A sudden sweep of naked witches across the night sky sends a pack of black cats into a frenzy, their howls rising over the rooftops of a restless city. The eye is caught first by the leading figure, her hair streaming and arm raised in wild exultation as she rides her broomstick above the urban sprawl. Below, the cats arch and leap, their bodies rendered in dense, inky strokes that anchor the composition and echo the witches’ uncanny energy.

Steinlen’s limited palette—mostly blacks, flesh tones, and a slash of red—draws out the tension between the mundane cityscape and the supernatural spectacle above. The city itself recedes into a haze, its order and geometry disrupted by this eruption of myth and mischief. Works like this, with their blend of fantasy and urban life, belong to a fin-de-siècle Paris where artists and illustrators delighted in the strange and the satirical. Théophile Alexandre Steinlen was famed for his posters and prints, especially those featuring cats, which became both personal signature and symbol of bohemian Montmartre.

Lithographs and photomechanical reproductions such as this one were often published in illustrated magazines or sold as affordable art for the growing middle class, eager for both humor and a hint of the forbidden. The Wellcome Collection, which now houses this image, preserves such works not only as art but as windows into the anxieties and amusements of their era. Look again at the witches’ faces—are they triumphant, mocking, or simply free?