The rabid anti-Dreyfusard sentiment was not isolated to mobs on the street. When asked to sign the pro-Dreyfusard Manifesto of the Intellectuals (which Monet, Paul Signac, and Lucien Pissarro signed a few weeks within the publication of Zola’s letter), Renoir refused point blank. Renoir’s anti-Semitic diatribes included denouncing the Pissarro family as part of “that Jewish race” of “tenacious” cosmopolitans and draft-dodgers. To Renoir,
[The Jews] come to France to make money, but the moment a fight is on, they hide behind the first tree. There are so many in the army because the Jew likes to parade around in fancy uniforms. Every country chases them out, there is a reason for that, and we must not allow them to occupy such a position in France” (qtd. Nord 104).
Degas was no better. Firing a model simply because she expressed reservations about Dreyfus’s guilt, Degas would rail against Jews to the point of tears of fury. In one story told by Paul Durand-Ruel, Degas announced in an art gallery that he was going to visit the Paris law courts. The art dealer asked, “To attend the trial?” to which Degas replied, “No, to kill a Jew!” (qtd. Nord 104) Degas clashed with Cassatt, a good friend and Dreyfusard, and for a while, the two did not speak to each other (Nord 105). The falling out over the Dreyfus Affair left a permanent mark on relations within the Impressionists. Both Degas and Renoir refused to speak to Pissarro, and Degas did not attend Pissarro’s funeral in 1903. Paul Cezanne, already upset over Zola’s earlier novel L’Oeuvre (1886) that had criticized the Impressionist movement, never saw Zola again; their opposing views over the Dreyfus Affair separated the former childhood friends (Nord 105-106). With the Dreyfus Affair came the political impetus to break up the Impressionist movement.
While all these artists certainly held strong opinions about the Dreyfus Affair, Pissarro appears to have been the only Impressionist to have incorporated the Dreyfus Affair in his art. The art commentary on the affair came primarily from newspaper cartoons; both Dreyfusard and anti-Dreyfusard art appeared throughout the 1890s in response to events during the scandal. Besides his famous letter, Zola also wrote essays in support of Dreyfus the year before, in 1897 (Burns 91). Zola’s publications made him a target of anti-Dreyfusards in print. In one example, "There he is!" (1899), Zola emerges from a toilet carrying a Dreyfus doll. 
The bottom caption reads, “Truth comes out of its well,” a parody on the French saying, “Truth is hidden at the bottom of the well.” The insulting sketch of Zola was published in the anti-Dreyfusard journal, Psst…! on June 10, 1899 by Caran d’Ache (Kleeblatt 176, 178). d’Ache’s more neutral sketch, "A Family Dinner" (1898), illustrates the divisive nature of the Dreyfus Affair. Published in Le Figaro on February 13, 1898, the cartoon first shows a family eating dinner with the caption, “Absolutely no talk of the Affair.” In the second frame, the title explains it all: “They talked about it” (Burns 107-108). The family is in total chaos, literally at each other’s throats because of the Dreyfus Affair. One of the most famous images from the Dreyfus Affair, "A Family Dinner" shows the great commotion within the home that Pissarro more subtlety portrayed in the streets.
A few artists, however, did venture to overtly portray the Dreyfus Affair in paint. In one such oil painting called She Is Not Drowning (1898, also known as Truth Leaving the Well), the Dreyfusard Edouard Debat-Ponsan depicts Truth emerging out of a well against clerical hypocrisy and military force. A group of admirers later gave the picture, based on the same French saying as There he is!, to Zola (Kleebatt 258). Debat-Ponsan’s rendition of the Dreyfus Affair contains more obvious symbolism, with the priest and military figure trying to block the shining beacon of Truth. As such, She Is Not Drowning more clearly conveys the artist’s political message and Dreyfusard sentiments than Pissarro’s Avenue de l’Opera series. However, whatever Pissarro lacks in blatant political messages, he makes up with an ingenious metaphor of motion using everyday scenes on the streets.
Pictured:
Caran d’Ache, "There he is!" (1899)
Caran d’Ache, "A Family Dinner" (1898)
Eduoard Debat-Ponsan, She Is Not Drowning (1898)