Bidspirit auction | ”Ball at the Élysée Palace”

”Ball at the Élysée Palace” – Dreyfus and his supporters in a joint dance – poster no. 26 from the series “Exhibition of Monsters” – the Dreyfus Affair - Un bal à l'Elysée - ”Ball at the Élysée Palace”. Poster no. 26 from the series Musée des Horreurs [”Exhibition of Monsters” / ”Museum of Horrors”] by V. Lenepveu. Paris, April 15, 1900. French. A hand-colored lithographic print depicting Dreyfus and his supporters - Émile Zola, Kahn, Picquart, and Reinach - as monkeys and pigs dancing around Loubet, who is beating a drum bearing the inscription: ”Panama” - a hint that he attempted to cover up the Panama Affair while serving as Minister of the Interior. (The Panama Scandal was a corruption affair that broke out in France in 1892 in connection with the construction of the Panama Canal, involving losses of nearly one billion francs, when the government accepted bribes to conceal the financial problems of the Panama Canal Company, in what is considered the largest financial corruption scandal of the 19th century). 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. 50.5x64 cm. Minor tears at the edges of the poster. Good condition.