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World War One - Artists
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To read articles purely dealing with the topic of trench warfare, click here.
| Gaudier-Brzeska (Literary Digest, 1916) Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1891 - 1915) was an avant-garde sculptor of the Vorticist school. Prior to the war he resided in London and broke bread with the talented Bohemians of that burg, and this article is composed of snippets of text from a remembrance written by his close friend, Ezra Pound. Joseph Cummings Chase: Soldiers All (Rob Wagner's Script, 1942)Joseph Cummings Chase (1878 - 1965) was an American painter who's name is not likely to be associated with World War I artists but, like Sir William Orpen, he had a comfortable place within fashionable circles and he, too, was commissioned to paint portraits of the anointed within his nations military establishment. This article appeared in 1942 and primarily concerns the W.W. I portrait that Chase painted of Brigadier General Douglas MacArthur during the closing days of the war:
"Joseph Cummings Chase is without doubt one of the world's greatest portrait painters, and as luck would have it, he was in Paris when World War I began, at which time the Government commissioned him to paint the Distinguished Service Cross men, both enlisted men and officers, wherever he could catch up with them; some in dugouts, some in trenches, and some behind the lines."
Click here to see a few trench war images by German Expressionist Otto Dix.
Click here to read a 1942 article by Rockwell Kent on the proper roll of American artists during wartime.
Drawings from the Soissons Trenches (Vanity Fair Magazine, 1915)French war artist Charles Huard (1875 - 1965) produced theses seven illustrations of French Poilus as they stood guard in the frozen misery of the Soisson trenches during the December of 1914.
Below is an excerpt from "Under Fire" (1916) by Henri Barbusse (1873 - 1935) describing French infantry with the same eye as Charles Huard: "And our legs!...Just now I crept down, bent double, into our dugout, a little low cellar, smelling of damp and mold, where one stumbles over empty preserve cases and dirty bundles of rags...I saw legs framed in the rectangular entrance: horizontal, vertical, oblique, spread about, doubled up, intermingles, blocking the passage and cursed by the passers-by. They are a multifarious and multicolored aggregation; gaiters black and yellow, leggings long and short, made of leather, khaki or other waterproof material, puttees of dark blue, light blue, black, lavender, khaki, or unbleached serge." Huard's War Memoir:
My Home In The Field Of Honor (1916) World War I Pictures by British Artists Seen in America (Vanity Fair Magazine, 1919)The attached VANITY FAIR art review by Christian Brinton (1870 - 1942) covered the first public exhibition of the British War Artists to be shown on American shores (1919):
"A direct product of war and war conditions, it reflects not only the varied aspects and incidents of the great struggle, but but also the actual state of British artistic taste at the present moment...England has been the first to enlist the services of the artist, and the readiest to grant him the measure of official standing so manifestly his due." Launched jointly by the British Ministry of Information and the Worcester Art Museum, the exhibit was comprised of almost 250 paintings. This review discusses the art of Paul Nash, Muirhead Bone, Sir John Lavery, James McBey,Sir William Orpen, Augustus John, C.R.W. Nevinson, John Everett, Frank Brangwyn and Eric Kennington. Butcher Bill Paid by the French Arts Community (Literary Digest, 1917)"Three hundred and fifty French artists, among whom are painters, sculptors, engravers, and architects, have paid the extreme price of their devotion to country and are counted with the dead." Muirhead Bone at the Front (Times Literary Supplement, 1918)A book review covering a collection of drawings by one of the Official War Artists, Muirhead Bone (1873 - 1953). The book was titled, The Western Front and it is not surprising to read that it was published by Country Life. The reviewer was not at all impressed with the artist's renderings of, what was at that time, the most dangerous place on planet earth: "In these drawings Mr. Muirhead Bone has resolutely refused to become a journalist. He has not allowed the novelty of his subject-matter to affect his treatment. There he differs from Mr. Nevinson. Mr. Nevinson in his pictures of the war is not a journalist but at least an illustrator." Nonetheless, Sir Douglas Haig wrote a supportive introduction to the book. Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) found his drawings to be highly inaccurate at best.
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