Théophile Alexandre Steinlen

Les Otages Civils

1916

Theophile Alexandre Steinlen was born in Lausanne in 1859. He was naturalized French in 1901. He was a painter, engraver, illustrator, poster artist and sculptor. Before settling in Paris, he made a detour to Mulhouse where one of his uncles placed him in the studio of one of the best lithographers of the time. He settled definitively in Montmartre in 1881. Willette introduced him to his companions of the Cabaret du Chat-Noir animated by Rodolphe Salis. He met Toulouse-Lautrec, Forain, Léandre, Debussy, Eric Satie, Verlaine, Alphonse Allais and Aristide Bruant. He took part in the performances of the famous cabaret's shadow theater with animal stories and, most often, sequences featuring cats, for which he has a particular affection. The felines will appear throughout his activity as "parentheses" in a tormented work. There is, in this torment, the expression of no personal problem but a painful compassion for the lives of the exploited and marginal beings. He painted and drew idylls, balls and bastrings, workers, kids and gosselin, the poor, the little workers, girls and marlous. He sometimes made posters. In the most successful of them (« Le lait pur de la Vingeanne » et le « Fer Bravais ») he imposed, relevant or not, the presence of cats. In 1901, Steinlen worked for L'Assiette au beurre , the most virulent satirical newspaper ever published and takes readily to target the institutions of the 3rd Republic. His works are found in numerous Public Collections, such as Petit Palais in Geneva, Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington.