“Picquart élargi. D’après un dessin d’un jeune dreyfusard,” (Picquart Aggrandized. After a drawing by a young dreyfusard)

“Picquart élargi. D’après un dessin d’un jeune dreyfusard,” (Picquart Aggrandized. After a drawing by a young dreyfusard)

Psst...!, no. 47, 24 December 1898

Caran d’Ache belittles the Dreyfusard campaign by depicting Picquart’s supporters as largely female, tumbling over themselves to offer him flowers. In the foreground, Madame Gustave Kahn, a Catholic poet who converted to Judaism, is caught in an act of unchecked violence as she strangles a Jesuit.

Like Caran d’Ache’s Journaleux caricature, this satire is another attempt to ridicule Dreyfus’ supporters. Caran d’Ache imitates the naïve style of children’s drawings, representing Colonel Picquart with a halo and angel’s wings upon his exit from the Cherche-Midi military prison in Paris. Picquart, who became a popular hero in Dreyfusard journalism, had been accumulating evidence against Major Esterhazy since Dreyfus’s sentence in 1894.This culminated between 1896 and 1898, when Esterhazy was accused of penning the bordereau that led to Dreyfus’s conviction and exile. Esterhazy was acquitted, after which Picquart himself was put on trial for forgery, as the French military scrambled to reestablish its reputation.

Caran d’Ache [Emmanuel Poiré]