LAND 6? WATER November 14, 1918 
The Genius of Raemaekers 
MANY of us who have visited this present 
Raemaekers exhibition at tlie Fine Art Society's 
C.alleries in New Bond Street have vivid 
memories of the first exhibition of all ; the 
war was young then, and the portrayals of 
German inhumanity came as a shock to many people who 
had consistently refused to believe that there was anything 
in the likeness of man which could be so vile as the cartoons 
showed (iermans. But, at the rate at which histor\' is made 
in these days, all that is long ago ; there persist memories 
of "Liege to Aix-la-Chapelle," the closed truck with blood 
dripping on the footboard — a picture of sheer ugliness and 
misplaced human effort as vivid as Browning's "Childe 
Roland," or as Shakespeare's study of Caliban ; memories, 
too, of tiie "Shields of Rosslaere," or of "Men to the right, 
women to the left!" Half a score of those shocking pre- 
sentments of an ugly truth come back to mind as one enters 
the galleries to 
see — what ? 
Cartoons of like 
quality, it is true, 
but other work as 
well. There is a 
picture — repro- 
duced here — 
showing how the 
guard against sub- 
marines has been 
maintained ; it is 
instinct with life — 
it is a testimony to 
the way in which 
the artist has 
sought out the 
realities of the war 
on sea as well as on 
land, and has set 
them down in 
crayon and ink 
and chalk that his 
fellow-men may 
know of what na- 
ture is this work 
that has been 
accomplished — of 
what its details 
consist. \ot far 
from it is the giant 
American soldier, with a pigm\- Kaiser and Crown Prince stand- 
ing down in its shadow, marvelling, and on the other side is the 
touch of irony in the big howitzer that blastsout leafletsof lies — 
Wolff's Bureau has been bought by Krupp's. These, typical of 
the wall on which they are hung, are different in quality from 
the fierce denunciation pf the first exhibition ; the world 
needed .awakening then, in these days it needs only that 
its memory shall be kept vivid, and that may be accom- 
plished in many ways. Raemaekers has taken every possible 
way ; each of these pictures has its own message, and 
its own method of i conveying the message; it may be 
by humour, or by the inspiration of contempt, or by the 
rousing of anger — there are half a hundred ways," and 
pictures and cartoons alike attest that this artist knows 
them all. 
He is cartoonist more than artist. This is best understood 
by passing from the r6om in which, if every picture is not a 
cartoon, it is a finished work with a story to tell, to the 
second room, in which are studies and pictures not intended 
for reproduction- — some little things there are, figure studies, 
intended to show the poses of a bomber throwing a grenade. 
"They are all wrong," said one critic. "The bomber does 
not throw like that, at all." However just or unjust the 
evidence may be, the bomber is real. But away from ana- 
tomical study, and in the presentment of the war area, there 
is a life and reality about these pictures that will draw the 
observer back to them again and again. The "Australian 
patrol in La Motte," and the landscape with shells bursting 
over it, are instances of this ; each is a phase of war — one 
sees, not the picture, but the reality behind it, and that is 
true art. Never mind if the man's conception of the anatomy 
of this horse is wrong, or if that arm is too long, or that 
figure out of proportion, for the life is there. Del Sarto 
criticising Rafael displays not such impudence as the blase 
art student who drags his limbs round these two rooms in 
THE WATCH 
By Louis 
New Bond Street, and knows that he could give Raemaekers 
points in the anatomical construction of the human body 
or of that of a horse. iM 
Certain of these pictures, or cartoons, had been better 
excised from the exhibition ; they tell too much, and in 
too ghastly a fashion. The artist, whatever the mere spectator 
may say, will declare that they are true, and thus worthy of 
a place. They are true, too horribly true, and just for this 
reason they might well have been excised, for in^ these later 
days of war^ — and in the first days of peace, as well — we have 
got back our squcamishness ; some of us would fain forget 
what happened in Belgium four years ago, or what was happen- 
ing on the battle-fields of France and Flanders every day up 
to the signing of the armistice. It is quite true, of coursej 
but it is so . . . so disturbing. A man like this should be 
kept quiet, or warned that we want amusing. A price was 
set on his head, once, for this sort of thing, and — well, really, 
you know. . . . 
Most of. these 
jicople pass 
through the first 
room hurriedly, on 
to the delightful 
little sketches of 
French soldiers, 
American soldiers, 
peasants, and the 
like. They pick 
out the weak 
points in the draw- 
ing and forget 
that the man who 
drew forced a 
realisation on the 
world, came out 
of Holland more 
as preacher than 
artist, and flung 
the crimes of Ger- 
many before a 
world that, but for 
him, would have 
ignored the half of 
them, or more — 
the half that these 
pictures of war's 
darker side make 
plain at a glance. 
Those who know the work of Raemaekers only from the 
black and white reproductions that appear in various journals 
cannot realise what a colourist the man is. " Sleeping Russia 
and the Bolshevist Prince," and "The Rock of Doom," each 
in its own way are instances of this ; there is in the first a 
warmth of colouring, and in the second an icy hardness, which 
render the pictures impressive as well as striking — they are 
not mere drawings that one dismisses after a glance, but 
works that their creator has made instinct with life and 
feeling. 
It is curious to note, once in a while, a trace of an influence 
or it may be a fancy on Raemaekers' part, which results in a 
faint and puzzling likeness to some other artist's work. Here 
a passing resemblance to Nevinson — passing, for a second 
glance shows that there is no great similarity, and the drawing 
bears the Raemaekers stamp ; there a shadow of Matisse or 
of Gaugin, and in one or two cases a sort of facile ugliness that 
is not unlike Orpen in brutal mood. 
He draws — and colours — attractive devils. "His Really 
Avowed and Llnconditional Ally" shows a winged devil pro- 
claiming his pride in the Kaiser, who inspired the sinking of 
the hospital ship Rciea, and while the Kaiser is a figure of 
repellent evil, the devil is almost a jolly devil, an evil, but a 
frank evil, and thus not so repellent as the human figure that 
it shadows. It may be a matter of contrast ; one figure we 
see as legendary, but the influence of the other we have all 
felt, even if we have not seen the lines of graves that his rule 
has brought to being. 
The first exhibition was a unity, while this — the last war 
.exhibition of Raemaekers' drawings, in all probability — is a 
collection of units. It is not a single aim expressed in many- 
ways, but many aims with the one behind them, expressed 
forcefully through the media of hard humour, sadness, con- 
tempt, anger — a dozen emotions, behind which is the desire 
of a great man that his fellows shall realise the war. 
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ON THE SEAS 
Raemaekers 
