WORLD WAR 1
PAINTINGS
William Orpen,
Ready to Start, 1917, 60 x 50.8 cm, oil on canvas, Imperial War
Museum, London.
The
Great War lasted for four years and caused the deaths of eight million
men. Also countless women and children. It saw the collapse
of three empires – Germany, Austro-Hungary and Russia. It devastated the
regions on both the eastern and western fronts. It was the first
industrial war, with endless technological advances, mass production and
the general mobilisation of all human, economic and mechanical
resources. Its victims came from every nationality and from every
background - from Europe and North America, from the Commonwealth
nations and colonised peoples in India, Indochina and Africa. It
happened everywhere, on the ground and underground, on the water and
under water, and in the air. It was fought using every possible means,
from cavalry charges to hand-to-hand trench warfare, from bombardments
to assault tanks, using gas or phosphorus. In this war, the warrior was
reduced to the dual role of servant and victim of the machine.
Europe emerged from the Great War completely changed - exhausted,
horrified, and forcibly modernised.
The war was a catalyst of
revolution; daughter of the industrial and scientific revolution; mother
to the political revolutions that gave rise to the Soviet Union and the
Weimar Republic. It changed the face of central Europe for two decades,
until the Anschluss and the invasion of Czechoslovakia and Poland by the
Third Reich. It shaped the world and for some, its after-effects are
still with us to this day - the fields of Picardy and Champagne still
yield a crop of unexploded shells ready to go off at any moment.
All this is recalled and commemorated by the monuments and cemeteries
set up in the warring countries and on the battlefields. Every nation
has written accounts, histories and memoirs published by those who
survived the European theatres of war. Even with this history lesson,
the world seems to have not learned it. Here is another reminder
in paint by some of the greatest painters of the 20th century and witness's at the time.
Egon Schiele,
Heinrich Wagner,
Leutnant i. d. Reserve (Portrait of Reserve Lieutenant Heinrich Wagner),
1917, black chalk and opaque color on paper, Heeresgeschichtliches
Museum, Vienna.
Eric Kennington,
The
Kensingtons at Laventie, oil on glass, 139.7 x 152.4 cm, Imperial
War Museum, London
John Nash,
Over the
Top, oil on canvas, 79.4 x 107.3 cm, Imperial War Museum, London.
Otto Dix,
Sturmtruppe
geht unter Gas vor (Assault under Gas), 1924, watercolour, 35.3 x
47.5 cm, Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin.
Edouard Vuillard,
Interrogatoire d'un prisonnier (Interrogation of a Prisoner), 1917,
tempera painting on paper mounted on canvas, 110 x 75 cm, Musée
d'Histoire Contemporaine - BDIC, Paris.
Félix Vallotton,
Le plateau de Bolante (Bolante Plateau), 1917, oil on canvas, Musée
d'Histoire Contemporaine - BDIC, Paris
Max Edler von
Poosch, Kampfstaffel D3, über der Brenta-Gruppe (Squadron over the
Brenta), 1917, 100 x 120 cm, Heeresgeschichtliches Museum, Vienna.
C. R. W. Nevinson,
A
Taube, 1916-17, oil on canvas, 63.5 x 76.2 cm, Imperial War Museum,
London
Egon Schiele,
Russischer Kriegsgefangener (Russian Officer), 1915, pencil and
gouache on paper, 44.9 x 31.4 cm, Albertina, Vienna.
Eric Kennington, Gassed and Wounded, 1918, oil on canvas, 71.1 x 91.4 cm, Imperial
War Museum, London.
John Singer Sargent,
A
Street in Arras, 1918, watercolour, 39 x 52 cm, Imperial War Museum,
London.
Félix Vallotton,
Le cimetière de Châlons-sur-Marne (The Cemetery of Châlons sur Marne),
1917, oil on canvas, 54 x 80 cm, Musée d'Histoire Contemporaine - BDIC,
Paris.
John Lavery, The
Cemetery, Etaples, 1919, oil on canvas, 59 x 90 cm, Imperial War
Museum, London.
William Orpen,
To the
Unknown British Soldier Killed in France, 1922-7, oil on canvas,
152.4 x 128.3 cm, Imperial War Museum, London (first version).
Alfred Basel,
Erstürmung des Dorfes Stary Korczyn durch das
Landsturminfanterieregiment Nr. 1, 22. Dez. 1914 (Attack on the
Village of Stary Korczyn by the Vienna First Infantry Regiment on
December 22nd 1914), 1915-6, tempera on canvas, 99 x 99 cm,
Heeresgeschichtliches Museum, Vienna.
John Lavery, A
Convoy, North Sea, 1918, oil on canvas, 172 x 198 cm, Imperial War
Museum, London.
Otto Dix, Flandern (Flanders) (after Le Feu by Henri Barbusse), 1934-6,
oil and tempera on canvas, 200 x 250 cm, Staatliche Museen Preußischer
Kulturbesitz, Berlin.
Otto Dix, Schädel (Skull), 1924, etching, 25.5 x 19.5 cm, Historial de la
Grande Guerre, Péronne.
- Courtesy
Mémorial pour la Paix, Caen-
Heeresgeschichtliches
Museum im Arsenal, Vienna
-
Imperial War Museum,
London
-
Historial de la Grande
Guerre, Péronne
-
Centre Mondial de
la Paix, des Libertés et des Droits de l'Homme, Verdun
-
Bibliothèque de
Documentation Internationale Contemporaine - BDIC - Musée
d'Histoire contemporaine, Paris
|
