Brangwyn: oorlog (Goddard)

196: was a year of explosive work for De Bruycker, when seven

of his eleven images of war themes were produced, and an eighth appeared

in its first state.

These plates were very large, all but two of them over one half meter in one dimension. Two letters of 1916 from Frank Brangwyn to De Bruycker set the tone for this production.

Brangwyn was primarily involved in making propagandistic lithographs and posters

during the war and some of his etchings from this period were enormous, over a meter in one dimension (fig. 14). The first letter is dated 13 August and concerns De Bruycker's need for large acid baths:

    

Dear Sir,

     Mr. Lambotte has asked me to send you a large bath -- I will let you

     have it early this week as the large baths I have are made of wood

     this hot weather has made them leak so I hope you will pardon the

     delay in sending it. I hope it will aid your purpose and that you

     will let me have the great pleasure of seeing the etchings you are

     now working upon.

     I have long admired your work. It is splendid. I am glad to hear

     that you are producing plates inspired by the War. With all good

     wishes

     Believe me my dear sir,

     Frank Brangwyn

And the second of 12 September:

      

Dear Sir,

     I had written you a letter last week which I forgot to post and

     which I now enclose as it contains the names of printers.

     I think after seeing your proofs that Golding & Co. No. 2 on the

     list will be the right man for you.

      
I must congratulate you on the noble and fine plates you have made

     more especially I admire the large one of Death ringing the bell --

     It is splendid and if printed on better paper and by a good printer

     it will be splendid.

 I have taken the liberty of giving your address to an American

     Library which is collecting plates and lithographs connected with

     the war. I hope you will hear from them.

          With all good wishes

          Yours sincerely,

          Frank Brangwyn

     p.s. Regarding a publisher I will give you a letter of introduction

     to one or two, but as you know the taste in England is more for the

     pretty than for the noble and large things in art.

"Death ringing the bell" refers De Bruycker's masterpiece among the wartime plates, Dood klepte weer over Vlaanderenland (Death Tolls Again over Flanders, cat. no. 19). Certainly the prospects for Belgium must have looked grim in 1916, by which time two of the three battles of Ieper had been fought, establishing the arc of the Salient, the demarkation of 40 the allied front and the locus of horrific trench and ultimately chemical warfare. In De Bruycker's print, Death appears as an enormous skeleton in hobnailed boots who, sitting astride the masonry towers of a church, has plucked the bell from the belfry and rings with it a death knell over Flanders.[62] Below in the wintry Bruegelian snowscape survivors arrive in a long funeral march laden down with caskets in a passage that, with the very notion of Death ringing a bell, recalls Bruegel's Triumph of Death (Madrid, Prado). Death has strung up the church's priest, whose demonic replacement and incense-toting assistant arrive from below.