This is an etching done by a travelling artist called Marcel Augis. He was an artist travelling up and down the front line selling etchings to the soldiers as memorabilia of their time there. (How strange, but true!) The etching is of a Belgian soldier, walking beside a flooded polder. It is dated 1914 with an inscription saying June 1914 Ramscapelle Ramskapelle near Nieuwpoort in Belgium. This was the important front where the Belgian troops combined with the French troops to push the Germans back (October 1914), unfortunately the Belgian troops did not understand the French officers so it became a disaster. I bought the etching at a junk shop in Britain some 25 years ago. I just thought how lonely the soldier looked guarding, what I can only say is a useless piece of dirt/dyke and how isolated he actually looked. Sometimes in these types of work is a more, deeper meaning that the artist wasn't aware that he was portraying at the time. To him, he was one of several artists travelling up and down the front line (that in itself was lunacy) drawing these and selling them to the troops as memorabilia/souvenirs. (Why would you want a souvenir of such an awful war?). I can't believe that this made it back home and why England when on that front there were no British soldiers. I just liked the etching, it seemed to me to be a very emotional piece bought by someone that early on in the campaign not knowing what was to come. There is a museum at Ramskapelle that goes in to detail about that campaign and you can log on to it online. Very interesting and little known about campaign. The Canadians were also involved at Ramskapelle. Marcel Augis also published under the name H. Dupont. In the Europeana 1914-1918 collection I came across another Augis picture The print of La Rue de l'Epicerie, Rouen, France 1917. This just goes to show the distances this man travelled just to eek a living selling memorabilia.
An etching of Ramscapelle 1914 by Marcel Augis

Ramskapelle, Belgium
Français
Painting