A Basement Shop in Cracow (1898): Art, History and Details

A Basement Shop in Cracow (1898) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864–1901).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

At the Foot of Mount Sinai by politician and journalist Georges Clemenceau collects six short stories about the lives of Jewish characters in the Poland of his time. As he worked on the commission to illustrate the book, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec spent many hours sketching Russian and Polish Jews living in the Tournelle district in Paris, using them as inspiration for his depiction of Clemenceau’s characters, including the Jewish officer in the Russian army and the poor shopkeeper. The book was written and released during France’s Dreyfus affair, a political controversy surrounding false accusations of treason and espionage against Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus. Clemenceau supported Dreyfus and, as editor of the newspaper L’Aurore (Dawn), published several articles defending him.

Object facts

• Title: A Basement Shop in Cracow
• Date: 1898
• Creator attribution: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864–1901)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Print
• Technique: lithograph
• Dimensions: Image: 17.5 x 14.4 cm (6 7/8 x 5 11/16 in.); Sheet: 33 x 23.5 cm (13 x 9 1/4 in.)
• Collection: PR - Lithograph
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1950.594

Collection credit

Dudley P. Allen Fund

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.