World War One

Find old World War 1 articles here. Find information on uniforms, women, gas warfare, prisoners of war and more.

The Future of War-Artists (Literary Digest, 1917)

Just as the American poet Walt Whitman once remarked concerning the American Civil War – that the real war will never make it into books, so goes the thinking of the ink-stained wretch who penned the attached column regarding the efforts of the Official War Artists during W.W. I – who attempted to render accurately the horrors of war. Such genuine indecency could never allow itself to be duplicated into a two or three dimensional format.

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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.

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William Orpen and W.W. I (Literary Digest, 1923)

In the immediate aftermath of the First World War there were many eye witnesses to the slaughter who refused to remember it as a Noble Struggle. The chubby and comfortable fellows who ran the British Government couldn’t have known that the society portraitist William Orpen was one of these witnesses – but they soon found out when they commissioned him to make a pretty painting depicting all the pomp that was taking place at Versailles…

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FRANCE AROUSED: Created by Jo Davidson (Vanity Fair Magazine, 1917)

An illustrated article about the American sculptor Jo Davidson (1883 – 1952) and his creation, FRANCE AROUSED. The Davidson piece, a colossal depiction of France as an outraged warrior queen, was intended for the French village of Senlis to serve as a memorial to that remarkable day in September, 1914, when the German drive on Paris was stopped and driven back. It was at Senlis where the earlier successes of the German Army were reversed.

To those in America and Europe who believed in the new doctrine of political equality, it was the most thrilling day in her history.

When France in wrath
Her giant – limbs

upreared,
And with that oath,
Which smote air,
Earth and sea
Stamped her strong
foot and said she
Would be free.

The statue, which is twenty feet high, was made in the sculptor’s studio in McDougal Alley (NYC), where it was photographed for the pages of VANITY FAIR.

In 1919, Jo Davidson would endeavor to create a number of busts depicting the various entente statesmen who participated in the Peace Treaty.

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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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The 36th Division (The American Legion Weekly, 1922)

The 36th Division has a little corner by itself in the general field covered by the A.E.F. It was not brought into either of the American major operation or into any American sector. Off by itself, under French command, it came into line in Champagne… Theses troops came bang into the middle of the hardest fighting, without any quiet sector preliminaries, and without a relatively easy initiation like St. Mihiel.

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The Ninetieth Division: Texas and Oklahoma (Stars and Stripes, 1919)

An illustration of the insignia patch and a brief account of the origins, deployments and war-time activities of the U.S. Army’s 90th Infantry Division during World War One. We have also provided a review of A History of the 90th Division by Major George Wythe (which the reviewer didn’t especially care for but nonetheless provides a colorful account of the division’s history in France).

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