March 4, 2026 • 38 mins
“Le Chat Noir” is one of the most famous pieces of late 19th century European art, but the artist behind it was also very active in France's anarchist and socialist political groups of the time.
Research:
- Asimakis, Magdalyn. “War, Socialism, and Cats: Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen's Political Artistic Practice.” The Met. Nov. 2, 2017. https://www.metmuseum.org/perspectives/theophile-alexandre-steinlen-cats-socialism-world-war-i
- Budge, A. “Arts & Decoration Combined with the Spur.” Volumes 19-20. 1923. Accessed online: https://books.google.com/books?id=joAyAQAAIAAJ&vq=steinlen&source=gbs_navlinks_s
- “Charles Matlack Price letters 1917-1947 [bulk 1918-1923].” The New York Public Library – Archives and Manuscripts. https://archives.nypl.org/mss/18567#:~:text=His%20career%20trajectory%20was%20briefly,to%20friends%2C%20and%20his%20work
- “Declaration of the Rights of Man – 1789.” Yale Law School. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/rightsof.asp
- Fau-Vincenti, Véronique. “STEINLEN Théophile, Alexandre.” Le Maitron. Nov. 4, 2009. https://maitron.fr/steinlen-theophile-alexandre/
- Gegout, E. and Ch. Malato. “Prison fin de siècle : souvenirs de Pélagie.” Paris. G. Charpentier et E. Fasquelle. 1891. https://digital-research-books-beta.nypl.org/read/7581051
- Glass, Chloe. “Printmaker Theophile Steinlen Used Art to Advocate for Social Change in 1900s France.” Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. https://crystalbridges.org/blog/printmaker-theophile-steinlen-used-art-to-advocate-for-social-change-in-1900s-france/
- Goldstein, Robert Justin. “Fighting French Censorship, 1815-1881.” The French Review, vol. 71, no. 5, 1998, pp. 785–96. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/398913
- Guthrie, Christopher E. “History of Censorship in France.” EBSCO. 2023. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/politics-and-government/history-censorship-france
- Kagan, Étienne, et al. “GEGOUT Ernest.”Le Maitron. April 7, 2014. https://maitron.fr/gegout-ernest-charles-joseph-ernest-dit-dictionnaire-des-anarchistes
- Olsen, Annikka. “The Surprising Story of the Cat-Obsessed Artist Behind the Famed ‘Le Chat Noir’ Poster.” Artnet News. Oct. 28, 2024. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/theophile-alexandre-steinlen-tournee-du-chat-noir-2417712?amp=1
- Stefiuk, Eleanor. 2022. “Villiers de L’Isle-Adam’s Anarchism: A Legacy of the Paris Commune.” Dix-Neuf26 (1): 1–17. doi:10.1080/14787318.2021.2010167
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Wilson.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
So the poster that is colloquially known as lu Cha
Noir or the Black Cat is easily one of the
most famous pieces of late nineteenth century European art, but
the artist behind it is surprisingly not all that well known,
and even though that artist's signature appears on the image
both as his signature and the little icon that he
(00:37):
developed as like a stamp for his signature, it is
actually often assumed that a more famous artist who is
associated with the Parisian Fendus Yekla art scene, created it.
I actually pulled a number of friends about this, including
friends who are artists, went to art school, and a
lot of them got this wrong, and several of them
thought it was to lose Latreik. It's not Tea Fi.
(01:00):
Steinland was right in the mix of the man Matra
Bohemians alongside now famous artists like Edgar Degas and Yes,
I'll Ride to Trek, but he has never achieved quite
their level of fame, even though he made a pretty
good living with his art and contemporaries thought incredibly highly
of his work, and his political work because he created
(01:23):
a lot of political art, which was very important to him,
is often eclipsed by his commercial images of felines. So
today we're going to unravel his life. But what that
really means is that we're going to talk a lot
about things that were happening in France and the world politically,
because his art and his life are very much tied
(01:44):
to the politics of the day. In fact, we're really
going to talk more about that than we do about
his art work. But we'll talk about cats. I promise
they are very good cats.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Devil Alexandra Steinland was born in eighteen fifty nine in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Like a lot of our subjects on the show, his
childhood is not very well documented. His parents encouraged his
art interests, and after he graduated from the Lease, he
attended Lasan's art school. At least one account says that
(02:20):
he studied theology briefly before focusing on art, but it
is not clear if that's accurate. After art school, he
moved to Mulos, that's in France and the Alsace region,
and that's about thirty five kilometers or twenty two miles
from the Swiss border. He worked at a textile factory there,
designing fabric prints, and he studied other art techniques, including
(02:44):
lithography and engraving. His story kind of picks up when
he's twenty one in eighteen eighty one, and that year
he moved to Paris, and that's a city that he
would be associated with for the rest of his life
and beyond.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
But that move and at a really significant moment in
French history, and knowing that history might give some inkling
of who Steinland was already at that young age, ideologically speaking,
because on July twenty ninth of eighteen eighty one, France
passed the Lois se la Liberte de la prece the
Law on the Freedom of the Press, which was a
(03:20):
huge and important change. So for context, the legal issue
of modern censorship as it related to print publications has
roots in the French Revolution the Revolutions. Seventeen eighty nine
foundational document Declaration of the Rights of Man states that
quote men are born and remain free and equal in rights.
(03:41):
This sounds very familiar to our US listeners. It's because
Thomas Jefferson helped the Marquis de Lafayette when he drafted
the first version of this declaration, so it mirrors our
Declaration of Independence in a lot of ways. The French
version also included the language quote, the free communication of
ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of
(04:02):
the rights of man. Every citizen may accordingly, speak, write,
and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such
abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law. So,
in practice, letting everybody say whatever they wanted in a
country that was a perpetual political powder keg that was
(04:23):
trickier than the leaders of the French Revolution had really anticipated.
There was concern that incendiary writing in newspapers and political
pamphlets was preventing any kind of unity within the nation.
So just two years after the Declaration of the Rights
of Man, a new law made it illegal for a
journalist to publish anti authority material. Anybody who did would
(04:48):
be charged with libel. Published writing was limited even more
in seventeen ninety three, when any writing or speech suggesting
a return to a monarchy was punishable by death. When
Robespierre gained political power in seventeen ninety three, rules about
free speech tightened even more to the point that dissenting
(05:10):
political ideologies could get a death penalty. The post Robespierre
government reset things back to the ideals of the Declaration
of the Rights of Man, but then the same cycle
started again. Yep, because by seventeen ninety six, the death
penalty was once again the consequence for advocating against the
(05:32):
new government. The start of Napoleon's reign in seventeen ninety
nine offered no relief. He took things even further by
limiting the number of newspapers that were even allowed to
publish and instituting a censorship board to review anything that
those papers produced. So this cycle of freedom of speech
being reinstated followed by a rollback of that freedom started
(05:56):
once again when Napoleon was replaced with the Bourbon Restoration
in eighteen fifteen, and censorship laws were once again relaxed.
In eighteen twenty four, laws against freedom of the press
were once again implemented, and the same pattern played out
again with the overthrow of the Bourbons and the installation
of King Louis Philippe, a reign which started out with
(06:17):
a more liberal attitude toward the press, but then soon
reduced their freedoms. From the beginning of the Second Republic
in eighteen forty eight, in the election of Napoleon the
Third and throughout the next several decades, the issue of
freedom of expression for writers was a huge source of
tension in France, as advocates for both censorship and total
(06:39):
freedom pushed farther and farther away from each other. A
lot of trials played out in the country as writers
purposely chose to defy the laws and were arrested, were
put on trial, but then the majority of them were acquitted.
A lot of journalists and creatives who made art that
contained political commentary found ways to technically operate within the
(07:04):
bounds of the law while also clearly speaking out against
the government. These were three things like satires and developing
representative characters that stood in for aspects of the government
or even figures in the government. In other instances, outlawed
writing was printed outside of the country, so that was
technically legal, and then it was smuggled in. By this point,
(07:27):
theater and art had also been included in the legislation
against government critical works, which just meant that those creators
in those fields started making art that protested that censorship.
The French Third Republic began in eighteen seventy with the
overthrow of Napoleon the Third and the start of President
Luis Joule Trochu's leadership. In eighteen seventy nine, Jule Grivis
(07:50):
became the President of France and it was during his
administration that the aforementioned Law for Liberty of the Press
was passed. That was in eighteen eighty one. This law
is considered the foundational legal text of France's freedom of
the press and expression, and it harkened back to the
Declaration of the Rights of Man. This law did not
(08:11):
magically give every journalist, writer, and artist freedom. There were
still regulations in place about how people could talk about
the president, for example, but it did represent a huge
step forward and it opened the door to additional legislation
that further expanded the freedom of the press. And it
was in this moment of newfound freedom of expression that
(08:32):
Teafiel Steinland made his move to relocate to Paris. He
had long wanted to move there, so in October eighteen
eighty one, just a few months after the Law of
the Freedom of the Press was passed, he moved to
the capitol with his girlfriend, Emilie May. Steinland was once
again able to find work as a fabric designer in Paris,
and he and Emily found a place to live in Monmacre.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Coming up, we'll talk about how Steinland fell in with
a circle of other artists in Paris, but before we do,
we will pause for a sponsor break.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
It was an illness actually that ultimately led Tayefield to
the heart of the art scene in Manmatha. Just a
few months after the move to Paris, Steinland became quite
sick and he called for a doctor to visit, and
that doctor was the older brother of Adolph Leon Wilette.
Rolette was a painter and illustrator, among other artistic talents,
(09:33):
and he was right in the center of Parisian artistic life.
And when Wilette's position brother was tending to Teofield Steinlan
in the Steinland home, he saw the various pieces of
art that were around and he suggested an introduction of
the two artists. These two men immediately hit it off,
and Wilette, who was Tayofield's lifelong friend, immediately brought Steinlin
(09:56):
into his social circle.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Soon Steinland was a Willette to social gatherings in the city,
and through Willette he became connected to a wide range
of successful artists. One of the places they frequented was
Le chat Noir. La Chatenoir was a nightclub that opened
in eighteen eighty one in Molmach, Paris, and it was
the brainchild of Rodolf Salis.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
The opening of Le chat Noir is actually pretty important
because it marks the birth of the modern cabaret. So
the word cabaret is derived from the Middle French word
for a small room, camberet, and prior to the opening
of Le chat Noir, the word cabaret meant something very different. Essentially,
it meant a place you could buy alcohol. Some such
(10:43):
places also served food, and some were attached to inns,
but it was the alcohol that separated a cabaret from
a restaurant, for example. But Sally envisioned a place where
people could eat and drink and see entertainment, and in
the late nineteenth century Paris that meant a heady combination
(11:03):
of opulent design, very rich cuisine, and an assortment of
interesting acts, all introduced by Salie, and a variety of
performers graced the stage at Le cha Noir, so there
were musical numbers. There were poetry readings, there were comedy skits.
Kind of anything you could think of that somebody could
do as a performance probably showed up there, and most
(11:25):
of them had this edge of rebellion or subversion to them.
This was a groundbreaking concept at the time and it
was instantly popular. Sally is credited with starting an entirely
new form of entertainment, and a lot of venues that
were looking to copy his successful format started popping up
around Paris in the years that followed. The Moulin Rouge,
(11:46):
for example, which is wildly famous, opened in eighteen eighty nine,
eight years after Sali opened Le Chaon Noir, and incidentally,
Steinland's friend Willette was the architect of the Moulin Rouge.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
The spirit of expression, freshly stoked by the freedom of
the press law, was central to the molmar To Art circle.
One of the prior regulations on press that had rolled
back was the requirement for any publication to pay a
fee and register if it wanted to print material for circulation.
(12:18):
That requirement was removed and new papers sprung up, including
one run by the proprietor of Le chat Noir. Sally
started publication of Gazette du chat Noir in eighteen eighty two,
the year after he opened the cabaret and to Field,
Steinland became a regular contributor. His first illustration for the
(12:39):
paper appeared on September second, eighteen eighty three. He went
on to provide at least six dozen other drawings for
the paper over the years. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Often these were like cute, little sort of cartoony drawings
that would accompany poems or songs in the paper, or
they would kind of be like a cute social commentary
on the day. His style is really really unique. It's
a little cartoony, but it has this edge to it.
I love it. The Gazette de Chaenoir was not the
only cabaret paper that Steinland worked with, though recontour Aristide
(13:11):
Bruon opened his own cabaret called Le Merleton, and Le
Merleton had its own paper of the same name. Steinland
was also a regular contributor to its pages, again mostly
creating illustrations to accompany the songs that Bruant wrote and
published in that paper.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Although Steinland was deeply ingrained in the Molmarch arts scene
and was very committed to it, he was also drawn
to politics and the social movements that were very active
in Paris at the time. He had moved to the
city as restrictions on free speech were lifted and a
lot of people who had been exiled moved back. At
the same time, he befriended a lot of them. A
(13:50):
lot of them were people who had been exiled for
supporting the Paris Commune and had been granted amnesty in
eighteen eighty he found himself aligned with anarchist and socialist
groups in France, and his art started to reflect that
ideology as well.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
And one of the most obvious instances of this alignment
was Steinland's involvement with Ernest Gegou and Charles Mulatto. Gegoo
was an anarchist and a publisher, and his weekly paper
Latac published columns that increasingly called for an abandonment of
almost all other political stances because they were all faulty
(14:26):
in one way or another. We've talked about.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Worker demonstrations in the US in the nineteenth century, and
their protests inspired similar actions in France. In eighteen ninety,
the first May Day was planned. This was a worker
strike that voiced the demands for eight hours of work
eight hours of sleep and eight hours of leisure. This protest,
planned for May first, was covered in a lot of
(14:50):
political papers and in Lattech as well, and then Gagoo's paper.
An article by Charles Mulatto was printed in the lead
up to Mayday that gave instruction for making bombs. Both
the publisher and writer were arrested and charged with inciting violence,
and they were found guilty and sentenced to fifteen months
in prison.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
While the two anarchists were serving their sentence, Tayofield Steinland
visited them in prison and he made some drawings while
he was there, and this led to a collaboration of
the three men, which was a book titled Prison fan
de jegle souvenir de Pelagie or Prison at the End
of the Century Memories of Pelagie. Pelagie was the name
(15:31):
of the prison they were in, and this book has
a really interesting take on the idea of a prison narrative.
It isn't really so much about the horrors of incarceration.
It's more of an exposee about how ludicrous the entire
legal system of France was in the view of Gegoo
and Malatteau, and it opens with quote prefaces are rarely read.
(15:55):
We believe, however, that we must explain our motive in
portraying our owns insignificant person. Prison, however, benign never represents
an el Dorado, and Pelagie has grown darkened with age. However,
even under current conditions, how many dispossessed people more interesting
than certain political speculators would like to find refuge there.
(16:18):
The halo of martyrdom claimed by ambitious writers has allowed
them to exploit the feelings of the masses whom they
inwardly despised. This fetishism of individuals is not yet extinct.
We believe we are doing useful work by combating it
with laughter. As captives, laughter is moreover our only weapon,
(16:39):
our only distraction. We hope that the body humor scattered
throughout this book, alongside serious ideas, will not cast a
negative light on the latter. While mocking the prison where
we are incarcerated, the magistrates who threw us in, the
jailers who hold us there, and the motley crew of
politicians we have encountered, we had a duty not to
(17:01):
spare ourselves, and that is what we have done. May
this strip bear forever the prestige of political martyrdom.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
One of the surprising things about this book is how
many cat drawings are in it. Stilin loved cats and
loved to draw them. Understandably, even today you can buy
books that are just compilations of his cat drawings, and
cat sketches are scattered throughout this account of life in prison.
Holly counted at least twenty three cat illustrations. Some of
(17:32):
them are just dropped into larger scenes. They're random cats
who don't seem particularly meaningful. But one of them is
a character in the book, and her arrival is described
by the authors this way quote. Then we had a
new companion, and this companion was a delightful little cat
that Malato's wife brought us in her work bag. Pelagia,
(17:52):
as she was christened, grew up in the horror of
the dungeons and didn't miss a single bite. How many
times she slept on and underneath them. Too sharp reproaches,
later corrections administered paternally according to the axiom, he who
loves well punishes well, gradually led her towards better habits.
(18:13):
A newspaper carefully unfolded and held up by a chair
in a corner of the room served as a safe place. So,
just for clarity, the reason that she couldn't sleep on
their beds or under their beds was because she would
easily be seen there. The men worked out this whole
elaborate system and trained her to it so she could
be in their cell and sit on their laps as
(18:33):
they ate to be fed from their plates, and then
have a safe out of sight spot to curl up
in during the day.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
She is depicted. However, as the book goes on in
the illustrations on pillows a lot, so it seems as
though little Pelagia kind of became an open secret in
the prison, and the rules about her got looser and
looser as her time with the men wore on.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
This book also mentions the day that Steinland visited them
quote in the dim light of bruon a second figure
advanced discreetly, preoccupied with holding an enormous tomcat in his arms,
the head keeper's cat captured on the way, Steinland cried, gagoo.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
The brilliant illustrator of.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Le chat Noir shook the outstretched hands, then, after a
few words exchanged, sat down, took a sheet of paper
and a pencil from his pocket, and immediately began sketching
animals and people.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Yeah, so he was very clearly already known both as
an artist and in anarchist circles. Coming up, we will
talk about one of the show's favorite subjects, and that
is more cats. But first we're going to hear from
the sponsors that keep stuff you missed a history class
going so to circle back to cats. When we said
(19:56):
Steinland loved them, that's putting it pretty mildly. He loved cats.
He regularly fed the strays of mamarcles. He came to
view the cats of Paris as the mascots of the
Bohemian movement, wild, free and alluring. He made sculptures of cats,
He sketched cats, he painted cats. When he took poster commissions,
(20:16):
which is where a lot of his money was coming from,
he often added a cat or two into the art.
His poster for campaign Francis de Chocolais dete that's French
company of chocolates and teas, features his beloved Emily as
well as their daughter Colette and a black cat in
the foreground. Similarly, the advertisement for Les pure de la
(20:38):
vengean stair lise that's pure sterilized milk from La Vengeun
features his daughter Collette again drinking a bowl of milk,
while three cats, a gray tabby, a solid black and
a calico paw at the girl's red dress. In some instances,
it was obvious that cats should be included in his
commercial art, like the art that he completed for Clinique Chahoon,
(21:01):
which was a veterinary clinic, is a very beautiful poster
that features a young woman surrounded by both dogs and cats,
and his non commercial paintings frequently featured only cats. His
work Apotheosis of Cats, which was painted in eighteen ninety,
features a swarm of cats, all traversing over a city,
(21:21):
seemingly drawn to an immense cat in the far background,
which appears as a silhouette backlit by the moon. Even
when a cat was not part of the active image
of a work that he did, it sometimes appeared as
a sort of iconic signature. One of the lithographs he
created is called Young Lovers Embracing in the Street, and
it shows a sketch of exactly what the title suggests,
(21:44):
but in the white border that frames the main image,
so not interacting with the image at all, there's a
black cat that's just shown racing across the very bottom.
The quote every dog has his day, but the knights
are reserved for the cats is often attributed to Steinlan
allthough so there's no real evidence that I could find
that he ever wrote or said that, but his work
(22:04):
sure does seem to support that sentiment.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
As the eighteen nineties continued, Dafield Steinland continued to create
illustrations for papers and magazines, but he started working more
for political publications instead of just cabaret papers. He started
working with the socialist paper Le Chambard in eighteen ninety three.
A lot of his political work was focused on workers' rights,
(22:29):
as well as the problems of the justice system and
the military. We mentioned his commercial poster work for a dairy,
which is in contrast to some of his protest work
about adulterated milk in France. We've talked about tainted milk
in the US on the show that aired back in
twenty twenty one, but France had its own problems with
(22:50):
adulterated milk being sold to poor families whose children were
often made sick from it. Steinland participated in a special
public criticizing the dairy industry for selling spoiled Milk, along
with more than four dozen other artists. The title of
this translated to the licensed poisoners, the milk falsifiers.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
But just as those cycles of freedom of the press
and then a rescinding of those freedoms had played out
numerous times in French history before Teafil was there, in
the early eighteen nineties, new laws were put into place
to curb anarchist writing and activities. There were three of
these laws. They're known collectively as the Loi se rat
(23:37):
or villainous laws, and they were ruled out after a
non lethal bombing happened at the Chamber of Deputies. So
the first law forbid anarchist publications. The second law was
a bit nebulous, as it named a crime that was
called the understanding, which was supposed to somehow encapsulate the
(23:57):
state of being an anarchist. Maybe seriously, it is a
very confusing legal concept. It actually tied up this legislation
for a long time because various politicians struggled to define
what they were getting at in this law. The third
law made it explicitly illegal to engage in any anarchist activities.
(24:20):
These laws are very complex in their context, and their
execution and their impact. But in relation to tefil Steinlan
there were two very obvious effects. One he started publishing
his art under the pseudonym Petitpier, and two he eventually
fled Paris for Munich.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
The decision to leave Paris has to have been difficult
because in terms of his art career, things were just
really starting to take off. He had his first solo
exhibition in the spring of eighteen ninety four, and if
he weren't involved in anti government political groups, he probably
would have continued to enjoy success as a painter and
a poster artist. But if he placed himself in the
(25:03):
public eye with his art, he knew he would probably
be arrested because of his ties to anarchists. So in
July of eighteen ninety four he went to Germany and
started producing art for a socialist magazine there called Simple Sisimus.
While he was away, a large group of activists in
Paris were put on trial for charges of anarchy in
(25:25):
the event now known as the Trial of thirty. That
trial was supposed to show how large and dangerous the
anarchist network of France was and provide legitimizing context for
the Las Celeratte, but it failed. All but a handful
of the defendants were acquitted. With the failure of the trial, Steinland,
(25:46):
like other activists, thought it was safe to return to Paris,
and he did that in October. He had only been
away for a few months and had visited Norway in
addition to Germany.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Yeah, at that point it wasn't like the laws all
went away, but everybody was kind of like, you don't
know what you're doing with these It don't make sense,
and you don't know how to enforce them, so it's fine.
The year after all of that upheaval, though, was very
busy for Steinland, both professionally and personally. He jumped right
back into working with an assortment of socialist papers. He
(26:17):
had a lot of commissions for artwork for posters and songbooks,
and he illustrated the cover of Les Soliloque du Povre,
a poetry book by Jehann Richtusdefield.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Had remained a Swiss citizen up to this point, but
now he finally applied to become a naturalized French citizen.
He and the woman he had moved to Paris with,
Emily May, had lived as husband and wife throughout their
time in France and had their daughter, Colette, but they'd
never legally gotten married. They had a small but official
(26:50):
wedding in eighteen ninety five at the eighteenth Arrondissement government offices.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
In eighteen ninety six, Steinland was commissioned to create the
poster that many of our listeners would recognize. That is
tourne de chat noir de Rudolph Salis. That translates to
tour of Rudolf Sali's chat Noir. The cabaret acs from
that nightclub would tour and this simple but striking graphic,
with its black, gold and red color scheme, was instantly recognizable,
(27:20):
and it has endured to still be in print one
hundred and thirty years later on all manner of things,
from art prints to coffee cups and get socks. You
can get kind of anything, literally anything to to Monmartre
and Paris. Find a thing that isn't printed with it,
it's hard to do. New spoofs of it pop up
seemingly every day in pop culture, featuring everything from bats
(27:44):
to demagorgans. Tamfield Steinland Shirley could not have anticipated the
life this particular poster would have, and he was soon
moving on to other projects. Incidentally, though the nightclub and
touring company Les Chat Noir did not have the same longevity.
Is this piece of art that all shut down just
the year after this poster was made.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Other places had the same name later, Like, if you
go look for pictures, you will find pictures of other establishments.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
We're going to talk about that at the end.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Yeah, I'm just saying for people who are maybe confused
in this moment. Steinland also has ties to the Dreyfus affair,
which we covered as a two parter in twenty twenty one.
That was the scandal in which Alfred Dreyfuss, Jewish French
artillery officer, was convicted of treason and sentenced to life
in prison, although another man, an officer named Ferdinand Whilston
(28:35):
est Hasi, was the true culprit. Steinland was very, unsurprisingly
to me, publicly vocal in his criticism of the military
and the cover up regarding the true details.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Of this case. Yeah, if you listen to that two
parter which Tracy did the research and writing on, a
lot of people were pretty vocal about that. But Steinland,
being very associated already with kind of incendiary political groups,
it is not at all surprising that he was really
angry about it. At the start of the twentieth century,
Steinland continued to illustrate for political papers, including the anarchist
(29:10):
papers Les Ton Nouveau and Lasieteuburg. And Steinland started to
write for these papers as well as illustrate for them,
which was just the beginning of a new level of
activism for him. In nineteen oh two, he was one
of the earliest crusaders for France to have a union
for painters and draftsmen. The General Confederation of Labor in
(29:30):
France was only a few years old at the time,
and Steinland wanted artists to be recognized as laborers as well.
The General Confederation did add artists to its roster in
nineteen oh five, and Teafiel Steinland gave a speech at
that ceremony. In nineteen oh four and nineteen oh five,
Steinlan extended his connections in both the art and political
(29:51):
worlds by joining the Society of Draftsmen and Humorists and
the Society of Friends of the Russian People and Annexed Peoples.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Steinland's style and subject matter shifted significantly at the onset
of World War One, He'd often drawn with a sort
of whimsical feel to his work, even when he illustrated
the Prison Memoir, but his desire to use his art
to inform the public about the realities of war led
him to a more serious, darker tone. Styland was a pacifist.
(30:22):
He made it a point to visit battlefield so that
he could sketch what he saw there. His work includes
wounded soldiers, refugees, and the people whose lives were turned
upside down and exploited to provide for the war effort.
While he had been commenting both with words and art
on the inequalities of the world in the plight of
the working class, his wartime work took on a more
(30:45):
urgent tone. Styland's work about the war was never about
active battle scenes. It also didn't directly involve politics. It
portrayed all the people who were often overlooked, like the
poor children and women, and show the impact of the
war on them. This is really very much in line
with his political views, which always centered the importance of
(31:07):
the common man and the idea of equality and freedom
from oppression and exploitation. One of these works, for example,
is titled The Exodus, and it's a simple but dramatic
charcoal sketch of a family of refugees carrying their belongings
as they walk searching for safe haven. Other families fill
in the background with slightly lighter shading, and it's an
(31:30):
image of Belgium being evacuated after a German attack. This
image has also been called the March of the Orphans,
and this and other drawings of wartime tableaux, including portraits
of grieving women standing over coffins that are draped in
French flags, were made into etchings so they could be
sold in runs of prints, because they really wanted a
(31:51):
lot of people to see this. And once the war ended,
Steinland continued to work with a variety of socialist and
anarchist papers as an illustrator occasional writer. The end of
the artist's life seems abrupt. Teyofil Alexandra Steinland died in
nineteen twenty three. His ashes were interred at sam Vinsant
Cemetery in Molmarch.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
He was sixty four.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
And if there's a cause of death recorded somewhere, Holly
was not able to find it, or any mention of
an illness or an underlying condition.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Yeah, it's all just kind of like he was living
his life, he was making his art and then died.
Two months after Steinland's death in February nineteen twenty four,
an obituary for him ran in Arts and Decoration magazine,
written by Mattlack Price. Price was a writer and a
professor at the American School of Design and the Rhode
Island School of Design, and he was considered an authority
(32:47):
on poster art. He wrote a book on the subject
in nineteen eleven, and his write up about Steinlan is
filled with admiration and the sense of loss of something
truly great in the art world. One section of it
reads quote to a great many artists and amateurs in
the graphic arts, Steinland has given and will always give
more real joy and satisfaction than most artists who have
(33:09):
risen since his zenith. Nor will Steinland's art deteriorate with time.
It is too real, too sincere, too literary and dramatic
in its quality. Another cycle of appreciation will revive Steinland
as one of the old masters, and again students will
find in his drawings and lithographs some at least of
(33:30):
the old thrill. Steinland is dead, perhaps unfortunately for us,
all much of his influence is dead today in the
field of the graphic arts. It is not that Steinland's
art is out of date, but rather that it is
so much better, so much more living and vivid than
most of the work today, that it is a little
disquieting to have it about as a reminder. It disturbs
(33:53):
our illusions of progress. We ought to have done much
more than we have since eighteen ninety.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
The legacy of Steinlan's work is varied. On the one hand,
outside of art circles, his war art, which is arguably
his most important work, is not very well known at all,
but his poster art is revered. His image of La
Chatnoir is instantly recognizable. It's helped sustain interest in the
(34:20):
bohemian nightclub scene of Paris. As we mentioned, it's been
spoofed by innumerable artists around the world. Because of that
ongoing interest, there have been several copycat venues that have
popped up in recent years to capitalize on the fascination
that the public has with the era and with La
chat Noir specifically, and a chat Noir immersive theater experience
(34:44):
is set to open in London this month. If you
are listening when this episode drops stage by the group
the Lost Estate.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
We didn't mention it specifically in the episode, but there
were additional locations that were opened of le Chon Noir
during Steinland's time, but they all folded and now we
have many around the worlds. But they are homages truly. Yeah,
but all are you know, created and opened with incredible
(35:17):
love for the legacy of Leshaw. More. Do you want
to talk about coffee for a minute? And listener mail yes,
I always want to talk about coffee. This is from
our listener Caro, who writes, Hi, Holly and Tracy. I
started playing your recent episode on Melita Benz in the
creation of coffee filters, assuming I had never used the
(35:39):
company's products. It wasn't until you mentioned their signature red
and green packaging that I realized I had, in fact
used those coffee filters several times. A few years ago,
I started seeing a self professed coffee snob who only
made pour over and didn't have a programmable coffee machine.
I usually woke up before them, so I was grogglely
learning being in water ratios, thinking this would all be
(36:02):
so much easier if I had some caffeine in my system.
Lo and behold. I was using Melina filters, but I
was too sleepy to notice. Thankfully, I was able to
look past the caffeine logistics because that coffee snob has
become the love of my life. We've been together for
three years. I get choked up over this makes me
so happy. We've been together three years and are moving
in together in a few weeks. Congratulations to the two
(36:23):
of you. I hope it is a wonderful time living together.
Caro writes, I'm still up earlier than them, so they
have since bought a programmable coffee pot see compromise. It's love.
We try to treasure slow cups of pour over on
Saturday mornings. Though attached his pet tax or pictures of
our cat, Charlie. I've tried to play your podcast for
him to make him better informed about the world, but
(36:45):
he's more interested in demonstrating how fast he can run
from one end of the apartment to the other. He's
more of an athlete than a scholar. Thanks to the
great podcast, Caro. This cat is so cute and he
looks like exactly my flavor of trouble Yay, I love
a little wild acting care at They're the best. Yeah,
I'm I'm surprised at how how common Melita Filters are
(37:06):
still m M, even though I know they're a huge company.
I don't know. I in my head, I'm like, but
in Europe, but no, Yeah, literally on my local grocery
store shelves there they are. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
I had a mental image, like as soon as I
got to the like the brand name part, I had
a mental image of like the color scheme and the
logo and all of that, And when I looked at it,
I was like, Yeah, that is exactly what I thought.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
Yeah, yep, that's the one. That is the one. Also
shout out to our listener and Defined Destinations traveler Scott,
who texted me this morning about the Melita Ben's podcast
because you know, we all love a little coffee. Yeah, Scott,
that brightened my day. So if you would like to
write to us, you can do so at History podcast
(37:50):
at iHeartRadio dot com. Uh, you can go to mystonhistory
dot com if you want to see our show notes
for the episodes. And if you haven't subscribed to the
podcast and you would like to, that's easiest pie the
iHeartRadio app or wherever it is you listen.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Wilson.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
So the poster that is colloquially known as lu Cha
Noir or the Black Cat is easily one of the
most famous pieces of late nineteenth century European art, but
the artist behind it is surprisingly not all that well known,
and even though that artist's signature appears on the image
both as his signature and the little icon that he
(00:37):
developed as like a stamp for his signature, it is
actually often assumed that a more famous artist who is
associated with the Parisian Fendus Yekla art scene, created it.
I actually pulled a number of friends about this, including
friends who are artists, went to art school, and a
lot of them got this wrong, and several of them
thought it was to lose Latreik. It's not Tea Fi.
(01:00):
Steinland was right in the mix of the man Matra
Bohemians alongside now famous artists like Edgar Degas and Yes,
I'll Ride to Trek, but he has never achieved quite
their level of fame, even though he made a pretty
good living with his art and contemporaries thought incredibly highly
of his work, and his political work because he created
(01:23):
a lot of political art, which was very important to him,
is often eclipsed by his commercial images of felines. So
today we're going to unravel his life. But what that
really means is that we're going to talk a lot
about things that were happening in France and the world politically,
because his art and his life are very much tied
(01:44):
to the politics of the day. In fact, we're really
going to talk more about that than we do about
his art work. But we'll talk about cats. I promise
they are very good cats.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Devil Alexandra Steinland was born in eighteen fifty nine in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Like a lot of our subjects on the show, his
childhood is not very well documented. His parents encouraged his
art interests, and after he graduated from the Lease, he
attended Lasan's art school. At least one account says that
(02:20):
he studied theology briefly before focusing on art, but it
is not clear if that's accurate. After art school, he
moved to Mulos, that's in France and the Alsace region,
and that's about thirty five kilometers or twenty two miles
from the Swiss border. He worked at a textile factory there,
designing fabric prints, and he studied other art techniques, including
(02:44):
lithography and engraving. His story kind of picks up when
he's twenty one in eighteen eighty one, and that year
he moved to Paris, and that's a city that he
would be associated with for the rest of his life
and beyond.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
But that move and at a really significant moment in
French history, and knowing that history might give some inkling
of who Steinland was already at that young age, ideologically speaking,
because on July twenty ninth of eighteen eighty one, France
passed the Lois se la Liberte de la prece the
Law on the Freedom of the Press, which was a
(03:20):
huge and important change. So for context, the legal issue
of modern censorship as it related to print publications has
roots in the French Revolution the Revolutions. Seventeen eighty nine
foundational document Declaration of the Rights of Man states that
quote men are born and remain free and equal in rights.
(03:41):
This sounds very familiar to our US listeners. It's because
Thomas Jefferson helped the Marquis de Lafayette when he drafted
the first version of this declaration, so it mirrors our
Declaration of Independence in a lot of ways. The French
version also included the language quote, the free communication of
ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of
(04:02):
the rights of man. Every citizen may accordingly, speak, write,
and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such
abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law. So,
in practice, letting everybody say whatever they wanted in a
country that was a perpetual political powder keg that was
(04:23):
trickier than the leaders of the French Revolution had really anticipated.
There was concern that incendiary writing in newspapers and political
pamphlets was preventing any kind of unity within the nation.
So just two years after the Declaration of the Rights
of Man, a new law made it illegal for a
journalist to publish anti authority material. Anybody who did would
(04:48):
be charged with libel. Published writing was limited even more
in seventeen ninety three, when any writing or speech suggesting
a return to a monarchy was punishable by death. When
Robespierre gained political power in seventeen ninety three, rules about
free speech tightened even more to the point that dissenting
(05:10):
political ideologies could get a death penalty. The post Robespierre
government reset things back to the ideals of the Declaration
of the Rights of Man, but then the same cycle
started again. Yep, because by seventeen ninety six, the death
penalty was once again the consequence for advocating against the
(05:32):
new government. The start of Napoleon's reign in seventeen ninety
nine offered no relief. He took things even further by
limiting the number of newspapers that were even allowed to
publish and instituting a censorship board to review anything that
those papers produced. So this cycle of freedom of speech
being reinstated followed by a rollback of that freedom started
(05:56):
once again when Napoleon was replaced with the Bourbon Restoration
in eighteen fifteen, and censorship laws were once again relaxed.
In eighteen twenty four, laws against freedom of the press
were once again implemented, and the same pattern played out
again with the overthrow of the Bourbons and the installation
of King Louis Philippe, a reign which started out with
(06:17):
a more liberal attitude toward the press, but then soon
reduced their freedoms. From the beginning of the Second Republic
in eighteen forty eight, in the election of Napoleon the
Third and throughout the next several decades, the issue of
freedom of expression for writers was a huge source of
tension in France, as advocates for both censorship and total
(06:39):
freedom pushed farther and farther away from each other. A
lot of trials played out in the country as writers
purposely chose to defy the laws and were arrested, were
put on trial, but then the majority of them were acquitted.
A lot of journalists and creatives who made art that
contained political commentary found ways to technically operate within the
(07:04):
bounds of the law while also clearly speaking out against
the government. These were three things like satires and developing
representative characters that stood in for aspects of the government
or even figures in the government. In other instances, outlawed
writing was printed outside of the country, so that was
technically legal, and then it was smuggled in. By this point,
(07:27):
theater and art had also been included in the legislation
against government critical works, which just meant that those creators
in those fields started making art that protested that censorship.
The French Third Republic began in eighteen seventy with the
overthrow of Napoleon the Third and the start of President
Luis Joule Trochu's leadership. In eighteen seventy nine, Jule Grivis
(07:50):
became the President of France and it was during his
administration that the aforementioned Law for Liberty of the Press
was passed. That was in eighteen eighty one. This law
is considered the foundational legal text of France's freedom of
the press and expression, and it harkened back to the
Declaration of the Rights of Man. This law did not
(08:11):
magically give every journalist, writer, and artist freedom. There were
still regulations in place about how people could talk about
the president, for example, but it did represent a huge
step forward and it opened the door to additional legislation
that further expanded the freedom of the press. And it
was in this moment of newfound freedom of expression that
(08:32):
Teafiel Steinland made his move to relocate to Paris. He
had long wanted to move there, so in October eighteen
eighty one, just a few months after the Law of
the Freedom of the Press was passed, he moved to
the capitol with his girlfriend, Emilie May. Steinland was once
again able to find work as a fabric designer in Paris,
and he and Emily found a place to live in Monmacre.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Coming up, we'll talk about how Steinland fell in with
a circle of other artists in Paris, but before we do,
we will pause for a sponsor break.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
It was an illness actually that ultimately led Tayefield to
the heart of the art scene in Manmatha. Just a
few months after the move to Paris, Steinland became quite
sick and he called for a doctor to visit, and
that doctor was the older brother of Adolph Leon Wilette.
Rolette was a painter and illustrator, among other artistic talents,
(09:33):
and he was right in the center of Parisian artistic life.
And when Wilette's position brother was tending to Teofield Steinlan
in the Steinland home, he saw the various pieces of
art that were around and he suggested an introduction of
the two artists. These two men immediately hit it off,
and Wilette, who was Tayofield's lifelong friend, immediately brought Steinlin
(09:56):
into his social circle.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Soon Steinland was a Willette to social gatherings in the city,
and through Willette he became connected to a wide range
of successful artists. One of the places they frequented was
Le chat Noir. La Chatenoir was a nightclub that opened
in eighteen eighty one in Molmach, Paris, and it was
the brainchild of Rodolf Salis.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
The opening of Le chat Noir is actually pretty important
because it marks the birth of the modern cabaret. So
the word cabaret is derived from the Middle French word
for a small room, camberet, and prior to the opening
of Le chat Noir, the word cabaret meant something very different. Essentially,
it meant a place you could buy alcohol. Some such
(10:43):
places also served food, and some were attached to inns,
but it was the alcohol that separated a cabaret from
a restaurant, for example. But Sally envisioned a place where
people could eat and drink and see entertainment, and in
the late nineteenth century Paris that meant a heady combination
(11:03):
of opulent design, very rich cuisine, and an assortment of
interesting acts, all introduced by Salie, and a variety of
performers graced the stage at Le cha Noir, so there
were musical numbers. There were poetry readings, there were comedy skits.
Kind of anything you could think of that somebody could
do as a performance probably showed up there, and most
(11:25):
of them had this edge of rebellion or subversion to them.
This was a groundbreaking concept at the time and it
was instantly popular. Sally is credited with starting an entirely
new form of entertainment, and a lot of venues that
were looking to copy his successful format started popping up
around Paris in the years that followed. The Moulin Rouge,
(11:46):
for example, which is wildly famous, opened in eighteen eighty nine,
eight years after Sali opened Le Chaon Noir, and incidentally,
Steinland's friend Willette was the architect of the Moulin Rouge.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
The spirit of expression, freshly stoked by the freedom of
the press law, was central to the molmar To Art circle.
One of the prior regulations on press that had rolled
back was the requirement for any publication to pay a
fee and register if it wanted to print material for circulation.
(12:18):
That requirement was removed and new papers sprung up, including
one run by the proprietor of Le chat Noir. Sally
started publication of Gazette du chat Noir in eighteen eighty two,
the year after he opened the cabaret and to Field,
Steinland became a regular contributor. His first illustration for the
(12:39):
paper appeared on September second, eighteen eighty three. He went
on to provide at least six dozen other drawings for
the paper over the years. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Often these were like cute, little sort of cartoony drawings
that would accompany poems or songs in the paper, or
they would kind of be like a cute social commentary
on the day. His style is really really unique. It's
a little cartoony, but it has this edge to it.
I love it. The Gazette de Chaenoir was not the
only cabaret paper that Steinland worked with, though recontour Aristide
(13:11):
Bruon opened his own cabaret called Le Merleton, and Le
Merleton had its own paper of the same name. Steinland
was also a regular contributor to its pages, again mostly
creating illustrations to accompany the songs that Bruant wrote and
published in that paper.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Although Steinland was deeply ingrained in the Molmarch arts scene
and was very committed to it, he was also drawn
to politics and the social movements that were very active
in Paris at the time. He had moved to the
city as restrictions on free speech were lifted and a
lot of people who had been exiled moved back. At
the same time, he befriended a lot of them. A
(13:50):
lot of them were people who had been exiled for
supporting the Paris Commune and had been granted amnesty in
eighteen eighty he found himself aligned with anarchist and socialist
groups in France, and his art started to reflect that
ideology as well.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
And one of the most obvious instances of this alignment
was Steinland's involvement with Ernest Gegou and Charles Mulatto. Gegoo
was an anarchist and a publisher, and his weekly paper
Latac published columns that increasingly called for an abandonment of
almost all other political stances because they were all faulty
(14:26):
in one way or another. We've talked about.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Worker demonstrations in the US in the nineteenth century, and
their protests inspired similar actions in France. In eighteen ninety,
the first May Day was planned. This was a worker
strike that voiced the demands for eight hours of work
eight hours of sleep and eight hours of leisure. This protest,
planned for May first, was covered in a lot of
(14:50):
political papers and in Lattech as well, and then Gagoo's paper.
An article by Charles Mulatto was printed in the lead
up to Mayday that gave instruction for making bombs. Both
the publisher and writer were arrested and charged with inciting violence,
and they were found guilty and sentenced to fifteen months
in prison.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
While the two anarchists were serving their sentence, Tayofield Steinland
visited them in prison and he made some drawings while
he was there, and this led to a collaboration of
the three men, which was a book titled Prison fan
de jegle souvenir de Pelagie or Prison at the End
of the Century Memories of Pelagie. Pelagie was the name
(15:31):
of the prison they were in, and this book has
a really interesting take on the idea of a prison narrative.
It isn't really so much about the horrors of incarceration.
It's more of an exposee about how ludicrous the entire
legal system of France was in the view of Gegoo
and Malatteau, and it opens with quote prefaces are rarely read.
(15:55):
We believe, however, that we must explain our motive in
portraying our owns insignificant person. Prison, however, benign never represents
an el Dorado, and Pelagie has grown darkened with age. However,
even under current conditions, how many dispossessed people more interesting
than certain political speculators would like to find refuge there.
(16:18):
The halo of martyrdom claimed by ambitious writers has allowed
them to exploit the feelings of the masses whom they
inwardly despised. This fetishism of individuals is not yet extinct.
We believe we are doing useful work by combating it
with laughter. As captives, laughter is moreover our only weapon,
(16:39):
our only distraction. We hope that the body humor scattered
throughout this book, alongside serious ideas, will not cast a
negative light on the latter. While mocking the prison where
we are incarcerated, the magistrates who threw us in, the
jailers who hold us there, and the motley crew of
politicians we have encountered, we had a duty not to
(17:01):
spare ourselves, and that is what we have done. May
this strip bear forever the prestige of political martyrdom.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
One of the surprising things about this book is how
many cat drawings are in it. Stilin loved cats and
loved to draw them. Understandably, even today you can buy
books that are just compilations of his cat drawings, and
cat sketches are scattered throughout this account of life in prison.
Holly counted at least twenty three cat illustrations. Some of
(17:32):
them are just dropped into larger scenes. They're random cats
who don't seem particularly meaningful. But one of them is
a character in the book, and her arrival is described
by the authors this way quote. Then we had a
new companion, and this companion was a delightful little cat
that Malato's wife brought us in her work bag. Pelagia,
(17:52):
as she was christened, grew up in the horror of
the dungeons and didn't miss a single bite. How many
times she slept on and underneath them. Too sharp reproaches,
later corrections administered paternally according to the axiom, he who
loves well punishes well, gradually led her towards better habits.
(18:13):
A newspaper carefully unfolded and held up by a chair
in a corner of the room served as a safe place. So,
just for clarity, the reason that she couldn't sleep on
their beds or under their beds was because she would
easily be seen there. The men worked out this whole
elaborate system and trained her to it so she could
be in their cell and sit on their laps as
(18:33):
they ate to be fed from their plates, and then
have a safe out of sight spot to curl up
in during the day.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
She is depicted. However, as the book goes on in
the illustrations on pillows a lot, so it seems as
though little Pelagia kind of became an open secret in
the prison, and the rules about her got looser and
looser as her time with the men wore on.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
This book also mentions the day that Steinland visited them
quote in the dim light of bruon a second figure
advanced discreetly, preoccupied with holding an enormous tomcat in his arms,
the head keeper's cat captured on the way, Steinland cried, gagoo.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
The brilliant illustrator of.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Le chat Noir shook the outstretched hands, then, after a
few words exchanged, sat down, took a sheet of paper
and a pencil from his pocket, and immediately began sketching
animals and people.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Yeah, so he was very clearly already known both as
an artist and in anarchist circles. Coming up, we will
talk about one of the show's favorite subjects, and that
is more cats. But first we're going to hear from
the sponsors that keep stuff you missed a history class
going so to circle back to cats. When we said
(19:56):
Steinland loved them, that's putting it pretty mildly. He loved cats.
He regularly fed the strays of mamarcles. He came to
view the cats of Paris as the mascots of the
Bohemian movement, wild, free and alluring. He made sculptures of cats,
He sketched cats, he painted cats. When he took poster commissions,
(20:16):
which is where a lot of his money was coming from,
he often added a cat or two into the art.
His poster for campaign Francis de Chocolais dete that's French
company of chocolates and teas, features his beloved Emily as
well as their daughter Colette and a black cat in
the foreground. Similarly, the advertisement for Les pure de la
(20:38):
vengean stair lise that's pure sterilized milk from La Vengeun
features his daughter Collette again drinking a bowl of milk,
while three cats, a gray tabby, a solid black and
a calico paw at the girl's red dress. In some instances,
it was obvious that cats should be included in his
commercial art, like the art that he completed for Clinique Chahoon,
(21:01):
which was a veterinary clinic, is a very beautiful poster
that features a young woman surrounded by both dogs and cats,
and his non commercial paintings frequently featured only cats. His
work Apotheosis of Cats, which was painted in eighteen ninety,
features a swarm of cats, all traversing over a city,
(21:21):
seemingly drawn to an immense cat in the far background,
which appears as a silhouette backlit by the moon. Even
when a cat was not part of the active image
of a work that he did, it sometimes appeared as
a sort of iconic signature. One of the lithographs he
created is called Young Lovers Embracing in the Street, and
it shows a sketch of exactly what the title suggests,
(21:44):
but in the white border that frames the main image,
so not interacting with the image at all, there's a
black cat that's just shown racing across the very bottom.
The quote every dog has his day, but the knights
are reserved for the cats is often attributed to Steinlan
allthough so there's no real evidence that I could find
that he ever wrote or said that, but his work
(22:04):
sure does seem to support that sentiment.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
As the eighteen nineties continued, Dafield Steinland continued to create
illustrations for papers and magazines, but he started working more
for political publications instead of just cabaret papers. He started
working with the socialist paper Le Chambard in eighteen ninety three.
A lot of his political work was focused on workers' rights,
(22:29):
as well as the problems of the justice system and
the military. We mentioned his commercial poster work for a dairy,
which is in contrast to some of his protest work
about adulterated milk in France. We've talked about tainted milk
in the US on the show that aired back in
twenty twenty one, but France had its own problems with
(22:50):
adulterated milk being sold to poor families whose children were
often made sick from it. Steinland participated in a special
public criticizing the dairy industry for selling spoiled Milk, along
with more than four dozen other artists. The title of
this translated to the licensed poisoners, the milk falsifiers.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
But just as those cycles of freedom of the press
and then a rescinding of those freedoms had played out
numerous times in French history before Teafil was there, in
the early eighteen nineties, new laws were put into place
to curb anarchist writing and activities. There were three of
these laws. They're known collectively as the Loi se rat
(23:37):
or villainous laws, and they were ruled out after a
non lethal bombing happened at the Chamber of Deputies. So
the first law forbid anarchist publications. The second law was
a bit nebulous, as it named a crime that was
called the understanding, which was supposed to somehow encapsulate the
(23:57):
state of being an anarchist. Maybe seriously, it is a
very confusing legal concept. It actually tied up this legislation
for a long time because various politicians struggled to define
what they were getting at in this law. The third
law made it explicitly illegal to engage in any anarchist activities.
(24:20):
These laws are very complex in their context, and their
execution and their impact. But in relation to tefil Steinlan
there were two very obvious effects. One he started publishing
his art under the pseudonym Petitpier, and two he eventually
fled Paris for Munich.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
The decision to leave Paris has to have been difficult
because in terms of his art career, things were just
really starting to take off. He had his first solo
exhibition in the spring of eighteen ninety four, and if
he weren't involved in anti government political groups, he probably
would have continued to enjoy success as a painter and
a poster artist. But if he placed himself in the
(25:03):
public eye with his art, he knew he would probably
be arrested because of his ties to anarchists. So in
July of eighteen ninety four he went to Germany and
started producing art for a socialist magazine there called Simple Sisimus.
While he was away, a large group of activists in
Paris were put on trial for charges of anarchy in
(25:25):
the event now known as the Trial of thirty. That
trial was supposed to show how large and dangerous the
anarchist network of France was and provide legitimizing context for
the Las Celeratte, but it failed. All but a handful
of the defendants were acquitted. With the failure of the trial, Steinland,
(25:46):
like other activists, thought it was safe to return to Paris,
and he did that in October. He had only been
away for a few months and had visited Norway in
addition to Germany.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Yeah, at that point it wasn't like the laws all
went away, but everybody was kind of like, you don't
know what you're doing with these It don't make sense,
and you don't know how to enforce them, so it's fine.
The year after all of that upheaval, though, was very
busy for Steinland, both professionally and personally. He jumped right
back into working with an assortment of socialist papers. He
(26:17):
had a lot of commissions for artwork for posters and songbooks,
and he illustrated the cover of Les Soliloque du Povre,
a poetry book by Jehann Richtusdefield.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Had remained a Swiss citizen up to this point, but
now he finally applied to become a naturalized French citizen.
He and the woman he had moved to Paris with,
Emily May, had lived as husband and wife throughout their
time in France and had their daughter, Colette, but they'd
never legally gotten married. They had a small but official
(26:50):
wedding in eighteen ninety five at the eighteenth Arrondissement government offices.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
In eighteen ninety six, Steinland was commissioned to create the
poster that many of our listeners would recognize. That is
tourne de chat noir de Rudolph Salis. That translates to
tour of Rudolf Sali's chat Noir. The cabaret acs from
that nightclub would tour and this simple but striking graphic,
with its black, gold and red color scheme, was instantly recognizable,
(27:20):
and it has endured to still be in print one
hundred and thirty years later on all manner of things,
from art prints to coffee cups and get socks. You
can get kind of anything, literally anything to to Monmartre
and Paris. Find a thing that isn't printed with it,
it's hard to do. New spoofs of it pop up
seemingly every day in pop culture, featuring everything from bats
(27:44):
to demagorgans. Tamfield Steinland Shirley could not have anticipated the
life this particular poster would have, and he was soon
moving on to other projects. Incidentally, though the nightclub and
touring company Les Chat Noir did not have the same longevity.
Is this piece of art that all shut down just
the year after this poster was made.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Other places had the same name later, Like, if you
go look for pictures, you will find pictures of other establishments.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
We're going to talk about that at the end.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Yeah, I'm just saying for people who are maybe confused
in this moment. Steinland also has ties to the Dreyfus affair,
which we covered as a two parter in twenty twenty one.
That was the scandal in which Alfred Dreyfuss, Jewish French
artillery officer, was convicted of treason and sentenced to life
in prison, although another man, an officer named Ferdinand Whilston
(28:35):
est Hasi, was the true culprit. Steinland was very, unsurprisingly
to me, publicly vocal in his criticism of the military
and the cover up regarding the true details.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Of this case. Yeah, if you listen to that two
parter which Tracy did the research and writing on, a
lot of people were pretty vocal about that. But Steinland,
being very associated already with kind of incendiary political groups,
it is not at all surprising that he was really
angry about it. At the start of the twentieth century,
Steinland continued to illustrate for political papers, including the anarchist
(29:10):
papers Les Ton Nouveau and Lasieteuburg. And Steinland started to
write for these papers as well as illustrate for them,
which was just the beginning of a new level of
activism for him. In nineteen oh two, he was one
of the earliest crusaders for France to have a union
for painters and draftsmen. The General Confederation of Labor in
(29:30):
France was only a few years old at the time,
and Steinland wanted artists to be recognized as laborers as well.
The General Confederation did add artists to its roster in
nineteen oh five, and Teafiel Steinland gave a speech at
that ceremony. In nineteen oh four and nineteen oh five,
Steinlan extended his connections in both the art and political
(29:51):
worlds by joining the Society of Draftsmen and Humorists and
the Society of Friends of the Russian People and Annexed Peoples.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Steinland's style and subject matter shifted significantly at the onset
of World War One, He'd often drawn with a sort
of whimsical feel to his work, even when he illustrated
the Prison Memoir, but his desire to use his art
to inform the public about the realities of war led
him to a more serious, darker tone. Styland was a pacifist.
(30:22):
He made it a point to visit battlefield so that
he could sketch what he saw there. His work includes
wounded soldiers, refugees, and the people whose lives were turned
upside down and exploited to provide for the war effort.
While he had been commenting both with words and art
on the inequalities of the world in the plight of
the working class, his wartime work took on a more
(30:45):
urgent tone. Styland's work about the war was never about
active battle scenes. It also didn't directly involve politics. It
portrayed all the people who were often overlooked, like the
poor children and women, and show the impact of the
war on them. This is really very much in line
with his political views, which always centered the importance of
(31:07):
the common man and the idea of equality and freedom
from oppression and exploitation. One of these works, for example,
is titled The Exodus, and it's a simple but dramatic
charcoal sketch of a family of refugees carrying their belongings
as they walk searching for safe haven. Other families fill
in the background with slightly lighter shading, and it's an
(31:30):
image of Belgium being evacuated after a German attack. This
image has also been called the March of the Orphans,
and this and other drawings of wartime tableaux, including portraits
of grieving women standing over coffins that are draped in
French flags, were made into etchings so they could be
sold in runs of prints, because they really wanted a
(31:51):
lot of people to see this. And once the war ended,
Steinland continued to work with a variety of socialist and
anarchist papers as an illustrator occasional writer. The end of
the artist's life seems abrupt. Teyofil Alexandra Steinland died in
nineteen twenty three. His ashes were interred at sam Vinsant
Cemetery in Molmarch.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
He was sixty four.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
And if there's a cause of death recorded somewhere, Holly
was not able to find it, or any mention of
an illness or an underlying condition.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Yeah, it's all just kind of like he was living
his life, he was making his art and then died.
Two months after Steinland's death in February nineteen twenty four,
an obituary for him ran in Arts and Decoration magazine,
written by Mattlack Price. Price was a writer and a
professor at the American School of Design and the Rhode
Island School of Design, and he was considered an authority
(32:47):
on poster art. He wrote a book on the subject
in nineteen eleven, and his write up about Steinlan is
filled with admiration and the sense of loss of something
truly great in the art world. One section of it
reads quote to a great many artists and amateurs in
the graphic arts, Steinland has given and will always give
more real joy and satisfaction than most artists who have
(33:09):
risen since his zenith. Nor will Steinland's art deteriorate with time.
It is too real, too sincere, too literary and dramatic
in its quality. Another cycle of appreciation will revive Steinland
as one of the old masters, and again students will
find in his drawings and lithographs some at least of
(33:30):
the old thrill. Steinland is dead, perhaps unfortunately for us,
all much of his influence is dead today in the
field of the graphic arts. It is not that Steinland's
art is out of date, but rather that it is
so much better, so much more living and vivid than
most of the work today, that it is a little
disquieting to have it about as a reminder. It disturbs
(33:53):
our illusions of progress. We ought to have done much
more than we have since eighteen ninety.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
The legacy of Steinlan's work is varied. On the one hand,
outside of art circles, his war art, which is arguably
his most important work, is not very well known at all,
but his poster art is revered. His image of La
Chatnoir is instantly recognizable. It's helped sustain interest in the
(34:20):
bohemian nightclub scene of Paris. As we mentioned, it's been
spoofed by innumerable artists around the world. Because of that
ongoing interest, there have been several copycat venues that have
popped up in recent years to capitalize on the fascination
that the public has with the era and with La
chat Noir specifically, and a chat Noir immersive theater experience
(34:44):
is set to open in London this month. If you
are listening when this episode drops stage by the group
the Lost Estate.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
We didn't mention it specifically in the episode, but there
were additional locations that were opened of le Chon Noir
during Steinland's time, but they all folded and now we
have many around the worlds. But they are homages truly. Yeah,
but all are you know, created and opened with incredible
(35:17):
love for the legacy of Leshaw. More. Do you want
to talk about coffee for a minute? And listener mail yes,
I always want to talk about coffee. This is from
our listener Caro, who writes, Hi, Holly and Tracy. I
started playing your recent episode on Melita Benz in the
creation of coffee filters, assuming I had never used the
(35:39):
company's products. It wasn't until you mentioned their signature red
and green packaging that I realized I had, in fact
used those coffee filters several times. A few years ago,
I started seeing a self professed coffee snob who only
made pour over and didn't have a programmable coffee machine.
I usually woke up before them, so I was grogglely
learning being in water ratios, thinking this would all be
(36:02):
so much easier if I had some caffeine in my system.
Lo and behold. I was using Melina filters, but I
was too sleepy to notice. Thankfully, I was able to
look past the caffeine logistics because that coffee snob has
become the love of my life. We've been together for
three years. I get choked up over this makes me
so happy. We've been together three years and are moving
in together in a few weeks. Congratulations to the two
(36:23):
of you. I hope it is a wonderful time living together.
Caro writes, I'm still up earlier than them, so they
have since bought a programmable coffee pot see compromise. It's love.
We try to treasure slow cups of pour over on
Saturday mornings. Though attached his pet tax or pictures of
our cat, Charlie. I've tried to play your podcast for
him to make him better informed about the world, but
(36:45):
he's more interested in demonstrating how fast he can run
from one end of the apartment to the other. He's
more of an athlete than a scholar. Thanks to the
great podcast, Caro. This cat is so cute and he
looks like exactly my flavor of trouble Yay, I love
a little wild acting care at They're the best. Yeah,
I'm I'm surprised at how how common Melita Filters are
(37:06):
still m M, even though I know they're a huge company.
I don't know. I in my head, I'm like, but
in Europe, but no, Yeah, literally on my local grocery
store shelves there they are. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
I had a mental image, like as soon as I
got to the like the brand name part, I had
a mental image of like the color scheme and the
logo and all of that, And when I looked at it,
I was like, Yeah, that is exactly what I thought.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
Yeah, yep, that's the one. That is the one. Also
shout out to our listener and Defined Destinations traveler Scott,
who texted me this morning about the Melita Ben's podcast
because you know, we all love a little coffee. Yeah, Scott,
that brightened my day. So if you would like to
write to us, you can do so at History podcast
(37:50):
at iHeartRadio dot com. Uh, you can go to mystonhistory
dot com if you want to see our show notes
for the episodes. And if you haven't subscribed to the
podcast and you would like to, that's easiest pie the
iHeartRadio app or wherever it is you listen.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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