Truth and Memory: British art of the First World War

Wonderful exhibition at the Imperial War Museum looking at the art of the First World War.

Quite early on in the First World War the idea arose of using art to commemorate what was happening. This began with Kennington’s wonderful “The Kensington’s at Laventie” which used the unusual style of painting with oil on the reverse of glass! The Government introduced the idea of official war artists some of whom went out to the battle fields to record life there.

There were rooms for different styles of art with a good room of Vorticist works including a picture of a Dazzle ship by Ferguson which uses the colours of the ship to create a Vorticist pattern. Next was a room of artists influences by Giotto such as Henry Lamb and Stanley Spencer. As ever I loved Spencer’s “Wounded arriving at the Dressing Station” where the figures converge on the light of salvation, in this case the operating theatre.

There was also a room looking at memorial which was worked round the permanent display of Sergeant’s “Gassed” and showed wonderful example of designs for war memorials such as one by Kennington and how different Orpen’s “Unknown Soldier in France” would have looked with the figures either side left on.

One the opposite side of the floor the concentration was on realistic and emotional representations of the war and artists reaction to the war. I got very excited as there was a whole room of Nevinson’s who I love. It showed how his style charge from using futurist art to imply the mechanization of war , to a more realistic style to depict the ordinary soldier.

There was also a section on the work of the Army Medical Collecting Scheme including Gilbert Roger’s “Gassed Soldier” in wonderful textured paint. In the same room I liked Percy Smith’s “Dance of Death” etchings as they reminded me of a very similar set in the British Museum show on German medals of the First World War. It just shows how similar the experiences of the two sides were.

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