Triple Portrait of Alfred Dreyfus, Emile Zola and George Piquart, Framed Lithograph in Shadow Box, Paris: P. Koch and Co., ca. 1900

Triple lithographic portrait using a lenticular technique (20½ x 17 in.; 520 x 430 mm) in a wooden frame with plaster scrollwork having some minor losses; brass plate affixed to frame bearing the legend: "The truth is on the march, and nothing shall stop it" from an open letter written by Zola to the nation of France, 7 January 1898.

Triple lithographic portrait using a lenticular technique (20 1/2 x 17 in.; 520 x 430 mm) in a wooden frame with plaster scrollwork having some minor losses; brass plate affixed to frame bearing the legend: "The truth is on the march, and nothing shall stop it" from an open letter written by Zola to the nation of France, 7 January, 1898. In fairly good condition, except for some of the paper strips that are slightly loose and bent. Not examined out of frame.
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This shadow box portrait of three important protagonists of the Dreyfus Affair that roiled France during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army was falsely accused and convicted of treason by a secret military commission an the basis of trumped-up evidence. Stripped of his rank and imprisoned on Devils' Island, it was only after the affair had dragged on for a dozen years that Dreyfus was finally cleared of all charges by the court of appeals, exonerated and reinstated. French society was deeply divided by the Dreyfus case and mob violence and hostile rhetoric led to widespread and virulent anti-Semitic expression in the popular press. 

The influential French writer Émile Zola,  played a major role in precipitating the events that would eventually lead to Dreyfus' exoneration. Zola's involvement reached a climax when he published an open letter to the President of France charging the French government and army with conspiring to suppress the true facts of the case. The open letter, famously headlined "J'accuse...!" appeared on the front page of the radical daily L'Aurore. Zola was subsequently tried and convicted of libel and forced to flee the country.

Georges Picquart, was chief of the French army's intelligence section; it was he who discovered that the memorandum that had been used to convict Captain Dreyfus had probably been the work of another man, Ferdinand Esterhazy. Despite warnings by his superiors to suppress this evidence, he persisted in making his findings known and suffered the consequences; a demotion in rank and transfer to Tunisia.  Picquart was later even accused of forging the note that had convinced him of Esterhazy's guilt. He was dismissed from the service and arrested for forgery. The exoneration of Dreyfus in 1906 also served to absolve Picquart, who was eventually promoted to general and entered Georges Clemenceau's cabinet as minister of war.

It is difficult to exaggerate the influence of the Dreyfus Affair, both on Jewish history and on French politics. In France the fractured left-wing groups united to form the Radical and the Socialist parties, shifting the balance of power in the Parliament for most of the first half of the 20th century.  And for Jews, the 12-year ordeal intensified anti-Semitism in France, enflaming the riots and violence which helped convince Theodor Herzl that Jews needed a homeland in Palestine.