Grand Artistic Matinée in Honour of Raemaekers

The event advertised in this poster is an afternoon celebration and benefit honoring the Dutch-born artist and cartoonist Louis Raemaekers, whose war-themed anti-German cartoons were syndicated in Allied newspapers and magazines. Maurice Neumont here depicted Raemaekers stepping out of an Edam cheese ball, his drawing implement at the ready, in front of a kneeling, surrendering Brunhild. Neumont’s grotesque, over-the-top rendering of Brunhild, an allegorical representation of Germany, defies description. Raemakers was held in great esteem among the Allies: “Louis Raemaekers will stand out for all time as one of the supreme figures which the Great War has called into being. His genius has been enlisted in the service of mankind, and his work, being entirely sincere and untouched by racial or national prejudice, will endure; indeed, it promises to gain strength as the years advance. When the intense passions, which have been awakened by this world struggle, have faded away, civilization will regard the war largely through these wonderful drawings.”