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Title

The Dreyfus Affair.

The Ben Shahn Prints.

[Limited Edition Numbered in Roman Numerals LV of Sixty Only]

[First Numbered Limited Edition ~ In the Original Clamshell Box]

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Author

Ben SHAHN

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Year of Publication

1984

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Publisher

Cincinnati: Crossroads Books

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For full description see below - after all photographs

Description:

Cincinnati: Crossroads Books, 1984, First, Roman Numeral Numbered Limited Edition one of 60 Only.

Limited first edition, number LV (55) of only 60 copies numbered in roman numerals on better quality paper, (390 further copies on lesser quality paper - 450 total), a magnificent portfolio production with the first collected publication of Shahn’s 1930s Dreyfus prints. Eight Ben Shahn offset lithographs after pochoir prints (11 3/4" x 15 1/4") and twenty-six page book in the original matching clamshell box. Each print with protective wrap-around tissue-guard housed in its own titled card case folder with short descriptive text. With original marketing material in original envelope.

Eight colour lithographic prints: ‘en pochoir’ – printed on Grandes Arches handmade pure rag vergé paper, loose as issued in descriptive sleeves, each with a tissue guard wrapped all the way around the print, 5 of the tissue guards creased or wrinkled to fit into the folded card sleeve – see photos.

Printed Book: Folio. 26pp [1]. Printed paper-covered boards with red and black lettering on cover. Frontispiece b/w photograph showing Ben Shahn and M. Crampe. With one colour and three b/w photographic reproductions. Includes essays by Bernarda Bryson Shahn, Egal Feldman and Charles Westheimer as well as the letter "J'Accuse" by Emile Zola in Dreyfus' defense, addressed to French President Félix Faure. The letter appeared in the Parisian newspaper "L'Aurore" on 13 January 1898. Letter in French with English translation.

Externally used and repaired condition, structurally solid with repairs in cloth to strengthen the paper and card binding. Internally excellent.

Pochoir prints:

1) Captain Alfred Dreyfus, an exemplary officer and member of the French General Staff who, being a Jew, was made scapegoat and condemned for a treasonable act that he did not commit.

2) Major Armand-Auguste-Ferdinand-Marie Mercier du Paty de Clam. There could not have been a worse choice for a fair preliminary interrogation of Dreyfus than a blundering and erratic busybody who felt himself honoured by the assignment. A man of fertile and cruel imagination, he had the soul of a medieval inquisitor. He was a violent anti-Semite.

3) Fernad Labori the lawyer, represented an anomaly in French legal circles: a lonely voice crying out for justice in a corrupt world. Like his famous clients, Zola, Picquart and Dreyfus, he was the subject of vicious attacks - including an attempted assassination. Like them, he attained the stature of a moral hero in the United States. He was a handsome man, full of vitality with "lungs of steel."

4) Georges Picquart was widely recognized as one of France's most promising young officers. Calm, clear-eyed, with slightly ironical honesty, a brainy dreamer of a type much more common among artists than soldiers, he loved music, spoke German, English and Spanish with equal fluency and excelled in mathematics and the military arts. It was to Picquart that Dreyfus was to owe his life, Picquart destroying his own in the process.

5) The Experts. The handwriting specialists accused by Zola of conspiracy and fraud.

6) Marie-Charles-Ferdinand-Walsin-Esterhazy. The son of a French General of an illegitimate branch of the Hungarian Esterhazys, was the man who actually peddled the French military secrets to the German military attaché in Paris. He was so utterly bored by his bourgeois world that he attempted to find relief in heroism and knavery. He was a gambler and adventurer, but without purpose, a man possessed of a fantastic and sardonic humour.

7) Labori and Picquart remained unwilling to accept any final accommodation by the courts less than the full revision of the guilty verdicts.

8) Paleologue and demange, the one a witness, the other an honoured lawyer, defender of Dreyfus.

Clamshell professionally repaired with cloth intrnally and externally – see photos.

Ben Shahn was a Lithuanian-born American artist. He is best known for his works on social realism, his left wing political views and his series of lectures published as 'The Shape of Content'.

Approximately 16 and a half inches tall.

Condition Report

Externally

• Spine – good condition – repaired with cloth to the joints retaining the paper and card exterior.
• Joints – good condition – see above, the printed book is very good.
• Corners – good condition – worn and bumped.
• Boards – good condition – boards to the commentary book excellent.
• Page edges – good condition – clean.
• See above and photos.

Internally

• Hinges – good condition – internally the clamshell box hinges have been professionally repaired.
• Paste downs – good condition.
• End papers – good condition.
• Title – good condition.
• Pages – good condition – pages in the commentary volume are very good with the limitation page at the end, each of the illustrations is wrapped in a folded tissue guard, five of which are creased and folded.
• Binding – good condition.
• See photos

Publisher: see above.
Publication Date: 1984
Binding: Hardback

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Ruler in picture is 6 inches long.

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