Artists

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, 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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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.

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