Les tombolas de guerre (War Lotteries)

This hand-colored lithograph by René De Pauw satirizes wartime charity lotteries, a common fundraising mechanism during World War I. Three gaunt, exaggerated figures—rendered with caricatural distortion typical of early 20th-century European print satire—clutch lottery tickets while a pig, symbol of greed, accompanies them. The composition mocks both profiteers enriching themselves through ostensibly charitable schemes and the desperation of ordinary citizens gambling for survival.

The work descends from a long tradition of political satire: the biting social commentary of Daumier, the grotesque caricature of Gillray, and the popular German Bilderbogen broadsheets. As newspapers and illustrated journals proliferated, such prints became the immediate ancestors of the modern comic strip, combining visual exaggeration, symbolic imagery, and narrative wit to critique power and expose folly to mass audiences.