 This event was the first of a series of exhibitions in which the art of Louis Dewis would draw serious attention from some prominent art critics of the era.The noted Belgian art and literary critic Henry Dommartin (sometimes spelled Henri) met Dewis at the 1917 exhibition and became a fervent admirer of his fellow countryman's work.He once served as the State Librarian at Brussels and had heroically engineered the rescue of truckloads of Belgian art treasures from what was almost certain destruction shortly after the Germans occupied Belgium in 1914.