Ten Assassinations for a Penny (1897): Art, History and Details

Ten Assassinations for a Penny (1897) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Théophile Alexandre Steinlen (Swiss, 1859–1923).

The work and its context

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

Nineteenth-century French lithographs, including Steinlen’s charged political images, offer wide-ranging documentation of the life at the time. In 1881 France passed a law granting freedom of the press, resulting in numerous magazines of humor and social criticism. An advocate for the poor, the downtrodden, and the working classes, Steinlen contributed artwork to journals linked to the leftist movement, such as the anarchist publication La feuille (The Newspaper), in which Ten Assassinations for a Penny was reproduced. Steinlen’s illustrations for La feuille comment satirically on the articles written by Zo d’Axa, the editor-in-chief. A sense of gloom and violence that parallels the pessimism of the writing permeates the somber images. Marked by strong contrasts of black and white, Ten Assassinations for a Penny has an unsettling, even frightening quality intended to shock the reader into acknowledging the deep-seated problems in French society.

Object facts

• Title: Ten Assassinations for a Penny
• Date: 1897
• Creator attribution: Théophile Alexandre Steinlen (Swiss, 1859–1923)
• Culture: Switzerland
• Type: Print
• Technique: lithograph
• Dimensions: Sheet: 60.6 x 46.5 cm (23 7/8 x 18 5/16 in.); Image: 60.6 x 46.5 cm (23 7/8 x 18 5/16 in.)
• Collection: PR - Lithograph
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 2012.271

Collection credit

Bequest of John Bonebrake

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.