Cleveland Museum of Art

A Basement Shop in Cracow

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Date

1898

Medium

lithograph

Culture

France, 19th century

Department

Prints

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

At the Foot of Mount Sinai by politician and journalist Georges Clemenceau collects six short stories about the lives of Jewish characters in the Poland of his time. As he worked on the commission to illustrate the book, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec spent many hours sketching Russian and Polish Jews living in the Tournelle district in Paris, using them as inspiration for his depiction of Clemenceau’s characters, including the Jewish officer in the Russian army and the poor shopkeeper. The book was written and released during France’s Dreyfus affair, a political controversy surrounding false accusations of treason and espionage against Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus. Clemenceau supported Dreyfus and, as editor of the newspaper L’Aurore (Dawn), published several articles defending him.

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