War artist

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Vasily Vereshchagin. The Apotheosis of War. 1874.

A war artist, also known as a combat artist, captures the experience of war in an artistic manner whilst based in the battlefield. Unlike war poets, a war artist is almost always acting in an official capacity.

Famous War Artists

Australian

The Australian tradition of war artists started with the First World War. Will Dyson, an expatriate Australian artist living in London petitioned the Australian government to allow him to travel to the Western Front where Australian forces were fighting. In 1917 he was finally granted permission to accompany the Australian Imperial Force to record the activities of its soldiers and thus became the first Australian official war artist. This scheme was expanded upon and other Australian artists were commissioned to undertake forays to the front lines to record the Australian experience of war.

Amiens, the key of the west, oil-on-canvas, completed in 1919.

At the same time, artists who had already enlisted and were fighting with the AIF, were appointed official war artists for the Australian Army.

During the Second World War, the Australian War Museum, later called the Australian War Memorial, continued the scheme and appointed war artists whilst the Australian Army, Royal Australian Navy and Royal Australian Air Force appointed their own official war artists from within their ranks.

Since the Second World War, the Australian War Memorial have appointed war artists to record the activities of Australian forces in Korea, Vietnam, East Timor and Afghanistan and both the Australian War Memorial and the Australian Army have appointed official war artists to depict Australian forces in Iraq.

• First World War
  • Frank Crozier
  • A. Henry Fullwood
  • George Lambert
  • H. Septimus Power
  • James Quinn
  • Arthur Streeton
• Second World War^[1]
  • Stella Bowen
  • William Dargie
  • Donald Friend
  • Ivor Hele
  • Sali Herman
  • Nora Heysen
  • Tony Rafty
• Recent conflicts
  • Rick Amor (East Timor Peacekeeping)
  • Conway Bown (Army War Artist Iraq War 2006)
  • Peter Churcher (2002 War on Terrorism)
  • George Gittoes
  • Lewis Miller (Iraq War 2003)
  • Wendy Sharpe (East Timor Peacekeeping)

British

• Boer War
  • Maurice William Greiffenhagen (1862-1931)
• First World War
  • David Bomberg
  • Muirhead Bone
  • Sir Frank Brangwyn
  • Sir George Clausen
  • Olive Edis
  • Archibald Standish Hartrick (1864-1950)
  • Francis Ernest Jackson (1872-1945)
  • Augustus John
  • Eric Kennington (also a war artist in World War II)
  • Wyndham Lewis
  • Fortunino Matania (Italian artist working in Britain)
  • Paul Nash (also a war artist in World War II)
  • Christopher Nevinson
  • Sir William Orpen
  • William Rothenstein (also a war artist in World War II)
  • Austin Spare
  • Charles Pears (1873-1958)
• Second World War^[2]
  • Edward Ardizzone
  • Edward Bawden
  • Stephen Bone
  • Graham Barry Clilverd
  • William Coldstream
  • Evelyn Mary Dunbar
  • Richard Ernst Eurich (1903–92)
  • Barnett Freedman
  • Charles Ginner
  • Anthony Imre Alexander Gross (1905-1984)
  • Eric Kennington (also a war artist in World War I)
  • Dame Laura Knight
  • L.S. Lowry
  • James Morris (b 1908)(A Signalman RN, who exhibited from 1944-46, eventually achieving the War Artist rank, Hon Lieut, RNVR. The Imperial War Museum has 34 pictures by him, mostly watercolours of the Far East)
  • Henry Moore
  • Rodrigo Moynihan (1910-1990)
  • Paul Nash (also a war artist in World War I)
  • Mervyn Peake
  • John Piper
  • Roland Vivian Pitchforth (1895-1982)
  • Eric Ravilious
  • William Rothenstein (also a war artist in World War I)
  • Ronald Searle
  • Stanley Spencer
  • Graham Sutherland
  • Doris Clare Zinkeisen (1898-1991)
  • Anna Katrina Zinkeisen (1901-1976)
• Bosnia campaign
  • Peter Howson (1958-)

Canadian

• First World War
  • Maurice Cullen
  • Kenneth Forbes
  • Alexander Young Jackson (1882-1974)
  • C.W. Jefferys
  • Arthur Lismer
  • David Milne
  • Frederick Varley
• Second World War^[3]
  • Thomas Harold Beament (1898-1985)
  • Alan Brockman Beddoe (1893-1975)
  • Bruno Jacob Bobak (1923-)[1]
  • Molly Lamb Bobak (1922-)[2]
  • Frank Leonard Brooks (1911-)
  • Patrick George Cowley-Brown (1918-2007)
  • David Alexander Colville (1920-)
  • Charles Fraser Comfort (1900-1994)
  • Francis Michael Forster (1908-)
  • Paul Alexander Goranson (1911-2002)
  • Lawren Phillips Harris (1910-1994)
  • Robert Stewart Hyndman (1915-)
  • Charles Anthony Francis Law (1916-1996)
  • Donald Cameron MacKay (1906-1979)
  • Rowley Walter Murphy (1892-1973)
  • Jack Nichols (1921)
  • William Abernethy Ogilvie (1901-1989)
  • George Douglas Pepper (1903-1962)
  • George Campbell Tinning (1910-1996)
  • Thomas Charles Wood (1913-1997)
• Korean War (unofficial)
  • Edward "Ted" Fenwick Zuber (1932)
• Gulf War
  • Dailin Spence (1990)
• Balkan Conflict
  • William Macdonnell (1943)
• Afghanistan (Operation Apollo)
  • Allan Harding Mackay (1944-)
• Afghanistan (Task Force 3-09)
  • smsteele first official war poet
• War on Terror- Persian Gulf (Operation Apollo)
  • John Malcolm Horton (1935-)

Japan

• Tsuguharu Foujita

New Zealand

• James Boswell
• Peter McIntyre (1910-1995)

South Africa

• Neville Lewis (World War II)

Spain

Francisco Goya. The Third of May 1808: The Execution of the Defenders of Madrid. 1814. Oil on canvas. 266 x 345 cm. Madrid: Museo del Prado.

• Francisco de Goya. Los desastres de la guerra

United States

• John Trumbull
• John Nash

John Singer Sargent, Gassed, 1918, 231 x 611.1 cm, Imperial War Museum, London

World War I

• John Singer Sargent

World War II

• Standish Backus Navy
• Griffith Baily Coale Navy
• Franklin Boggs Army
• Howard Brodie Army
• Manuel Bromberg Army
• William Franklin Draper Navy
• Richard M. Gibney Marines
• Albert Gold Army
• Robert Greenhalgh Army
• Mitchel Jamieson Navy
• Edward Millman Navy
• Bill Maudlin Army
• Albert Murray Navy
• Ed Reep Army
• Alexander P. Russo Navy
• Dwight C. Shepler Navy

^[4]

Modern

• Michael D. Fay
• Henry Casselli
• Kristopher J. Battles

See also

• War photography

Notes

References

• Canadian War Museum online exhibition: "Art and War - Australia, Britain and Canada in the Second World War," 2005.

External links

• Canadian artists: Library and Archives Canada
• Australian official war artists
• British Ministry of Defence art collection - war artists
• American war artists
• Kandahar Journal Contemporary war artist Richard Johnson in Kandahar, Afghanistan
• The Art of War at The National Archives