While 

The Eye of the Artist provides cryptic clues to its meaning, other works somewhat more

straightforwardly give the viewer a sense of the artist’s political concerns and convictions. These
include Safe Money, in which he depicts the open and overstuffed vault of a mythical railroad

company (North, South, East, and West Railroad), revealing its excessive profits in paper
currency as well as in gold and silver coins over a six-month period.19 Dubreuil was clearly

attracted to the opportunity of exposing capitalist greed and the astounding profits behind such
monopolies.

Another money painting, The Cross of Gold, derives its title not from the artist but from a
famous speech that the presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan gave in the same decade

in which the work was made. Bryan’s address (now called “The Cross of Gold Speech”) at the
1896 Democratic National Convention in Chicago attacked wealthy easterners for insisting on a

gold standard for the country’s currency at the expense of the average worker, who would be
better off with a silver or a bimetallist standard. Bryan electrified his audience when he ended
with the memorable words: “You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”20 Shortly

afterward, a caricature of Bryan giving the speech depicted him waving a crown of thorns and

holding a huge golden cross. Dubreuil’s creation, however, in its striking originality, does not fit
this iconography and is not convincing as the “literal embodiment”, as has been argued, of a
contemporaneous politician’s rant.21 In the traditional position of the Virgin Mary is a depiction

of Martha Washington, an “exemplary” historical figure associated with the founding of the
nation. Placed this way, she appears to be chief worshiper in a farce.22 The words “United States”

on the topmost silver certificate seem to confirm that this object of adoration can be interpreted

as a satire of the country’s worship of money, particularly in this time of financial difficulty.
 Victor Dubreuil, The Cross of Gold, ca. 1896 — Source.

As a painted subject, currency increased in popularity among still-life painters in New York at

the end of the century. Compared with his competitors, Dubreuil was less prolific and more
uneven an illusionist than most. In fact, some of his bank notes are quite loosely painted and
mostly fanciful, as in a second robbery picture, A Hard Day’s Work. Yet while his pictures could

be cruder or less exact than those of his better-known contemporaries, they were also more
strident in content. Alfred Frankenstein, who in 1953 was possibly the first art historian to

mention Dubreuil, admired and reproduced Don’t Make a Move! as the artist’s masterpiece, later
noting with approval its “vein of stark brutality”.23 The art historian Bruce Chambers had good

reason, in surveying money paintings of the period, to note that Dubreuil’s images were “the
most individual of them all”.24 In fact, Dubreuil’s societal warnings are more daring and socially

critical than the subjects of nearly all — if not all — of his contemporaries. These images have
no known fine art counterparts in the period.25

Dubreuil returned to France by 1900 when he had one of his inventions — a life-saving boat —
shown in the American section of the International Exposition in Paris, with his New York

address listed in the catalog. If this were not sufficient reason for him to cross the Atlantic, there
was another. The American federal authorities had an increasing suspicion that he was engaged
in counterfeiting.26 In 1897 a Treasury Department Secret Service agent, acting on a law

prohibiting the reproduction of currency in any form, ordered the removal of Dubreuil’s

painting A Barrel of Money from a New York “beanery” until the U.S. district attorney could
give an opinion as to its legality. Almost two years later, a similar barrel picture by Dubreuil,

“considered by artists a valuable piece of art”, was confiscated from a Boston shop window and
sent to the head of the Secret Service, Chief Wilkie, in Washington.27
 Victor Dubreuil, Money to Burn, ca. 1893 — Source.

Fortunately, Dubreuil left a paper trail in France and what survives — although meager —

contributes to the context for his American work. He was no ordinary burglar but, rather, an
idiosyncratic moralist who wrote not only a financial column for his socialist journal but also a

satirical counterpart concerned with unmasking social, political and financial corruption. Titled
“Moralisons!" or “Let's Moralise!", the column, with its humor and criticism, has much in
common with the pictures.28

Likewise, during his army stint as a colonel in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71), Dubreuil

separated himself from his comrades and departed from orders so as to follow his own moral
code. That is, he complained about ill-equipped, untrained soldiers and, when nothing was done,

resigned rather than lead them into battle. Then, to fulfill his patriotic duty, he rejoined at the
lowest rank. At the time, he wrote, in relation to those above him, he had never been anyone's
courtier, meaning he could not be bought. Evidently, the stolen bank money was also less purely
selfish than appears. He had become involved in supposedly “vast" financial enterprises and part

of it related to the quixotic African plan that went awry. Perhaps in this regard, as he told
the Tribune interviewer, he had trustingly worked with others and been ruined by “capitalists”.29

Dubreuil continued to paint pictures in France, but, as far as is known, the extant work is not
comparable in ingenuity to the best of his New York canvases. Nor is it as numerous, suggesting
a possible death date near 1900, when his location (outside of Paris) is last known.30 Reflecting

methods he learned from Rabelais, many of Dubreuil’s American pictures are contrived to be

indirect in their meaning. Like The Eye of the Artist, the paintings Don’t Make a Move!, Safe
Money, and The Cross of Gold have to be chewed on to get out their marrow-like essence.

Clearly the odd dates, numbers, and strange juxtapositions are evidence of the artist’s propensity
to tempt his audience to interact with his pictures. They provide an intriguing, hint-based game

of guessing. As is evident, they also tend to involve a moralizing twist.