containing his fictional works and smearing “international poop” on the map of France.
Transverse folds, some tiny tears, two small holes above Zola's head, without affecting the image.
The representation of Émile Zola as a pig does not date back to Lenepveu, as Guillaume Doizy highlights in his article dedicated to pig caricatures (“Le porc dans la caricature politique (1870-1914): une polysémie contradictoire” in
Sociétés & Représentations n°27, 2009): “For the end of the 19th century, we also think of the many caricatures of which Zola was the victim and which associate excrement, symbols of naturalism, with pigs. Dozens of images could be mentioned. In the 1880s, Sapeck imagined the naturalist naked, a vine leaf hiding his genitals (a veiled reference to the supposed pornography of his writings), sitting astride a pig feeding on his excrement, a long-lasting symbol called to stigmatise the new literary school. In a caricature dated 1898, Alfred Le Petit shows a Zola-pig defecating on the tricolore flag. Barely a month after the publication of his famous “J'accuse”, the writer defending the Dreyfusard cause, is accused of defiling France, and especially its Army, by defending “the traitor” Dreyfus and Prussia, considered the eternal enemy. The pig is dirty, but above all, it dirties, defiles, by the effect of its harmful will. The same year, Caran d'Ache portrayed “the weapons of the Dreyfusard press” as a big pig sprawled in muck and covered with mud. [...] In his series
Le Musée des horreurs, the very right-handed Lenepveu violently attacks Zola. The writer is depicted as a piglet, sitting on a box of waste containing his own works, the fruit of his defecations, prominently including
La Terre and
Nana. He soils a map of France with his “international poop” contained in a chamber pot that he spreads with a small brush. The artist is of course aiming at the Dreyfus defender through his famous “J'accuse” and “Jewish cosmopolitanism”, smearing France with his support for treason. The soiling-pig association seems obvious and primordial. As for Napoleon III, the pig's dirt reinforced here by the visible excrement stigmatises the target's political choices. Lenepveu defines Zola's ideas as works of unworthiness, intestinal and dripping products.”
Although this is not the first porcine representation of Émile Zola, the one that features prominently in Lenepveu's Musée is undeniably – by its realism – the most violent.Circulated between October 1899 and December 1900 in a France set ablaze by the Dreyfus Affair, these immense colour portraits are the work of Victor Lenepveu, who announced the publication of 150 and then 200 drawings, before finally producing only around fifty. Despite the 1881 law on the freedom of press allowing the dissemination of a politically subversive image, the publication of this nightmarish pantheon was interrupted by order of the Ministry of the Interior.
The fragility of the paper and the imposing size of these very violent posters, as well as their almost immediate seizure by the police, contributed to the disappearance of these caricatures which strongly left a mark on public opinion.
These horreurs were widely promoted by anti-Semitic newspapers that announced a fantasised print of 300,000 copies, thus insinuating the success of anti-Semitic ideas in the population.
On 1st October 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.” “An artist of great spirit, with an intense comical pencil stroke, 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 is a good indicator of what it promises. [...] It is Maison Hayard that will put up for sale, from today, issue number 1 of this hilarious series.” First a peddler then a bookseller-publisher, Napoléon Hayard (known as Léon Hayard) specialised in the marketing of anti-Dreyfusard and anti-Semitic ephemera and advertisements.
Today, however, copies in good condition of these pamphlet caricatures, which contributed to the social and political divide of France, are very rare. Published in the booming written press - at the same time as Émile Zola's famous “J'accuse !” - these propaganda materials had a significant impact on the younger generations and preceded the ideological violence of the 20th century.
