?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(WORLD WAR ONE.) Louis Raemaekers. Pair of original anti-German pieces by the noted cartoonist. 2 drawings, pencil on paper, 18 1/4 x 14 1/2 and 17 3/4 x 13 1/4 inches, each signed by the artist; irregularly trimmed, minor wrinkling and wear, mount remnants in margins. No place, circa 1918
The Dutch cartoonist Louis Raemaekers (1869-1956) was one of the most successful anti-German propagandists of the war. He removed to London in 1915 and then to the United States in 1917, where he became a regular contributor to the Hearst newspapers.
The first cartoon depicts Kaiser Wilhelm armed with a pistol, skulking off with a bag of "loot" while pursued closely by Uncle Sam. Here titled "William: I wish I could shake that fellow," and published with the caption "Not This Time!" in the 1918 Century Co. book of Raemaekers cartoons, "America in the War," page 43. It is there paired with a quote by Raemaekers, reading in part "For twenty years I have been drawing and publishing the same type of cartoons which have attracted so much notice since the war. . . . I cannot possibly express to you the unhappiness which I felt at being absolutely certain of the impending doom, and at the same time being incapable of making people foresee and believe it."
In the second cartoon, Kaiser Wilhelm is alarmed to see that the driver of his taxi is Death. It is captioned simply "The Taxi," with additional notes to the printer. This drawing does not appear in "America in the War," although a very similar piece closes the book on page 207.
