The Creators and the Dreyfus Affair

It was during the Dreyfus affair’s most intense years (1898-1899), which were seen as an “Age of Paper” and an unleashing of opinions, that René Georges Hermann Paul aka Hermann-Paul (1864-1940) took part in the “War of the Pencils”, in which anti-Dreyfusard caricaturists and their Dreyfusard counterparts fought each other relentlessly and sometimes ferociously, well aware of their role and the special power of their means of expression. Alongside intellectuals, writers and scientists, they set themselves to turning the Dreyfus affair and its polemics into a forum that would transcend simple daily columns on the twists and turns of an eventful legal case. Hermann-Paul belonged to the group of caricaturists, painters and sculptors who, due to their commitment to the Republic and respect for its founding principles of truth, justice, equality and liberty, put their means of expression at the service of the Dreyfus cause.

Hermann-Paul’s output relating to the Affair took two forms: satirical editorial cartoons and courtroom sketches. His graphic activism soon led the caricaturist to be crowned “the Left’s Carnie” in a particularly hectic political, social and ethical context that threatened the Republic’s very foundations. He published large, double-page drawings in Le Cri de Paris, in which he ridiculed the actions of the army and the justice system, citizens refusing to doubt the res judicata, politicians entangled in untenable statements and positions, and the passions of a society that had fallen prey to the poison of anti-Semitism. In parallel to his output as a newspaper illustrator and caricaturist, Hermann-Paul was sent by Le Figaro as a courtroom sketch artist to cover the Zola trial’s hearings in February 1899 and Dreyfus’ retrial, which was held in Rennes in August and September the same year. The Musée d’Orsay conserves almost 300 of Hermann-Paul’s courtroom sketches, which show his talent as a non-professional courtroom sketch artist while also highlighting the sincerity of his Dreyfusard convictions, before he became an openly anti-Semitic caricaturist after the First World War, collaborating with the far-right newspapers Candide, Gringoire and Je Suis Partout.

Curatorship

• Bertrand Tillier, Professor at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University;
• Isolde Pludermacher, General Curator of Painting at the Musée d’Orsay, with Géraldine Masson, responsible for promotion of the Musée d’Orsay’s graphic arts collection at the Musée d’Orsay.

Between March and December 1895, the Lumière brothers organized the first screenings of films recorded by cinematography, holding them in Paris and La Ciotat. The same year, Captain Alfred Dreyfus was accused of committing high treason to Germany’s advantage, stripped of his rank in the courtyard of Paris Military School in front of hundreds of soldiers and bystanders, and then sentenced to hard labor for life on Devil’s Island.

Recognizing the Affair’s dramatic interest and endless twists and turns, which had all the appearance of a cultural and political civil war between Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards, and also well aware that they were witnessing history in the making, filmmakers wasted no time making use of the subject. Among the dozen or so contemporary films (trick films, reconstructed news stories and comic images), some, in “stolen” sequences or images, depicted Lucie Dreyfus’ fight to support and vindicate her husband: an unrelenting commitment, even though it was in the shadow of the officer’s brother and lawyers.

“Why did you praise me so much, I’m far from deserving of it. If I endured these years of suffering, it was because I owed it to my husband, to my children. I simply did my duty; if I had done otherwise, I would have been criminal”. (Lucie Dreyfus in a letter to her friend Hélène Naville, July 1898)

By making repeated approaches to political, legal, religious and intellectual circles in order to expose the truth and clear Alfred Dreyfus’ name (he was officially exonerated in 1906), Lucie Dreyfus marked the advent of women’s intervention in the public arena. The fledgling cinema helped turn her into a figure who embodied the universal values of loyalty, justice and love.

Curatorship

• Marie Robert, Chief Curator of Photography and Cinema at the Musée d’Orsay.

An itinerary taking visitors through the Museum’s collections and evoking the stances that artists and intellectuals took during this major republican crisis. It explores the works of such painters and sculptors as Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, Édouard Manet and Auguste Rodin, whose creations or reception were marked by the Affair, or who were connected with the public figures involved (Zola, Clemenceau, Anatole France, etc.).

Exhibited in 1898, Auguste Rodin’s Balzac was refused by its commissioner, the Society of Men of Letters of France, on the grounds that it didn’t look like the novelist. A controversy arose as a result, which became entangled with the Dreyfus affair: most of the artists and men of letters who admired the work were Dreyfusards, while its detractors were mostly anti-Dreyfusards. Rodin decided to withdraw his Balzac as he didn’t want to take sides.

The press also played a major role in the Dreyfus affair, and numerous journalists and men of letters committed themselves to one camp or the other. Caricaturists liked to misappropriate famous works in order to influence public opinion. In October 1898, for example, Henri-Gabriel Ibels (1867-1936) published a drawing titled “Colonel Henry Keeping the Joint Chiefs’ Secret”, copying the pose in a work by the anti-Dreyfusard sculptor Saint-Marceaux. At the request of his superior officers, Colonel Henry had forged documents accusing Dreyfus.

The journalist and polemicist Henri Rochefort was also a fierce opponent of the Second Empire, before taking up increasingly nationalistic and conservative positions. Rodin sculpted his bust in 1884, and presented this larger, darker version in 1898, the same year he exhibited his Balzac, which Rochefort criticized very harshly. He was openly anti-Semitic and a particularly vocal anti-Dreyfusard.

Curatorship

• François Blanchetière, Chief Curator of Sculpture and Architecture at the Musée d'Orsay.