British War Artists / World War Two
A subject often covered on the Rust is World War One so I knew I would be fascinated when our last lesson in our course on Tuesday was on the war artists of World War Two.
War artist is a loose term. The status of war artist was not made official till 1916 and even then the output was subject to censorship.
Further there was some difference in artistic attitude to war, in rank and theatre of war.
It was Eric Kennington with his Kensingtons at Lavenie (1916) [see above] who changed the whole attitude.
The Department of Information became a Ministry and a British War Memorial Committee was formed.
The first official war artist was Muirhead Bone.
Christopher Nevinson went to war with his father as an ambulance driver.
In 1917 he became an official war artist but he ran foul of the censorship regulations for depicting dead British soldiers.
Thus a symbolism developed of painting stunted trees to represent the dead.
One of the finest artists who later became a Surrealist was Paul Nash.
Nash, who had been at St Paul’s School by Eric Kennington, enlisted in 1914 and fought at the Battle of the Somme.
He was traumatised by what he saw and this is reflected in Menin Road a grim landscape of stunted trees and pools of water representing stasis.
The colours are pallid and redolent of Yves Tanguy.
Stanley Spencer studied at the Slade under Henry Tonks at roughly the same time as Nash.
He too was an ambulance driver in Macedonia but he was more enthralled by patriotism and the glories of war.
His Sandham Chapel near Newbury, commissioned by a family for their son, is well worth a visit.
Mark Gertler’s Merry Go Round (1916) might well have inspired Oh What a Lovely War.
Girtler was appalled by the mechanical slaughter and his representation though satirical is mechanamorphic.
John Singer Sergeant by the time of the war was a portrait artist of renown and wealth.
His Gassed, a pitiable line of blinded troops making their uncertain way over a hill, is perhaps the most moving picture of all.
Even to this day war artistry creates a new milieu for an aspiring artist.
Ken Howard left Kilburn and a uncertain future for Northern Ireland during the Troubles as an artist commissioned by the Imperial War Museum.
Jason Bowyer, son of William Bowyer, went to Afghanistan as a war artist.
In World War Two Harold Alexander, during the Italian Campaign, would paint in the foothills of Tuscany with Edward Seago prior to battle. Yet back in the day of World War One the body of work of war artists is of considerable historical value in a conflict that claimed a whole generation and was to change the notion of “ For King and Country “.
