Pod Insights Stuff You Missed in History Class Théophile Steinlen Beyond 'Le Chat Noir' About this episode “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.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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2:10 Holly Frey? Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.
2:21 Holly Frey? Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frey.
2:24 Tracy V. Wilson? And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
2:26 Holly Frey? So the poster that is colloquially known as Le Chaînoir, or The Black Cat, is easily one of the most famous pieces of late 19th 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 developed as like a stamp for his signature, it is actually often assumed that a more famous artist, who is associated with the Parisian fin de siècle art scene, created it. I actually polled 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 Tu L'usre Tracy.
3:07 Holly Frey? It's not. Théophile Steinlen was right in the mix of the Montrat bohemians, alongside now famous artists like Edgar Degas and, yes, Henri de Toulouse Tracy. 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 a lot of political art, which was very important to him, is often eclipsed by his commercial images of felines. So today, we're gonna unravel his life. But what that really means is that we're gonna talk a lot about things that were happening in France and the world politically,
3:50 Holly Frey? because his art and his life are very much tied to the politics of the day. In fact, we're really gonna talk more about that than we do about his artwork. But we'll talk about cats, I promise.
4:03 Tracy V. Wilson? They are very good cats.
4:06 Tracy V. Wilson? Théophile Alexandre Steinlen was born in 1859 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 Lycée, he attended Lausanne's art school.
4:28 Tracy V. Wilson? At least one account says that he studied theology briefly before focusing on art, but it is not clear if that's accurate. After art school, he moved to Moulose, that's in France and the Alsace region. And that's about 35 kilometers or 22 miles from the Swiss border. He worked at a textile factory there designing fabric prints. And he studied other art techniques, including lithography and engraving. His story kind of picks up when he's 21 in 1881. 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.
5:08 Holly Frey? But that move happened at a really significant moment in French history. And knowing that history might give some inkling of who Steinle was already at that young age, ideologically speaking. Because on July 29th of 1881, France passed the Loi sur la liberté de la presse, the law on the freedom of the press, which was a 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 Revolution's 1789 foundational document, Declaration of the Rights of Man, states that, quote, "Men are born and remain free and equal in rights." This sounds very familiar to our US listeners.
5:53 Holly Frey? It's because Thomas Jefferson helped the Marquis de Lafayette when he drafted the first version of the, uh, 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 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."
6:24 Tracy V. Wilson? So in practice, letting everybody say whatever they wanted in a country that was a perpetual political powder keg. That was 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 be charged with libel. Published writing was limited even more in 1793, when any writing or speech suggesting
7:06 Tracy V. Wilson? a return to a monarchy was punishable by death. When Robespierre gained political power in 1793, rules about free speech tightened even more, to the point that dissenting 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.
7:34 Holly Frey? Yep, because by 1796, the death penalty was once again the consequence for advocating against the new government. The start of Napoleon's reign in 1799 offered no relief. He took things even further by limiting the number of newspapers they 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 once again when Napoleon was replaced with the Bourbon Restoration in 1815, and censorship laws were once again relaxed. In 1824, laws against freedom of the press were once again implemented, and the same
8:19 Holly Frey? pattern played out again with the overthrow of the Bourbons and the installation of King Louis Philippe, a reign which started out with a more liberal attitude toward the press, but then soon reduced their freedoms. From the beginning of the Second Republic in 1848 and the election of Napoleon III, 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 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.
9:04 Holly Frey? A lot of journalists and creatives who made art that contained political commentary found ways to technically operate within the bounds of the law while also clearly speaking out against the government. These were through 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, 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.
9:47 Tracy V. Wilson? The French Third Republic began in 1870 with the overthrow of Napoleon III and the start of President Louis Jules Troschus's leadership. In 1879, Jules Grevy 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 1881. This law is considered the foundational legal text of France's freedom of the press and expression, and it hearkens back to the Declaration of the Rights of Man. This law did not 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.
10:32 Tracy V. Wilson? And it opened the door to additional legislation that further expanded the freedom of the press.
10:38 Holly Frey? And it was in this moment of newfound freedom of expression that Theophil Steinlen made his move to relocate to Paris. He had long wanted to move there. So in October 1881, just a few months after the law of the freedom of the press was passed, he moved to the capital with his girlfriend Emily May. Steinlen was once again able to find work as a fabric designer in Paris, and he and Emily found a place to live in Montmartre.
11:05 Tracy V. Wilson? Coming up, we'll talk about how Steinlen fell in with a circle of other artists in Paris. But before we do, we will pause for a sponsor break.
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14:58 Holly Frey? It was an illness, actually, that ultimately led Théophile to the heart of the art scene in Montrat. Just a few months after the move to Paris, Steinlen became quite sick and he called for a doctor to visit. And that doctor was the older brother of Adolph Leon Willett. Willett was a painter and illustrator, among other artistic talents, and he was right in the center of Parisian artistic life. And when Willett's position brother was tending to Théophile Steinlen in the Steinlen 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 Willett, who was Théophile's lifelong friend, immediately brought Steinlen into his social circle.
15:44 Tracy V. Wilson? Soon Steinlen was accompanying Willett to social gatherings in the city. And through Willett, he became connected to a wide range of successful artists. One of the places they frequented was Le Château Noir. Le Château Noir was a nightclub that opened in 1881 in Montmartre, Paris, and it was the brainchild of Rodolphe Salis.
16:07 Holly Frey? The opening of Le Château 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, cabaret. And prior to the opening of Le Château Noir, the word cabaret meant something very different. Essentially, it meant a place you could buy alcohol. Some such 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 Salis envisioned a place where people could eat and drink and see entertainment. And in the late 19th century, Paris, that meant a heady combination of opulent design,
16:51 Holly Frey? very rich cuisine, and an assortment of interesting acts, all introduced by Salis. And a variety of performers graced the stage at Le Château 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 of them had this edge of rebellion or subversion to them. This was a groundbreaking concept at the time and it was instantly popular. Salih 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.
17:31 Holly Frey? The Moulin Rouge, for example, which is wildly famous, opened in 1889, eight years after Salih opened Le Château Noir. And incidentally, Steinlen's friend Willette was the architect of the Moulin Rouge.
17:44 Tracy V. Wilson? The spirit of expression, freshly stoked by the freedom of the press law, was central to the Montmartre 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. That requirement was removed and new papers sprung up, including one run by the proprietor of Le Château Noir. Salih started publication of Gazette du Château Noir in 1882, the year after he opened the cabaret, and Teofiel Steinlen became a regular contributor. His first illustration for the paper appeared on September 2nd, 1883.
18:28 Tracy V. Wilson? He went on to provide at least six dozen other drawings for the paper over the years.
18:34 Holly Frey? Yeah, 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 du Château Noir was not the only cabaret paper that Steinlen worked with, though. Raccenturé Aristide Bruin opened his own cabaret called Le Merletton, and Le Merletton had its own paper of the same name. Steinlen was also a regular contributor to its pages, again, mostly creating illustrations to accompany the songs that Bruin wrote and published in that paper.
19:15 Tracy V. Wilson? Although Steinlen was deeply ingrained in the Montmartre art 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 lot of them were people who had been exiled for supporting the Paris Commune and had been granted amnesty in 1880. He found himself aligned with anarchist and socialist groups in France, and his art started to reflect that ideology as well.
19:52 Holly Frey? One of the most obvious instances of this alignment was Steinlen's involvement with Ernest Gagou and Charles Malato. Gagou was an anarchist and a publisher, and his weekly paper, La Tac, published columns that increasingly called for an abandonment of almost all other political stances because they were all faulty in one way or another.
20:14 Tracy V. Wilson? We've talked about worker demonstrations in the US in the 19th century, and their protests inspired similar actions in France. In 1890, the first May Day was planned. This was a worker's strike that voiced the demands for eight hours of work, eight hours of sleep, and eight hours of leisure. This protest planned for May 1st was covered in a lot of political papers and in La Tac as well. And in Gagou's paper, an article by Charles Malato, was printed in the lead up to May Day that gave instructions for making bombs. Both the publisher and writer were arrested and charged with inciting violence, and they were found guilty and sentenced to 15 months in prison.
20:57 Holly Frey? While the two anarchists were serving their sentence, Theophile Steinlen 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 Fin de siècle Souvenirs de Pelagie, or Prison at the End of the Century: Memories of Pelagie. Pelagie was the name 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 exposé about how ludicrous the entire legal system of France was in the view of Gagou and Malato. And it opens with, quote, "Prefaces are rarely read. We believe, however,
21:42 Holly Frey? that we must explain our motive in portraying our own." insignificant personalities. Prison, however benign, never represents an El Dorado, and Pelagia 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? 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, our only distraction.
22:27 Holly Frey? We hope that the bawdy 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 spare ourselves. And that is what we have done. May this strip bare forever the prestige of political martyrdom.
22:55 Tracy V. Wilson? One of the surprising things about this book is how many cat drawings are in it. Steinlen 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 23 cat illustrations. Some of 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.
23:26 Holly Frey? 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 workbag. Pelagia, 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 our beds and underneath them too? Sharp reproaches, later corrections, administered paternally according to the axiom, he who loves Loves well, punishes well, gradually led her towards better habits. 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
24:10 Holly Frey? 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 they ate to be fed from their plates and then have a safe out of sight spot to curl up in during the day. 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.
24:42 Tracy V. Wilson? This book also mentions the day that Steinlen visited them. Quote, "In the dim light of Bruin, a second figure advanced discreetly, preoccupied with holding an enormous tomcat in his arms, the head keeper's cat captured on the way. Steinlen cried, Gugu, the brilliant illustrator of La Chateaubourne, 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."
25:15 Holly Frey? 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 in History Class going.
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26:04 Tracy V. Wilson? Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jesay have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So, listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy
26:49 Tracy V. Wilson? only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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29:15 Holly Frey? So to circle back to cats, when we said Steinle loved them, that's putting it pretty mildly. He loved cats. He regularly fed the Strays of Montreux. 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, which is where a lot of his money was coming from, he often added a cat or two into the art. His poster for Compagnie Française des Chocolats et des Teiges, 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 La Pure
29:59 Holly Frey? de la Vinjeune Sterilisée, that's pure sterilized milk from la Vinjeune, features his daughter Colette 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 Charon, which was a veterinary clinic. It's 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 1890, features a swarm of cats all traversing
30:42 Holly Frey? over a city, 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. 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 nights are reserved for the cats," is often attributed to Steinlen, although there's no real evidence that I could find that he
31:24 Holly Frey? ever wrote or said that, but his work sure does seem to support that sentiment.
31:29 Tracy V. Wilson? As the 1890s continued, David Steinlen 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 1893. A lot of his political work was focused on workers' rights 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 2021, but
32:10 Tracy V. Wilson? France had its own problems with adulterated milk being sold to poor families, whose children were often made sick from it. Steinlen participated in a special publication 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."
32:37 Holly Frey? 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 Teofil was there, in the early 1890s, new laws were put into place to curb anarchist writing and activities. There were three of these laws, they're known collectively as the Lois Célérates, or villainous laws, and they were rolled 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 state of being an anarchist, maybe?
33:22 Holly Frey? 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. These laws are very complex in their context and their execution and their impact, but in relation to Teofil Steinlen, there were two very obvious effects. One, he started publishing his art under the pseudonym Petit Pierre, and two, he eventually fled Paris for Munich.
34:02 Tracy V. Wilson? 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 1894. 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 public eye with his art, he knew he would probably be arrested because of his ties to anarchists. So in July of 1894, he went to Germany and started producing art for a socialist magazine there called Simplicissimus. While he was away, a large group of activists in Paris were put on trial for charges of anarchy
34:47 Tracy V. Wilson? in 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 Loi Sellette. But it failed. All but a handful of the defendants were acquitted. With the failure of the trial, Steinlen, 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.
35:19 Holly Frey? 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. They 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 Steinlen, both professionally and personally. He jumped right back into working with an assortment of socialist papers. He had a lot of commissions for artwork for posters and songbooks. And he illustrated the cover of Les Sol et L'Ok du Pauvre, a poetry book by Johann Richtus.
35:51 Tracy V. Wilson? Deauville 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 wedding in 1895 at the Eighteenth arrondissement government offices.
36:18 Holly Frey? In 1896, Steinlen was commissioned to create the poster that many of our listeners would recognize, that is, Tourne du Châne Noir de Rudolphe Salis, that translates to tour of Rudolphe Salis' Châne Noir, the cabaret acts from that nightclub would tour. And this simple but striking graphic with its black, gold, and red color scheme was instantly recognizable, and it has endured to still be in print 130 years later on all manner of things, from art prints to coffee cups, you can get socks, you can get kind of anything.
36:52 Tracy V. Wilson? Literally anything.
36:53 Holly Frey? You go to Montmartre in 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 to demogorgons. Taffiel Steinlen surely 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 Le Châne Noir did not have the same longevity as this piece of art. That all shut down just the year after this poster was made.
37:26 Tracy V. Wilson? Other places had the same name later. Like, if you go look for pictures, you will find pictures of other establishments.
37:32 Holly Frey? We're gonna talk about that at the end.
37:33 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, I'm just saying for people who are maybe confused in this moment. Steinlen also has ties to the Dreyfus affair, which we covered as a two-parter in 2021. That was the scandal in which Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish-French artillery officer, was convicted of treason and sentenced to life in prison, although another man, an officer named Ferdinand Wilson-Esterhazy, was the true culprit. Steinlen was, very unsurprisingly to me, publicly vocal in his criticism of the military and the cover-up regarding the true details of this case.
38:08 Holly Frey? 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 Steinlen 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 20th century, Steinlen continued to illustrate for political papers, including the anarchist papers Les Trônes Nouveaux and La Siède au Beurre. And Steinlen 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 1902, he was one of the earliest crusaders for France to have a union for painters and draftsmen.
38:50 Holly Frey? The General Confederation of Labor in France was only a few years old at the time, and Steinlen wanted artists to be recognized as laborers as well. The General Confederation did add artists to its roster in 1905, and Teofyl Steinlen gave a speech at that ceremony. In 1904 and 1905, Steinlen extended his connections in both the art and political worlds by joining the Society of Draftsmen and Humorists and the Society of Friends of the Russian People and Annexed Peoples.
39:21 Tracy V. Wilson? Steinlen's style and subject matter shifted significantly at the onset of World War I. 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. Steinlen was a pacifist. He made it a point to visit battlefields 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
40:03 Tracy V. Wilson? and the plight of the working class, his wartime work took on a more urgent tone. Steinlen'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 showed the impact of the war on them.
40:25 Tracy V. Wilson? This is really very much in line with his political views, which always centered the importance of the common man and the idea of equality and freedom from oppression and exploitation.
40:35 Holly Frey? 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 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 tableau, 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 lot of people to see this. And once the war ended, Steinlen continued to work with a variety of socialist and anarchist papers
41:20 Holly Frey? as an illustrator and occasional writer.
41:23 Tracy V. Wilson? The end of the artist's life seems abrupt. Teiffel Alexandra Steinlen died in 1923. His ashes were interred at Saint Vincent Cemetery in Montmartre. He was 64. 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.
41:45 Holly Frey? Yeah, it's all just kind of like, he was living his life, he was making his art.
41:48 Tracy V. Wilson? And then he died.
41:51 Holly Frey? Two months after Steinlen's death, in February 1924, an obituary for him ran in Arts and Decoration Magazine, written by Matlak 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 on poster art. He wrote a book on the subject in 1911. And his write-up about Steinlen 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, Steinlen has given and will always give more real joy and satisfaction than most artists who have risen since his zenith. Nor will Steinlen's art deteriorate with time.
42:36 Holly Frey? It is too real, too sincere, too literary and dramatic in its quality. Another cycle of appreciation will revive Steinlen as one of the old masters. And again, students will find in his drawings and lithographs, some at least of the old thrill." Steinlen 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 Steinlen'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 our illusions of progress. We ought to have done much more than we have since 1890.
43:21 Tracy V. Wilson? The legacy of Steinlen'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 Le Chat Noir is instantly recognizable. It's helped sustain interest in the 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 Le Chat
44:01 Tracy V. Wilson? Noir specifically. And a Chateau Noir immersive theater experience is set to open in London this month, if you are listening when this episode drops, staged by the group The Lost Estate.
44:14 Holly Frey? We didn't mention it specifically in the episode, but there were additional locations that were opened of Le Chat Noir during Steinlen's time, but they all folded. And now we have many around the world, but they are homages, truly.
44:31 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
44:34 Holly Frey? But all are, you know, created and opened with incredible love for, for the legacy of Le Chat Noir. Do you want to talk about coffee for a minute, listener mail?
44:45 Tracy V. Wilson? Yes.
44:47 Holly Frey? 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 and the creation of coffee filters, assuming I had never used the 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 groggily learning bean and water ratios, thinking this would all be so much easier if I had some caffeine in my system. Lo and behold, I was using Melita filters, but I was too sleepy to notice.
45:31 Holly Frey? 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. It makes me so happy. We've been together three years and are moving in together in a few weeks. Congratulations to the two 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 its love. We try to treasure slow cups of pour over on Saturday mornings, though. Attached is pet tax or pictures of our cat, Charlie. I tried to play your podcast for him to make him better informed about the world, but 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 for the great podcast, Caro.
46:16 Holly Frey? This cat is so cute and he looks like exactly my flavor of trouble.
46:19 Tracy V. Wilson? Yay.
46:20 Holly Frey? I love a little wild-acting cat. They're the best. Yeah, I'm surprised at how common Melita filters are still. Even though I know they're a huge company, I don't know, in my head, I'm like, but in Europe, but no.
46:34 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
46:35 Holly Frey? Literally on my local grocery store shelves, there they are.
46:38 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, 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.
46:50 Holly Frey? Yeah, yep, that's the one. That is the one. Also, shout out to our listener and Define Destinations traveler, Scott, who texted me this morning about the Melita Benz 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 [email protected] . You can go to missedinhistory.com if you want to see our show notes for the the episodes. And if you haven't subscribed to the podcast and you would like to, that's as easy as pie, the iHeart Radio app or wherever it is you listen.
47:34 Tracy V. Wilson? 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.
47:48 Holly Frey? A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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