Le Traître!. Poster No. 6 from the Musée des Horreurs series ["Monsters Exhibition" / "Museum of Horrors"]. Paris, [1899-1900]. French. Hand-painted lithographic print depicting Alfred Dreyfus as a monster with a dragon body with aggressive snake heads. In the center of the dragon's sticks a sword, with the inscription: "Le Traitre!" [The Traitor !, French]. Signed in print by V. Lenepveu. The poster was issued in November 1899 (About two months after Dreyfus was pardoned).
The series "Monsters Exhibition" was published during the Dreyfus affair under a pseudonym, and included 51 large posters with anti-Dreyfus illustrations, antisemitic, and against the Freemasons. The series was published in France over a period of about a year, between October 1899 and December 1900. The original plan was to issue 200 Posters in the series, but eventually only 51 came out. The first posters in the series sold over 300,000 copies. In October 1899 the French police arrested a number of peddlers who sold posters from the series on the orders of District Commander Louis Lapin. According to some reports, Lapin ordered the distribution of posters to be stopped following a request he received from Baron de Rothschild, who claimed that the damage in distributing them was irreversible. In February 1900 the local police sent letters in which they threatened to revoke the trade license from Merchants who would sell the posters, and since then their distribution has stopped.
65X50 cm. Slight tears in margins. Glued to a linen substrate for display and preservation. Good condition.
