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Catalogue information
LastDodo number
6601233
Area
Drawings / paintings
Title
Ramsay MacDonald
Artist
Art object
Art Movement / style
Genre
Material
Technique used
Colouring
Dimensions
44.5 x 29 cm
Series / hero
Collection / set
Number
Addition to number
Year
1935
Country
Language
Details
Original political cartoon on paper in pen/brush and ink/crayon, 1935, shows the British prime minister Ramsay MacDonald as a golfer being attacked by a swarm of bees in the form of ‘battleships’. This is a comment on the signing of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 18 June 1935 between the United Kingdom and Germany regulating the size of the German navy, or Kriegsmarine, in relation to the Royal Navy. The agreement fixed a ratio whereby the total tonnage of the Kriegsmarine was to be 35% of the total tonnage of the Royal Navy on a permanent basis. The agreement was highly controversial because the 35:100 tonnage ratio allowed Germany the right to build a Navy beyond the limits set by the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, and the British had made the agreement without first consulting their allies France and Italy. MacDonald (who was in fact a keen golfer) was the first Labour prime minister and headed the so-called National Government from 1931 to 1935; his inclinations were pacifist and this led him to appeasement of Hitler's Germany, in which this naval agreement was an important step. It is suggested here that the agreement will come back to ‘sting’ MacDonald in the future. This would not turn out to be the case, as he had already been replaced by June 1935 and died in 1937. On verso a portrait of a man in uniform, perhaps Anton Mussert, leader of the Dutch fascists in the National Socialist Movement (NSB). Paper size 44.5 x 29 cm, image size 38 x 27 cm. signed lower right. Several stains, otherwise in very good condition