This moustache is sometimes just called "a painter" but it is more correctly called "a painter`s brush". However it does seem the case that many painters sport a moustache and beard, and in some cases these are as wildly extravagant as the painter themselves, think of Salvador Dali as just one example! The Painter`s brush, I think, gained its name from the fact that is is rather straight, but just gently rounded at the edges, in other words, the simplest form to actually paint on with a brush. And apparently it is also one of the simplest to grow.
This set is quite an important one, being one of the earliest sets issued by Carreras, the first flush as it were. Sadly there never was a Carreras reference book, though one was planned, which was to also have covered Alexander Boguslavsky. So we know little about the set. We do know that it was either re-issued, or issued in two different brands at the same time - because you can find the front of the cards saying either "Black Cat Cigarettes" or "Carreras` Cigarettes". The latter is scarcer, but I do not know why. Maybe there is a Carreras Connoisseur out there who can explain this to us? If so please step forwards.
We know more about the artist, whose name was actually Louis Raemakers. He was born on April the 6th 1869 in Holland. His father was a newspaper publisher and Louis inherited not just his interest in publishing but his journalistic standpoint against that which he did not feel was right or fair. During the First World War Louis was a cartoonist for a newspaper in Amsterdam, and he had a reputation for making a simple cartoon become a barbed weapon against not only the enemy, but also those who were letting events happen, which included the Netherlands itself, determined to remain neutral. In fact the Dutch government confiscated several of his paintings that were too scathing of this, and too insulting to the Kaiser. As of 1915 it was widely reported that the Germans had been offered a reward for his capture, dead or alive, also, shockingly, offering this reward in local Dutch currency in the hope that a countryman would turn him in. No official proof has yet been found of this, but he was rattled and he left for London not too long after, in November 1915.