Bidspirit auction | Alphonse de Rothschild as a

Alphonse de Rothschild as a monstrous ape – poster no. 45 from the series “Exhibition of Monsters” – the Dreyfus Affair - Le baron Alphonse - Alphonse de Rothschild as a monstrous one-eyed ape with claws, contemplating a chest filled with gold coins. Poster no. 45 from the series Musée des Horreurs [”Exhibition of Monsters” / ”Museum of Horrors”]. Paris, September 1900. French. A hand-colored lithographic print depicting Alphonse de Rothschild as a monstrous ape bent over a chest filled with gold coins, pondering: “When I think that one day we shall have to give it back...”. Signed in the plate V. Lenepveu. Baron Alphonse de Rothschild (1827–1905) was a French banker and government bond financier. After obtaining French citizenship, he succeeded in joining the board of directors of the Bank of France (1855), in which the Rothschild bank was the largest shareholder. In 1871, he acted to reduce the war indemnity demanded by Germany. This operation led to the largest foreign exchange transactions the world had ever seen. The antisemitic press, led by Édouard Drumont, exploited Rothschild’s status to spread theories of a “Jewish conspiracy, ” claiming - without basis - that the family operated behind the scenes to influence the trial. In practice, there is no reliable evidence that Alphonse acted in any significant way to save Dreyfus in the early stages. The series “Exhibition of Monsters” was published during the Dreyfus Affair under a pseudonym and comprised 51 large posters with anti-Dreyfus, antisemitic, and anti-Masonic illustrations. 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 in practice only 51 were produced. The first posters released in the series sold in more than 300,000 copies. In October 1899, the French police arrested several peddlers who were selling posters from the series on the orders of the prefect Louis Lépine. According to some reports, Lépine ordered the halt of their distribution following a complaint he received from Baron de Rothschild, who argued that the damage caused by their dissemination was irreversible. In February 1900, the local police sent letters threatening to revoke the business licenses of shopkeepers who sold the posters, and from that point their distribution ceased. Approx. 50x65 cm. Good - very good condition.