THÉOPHILE ALEXANDRE-STEINLEN (1859-1923) LE COUPABLE. 1896. 54 x 39 inches. Charles Verneau, Paris. Condition B+: extensive expert overpainting, restored losses, and restoration in margins and text. Le Journal was founded in 1892 by Ferdinand Xau (the impresario who helped bring Buffalo Bill to Europe.) A daily newspaper, it achieved tremendous circulation and success as it was packed with French Republican politics, great stories (including many serialized novels) and good illustrations by the likes of Henri-Gabriel Ibels and Rene Hermann-Paul. This story, The Culprit, is a drama about a fatherless child who is sent to live in a "country colony" upon being arrested for vagrancy. After ten years he leaves and moves back to Paris, where he kills a man. When he is brought before a magistrate it turns out that the lawyer prosecuting him is his long lost father, who (after years of remorse) announces himself to be the culprit. Steinlen, always conscious of the poor and the downtrodden, depicts the misery of these penal camps in a hard, realist manner. The child, with a clearly unhappy look on his face is sitting in his drab uniform and his wooden clogs amidst a desolate landscape. This poster would have been an extremely brave choice for the editors to make to promote the periodical. This is the version without the top banner announcing Le Journal. Bargeil 26 (var), Maitres pl. 134 (var), DFP II 788 (var)
