I've just been looking at the thread on Great War paintings and, like many others, have marvelled at many of them. But the thought did occur as to how accurate in detail are they? To what extent can a researcher rely on them?

The obvious answers are some are very accurate, others aren't, and it pays to double-check.

A prime subject for debate in this context (albeit off-Forum) is the Battle of the Little Big Horn, where accuracy has often given way to dramatic effect (eg sabres were not carried, yet Custer is often shown gallantly flourishing one). But when one artist meticulously researched the battle and produced a painting of almost photographic clarity, it was pointed out that it omitted the dust of battle which would have obscured the details of equipment and uniforms! One might say the same of some paintings of epic cavalry charges.

Are there any thoughts on this matter within the context of the Great War?


Moonraker

I must say moonraker that I too was thinking the same and especially when I see the paintings of VC winners.


regards<

Phil

Interesting thread Moonraker . Here is a description from the site in a differant light http://www.greatwardifferent.com/Great_War.../Matania_01.htm
of how the Artist Matania worked .

Fortunino Matania (1881 - 1963) was Italian by birth. After training in his father's workshop he illustrated his first book at the age of 14 and later worked as illustrator for newsmagazines worldwide. One of the most accomplished realistic illustrators and artists of his time, his wartime work was immensely popular and appeared in nearly every major newsmagazine, Allied, neutral and Central Powers alike. After and during the war, his work adorned many a history book as well.

During the war he mainly worked for the British magazine 'the Sphere' as their star illustrator, usually producing one full page illustration or more per weekly issue, often for the opening cover page. These illustrations were sold to other magazines and publications worldwide. Literally tens of millions of readers saw war time events through the medium of Matania's weekly illustrations and as such he played an important role in defining people's mental image of what Great War battlefield scenes and soldiers looked like. He was also employed by the British government and commissioned by individual British regiments. He visited the front several times which allowed him to view wartime conditions at first hand and talk with soldiers about their experiences. From sketches and memory he could then finish a painting, often in a few days time. At other times, when his illustrations depicted specific news events he would receive information, photographs or rough sketches and descriptions from on-the-scene reporters or eye-witness reports. Drawing on personal experience and technique as well as on information from archive photographs or prints he would then set to work composing and finishing the required illustration. Rich in detail and carefully composed, his stirring paintings often depicted heroic or romantic scenes. In our present day and age they appear at times to be overly sentimental if not somewhat theatrically posed. However, Matania seems to have been in accord with the prevailing mood and tastes of the times, when exaggerated gestures and explicitly heroic, if sometimes improbable seeming deeds and actions were greatly admired. And on a practicl level, Matania had to tell or illustrate a story in one single scene. This too meant using stock poses and physical stances, often borrowed from the performing arts, so that viewers could readily grasp the underlying emotions and assumptions being shown.

I think most artists would tend to add drama to a battle scene for more effect. Your point about the Little big horn and the dust rings true. I've heard this mentioned before but applied to the Battle of Waterloo. No one could see anything for the musket fire. What you might call the fog of war

Chris

Check and then double check IMHO.

Very good point to raise Moonraker.

I have received vehement arguments from both sides of the camp - I remember my art tutor banging the table as he effervesced the importance of "Painting it True". Integrity of the Artist and all that.

Yet I have also met artists who will ommit or over-indulge details on the basis of "artistic license". Commonly for the benefit of composition or to stop the eye detracting from where the artist wants it to travel.

Who is more correct?

I think that this is in the hand of the individual artist - but with historical subject matters, does the artist have a duty to correctly chronical or to create an emotive response from the viewer at the expense of accuracy?

Custer's use of weapons and the artist's desicion to change it throws up interesting questions. George Orwell's 1984 portrays the control of history by a regime, constantly rewritten to suit the political control. Beade's history of Britain is the single account of the Dark Ages by one man, written with a political slant - we take it at face value. Will Great War art be consigned to the same fate?

Regards,
EoB.

'The Second Battle of Ypres' - Richard Jack

Lavish detail - but does this alone imply historical accuracy?

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

Surely they`re both correct? The canvas depicts exactly what the artist wishes it to and that may vary from photographic accuracy to the highly imaginative. Or anything in between. Sort of caveat emptor!

Thanks Phil, I agree that it lies in the hand of the artist - but does the artist have a duty to chronical accuracy at the expense of aesthetics/emotive response?

Regards
EoB.

I would say no - unless he/she makes claims that it is an accurate portrayal, which would be rare for an artist?

can you define what you mean by 'an accurate portrayal' ?

There is little evidence that Goya directly experienced the scenes which inspired his 'Disasters of War' series yet they have become the very leitmotif for the horrors which accompanied the Napoleonic wars. Likewise Picasso was not present when Guernica was bombed, yet who can doubt that he produced a transcendent artwork ? Perhaps you would maintain that these examples are not accurate portrayals ?

Look at the Richard Jack painting. In the heat and fury of battle do you really think that any individual present had the time or the opportunity to digest that level of detail ? No, because the painting belongs to the genre convention of 'history painting'. It is composed and realised according to the structure and thematic requirements of that established idiom and the expectations of the specific market it is aimed at. You could trace the structure, phrasing and lighting of WW1 genre paintings back to Benjamin West through Alma-Tadema if you wanted to. The compositions remain the same, only the milieu changes. The function of the traditional history painting is didactic in that they generally portray physically perfect people carrying out morally perfect deeds pro publico bono ! Put another way, in WW1 (and the inter-war years ) history painting served a propagandist function as surely as any newspaper editorial.

Other artists reacted to war experience in a quite different way, serious artists reacted against the academic conventions enshrined in history painting, believing that conventional modes were totally inadequate for expressing the shattering realities of 20thc warfare. And you find the same phenomenon in music, in literature, architecture and design. The war acts as a catalyst by speeding up the reaction against genre conventions which was already underway in fin de siecle Europe.

You could perhaps look upon each art form as a language with its own conventions of signs and meanings. Whatever cultural vehicle you select, the genre conventions of its specific language interact with the theme and the theme (reality - whatever that means) in turn interacts and modifies the genre.

I would hold that none of these art works can ever be 'an accurate portrayal' of events yet all contain more than a vestige of truth - whatever that is.

Of course no artist could paint a photographic reproduction of a scene from memory. By "accurate portrayal"of WW1 scenes, I probably mean one which generally approaches closely to the actuality and is correct in technical detail. I would not call Guernica an accurate portrayal but then it isn`t supposed to be.

Otto Dix was not much concerned with getting regimental badges right but many would maintain that his work (If I discuss Picasso I will be removed) transcends mere genre conventions and does more to convey the essential realities/ truths/accuracies of war in a way that the chocolate box sentimentality of Matania and his ilk could never do.

Why should visual art be any different to literature or photography? In literature we have fiction and non-fiction, with many examples of the latter being more akin to the former according to some readers (as many debates on this very forum vividly display). A photograph can represent one point of view, yet a shot of the same event when taken from a different angle can represent another. Everything depends on point of view - the so-called facts being no exception, one man's fact is another's lie, one man's eye-witness account can be contrary to another's.

Should a writer not write about an event because it may not represent all points of view? Should a photographer not take a picture because he may have the wrong angle to represent the whole truth? Should an artist not paint because the end-result may not deliver all truths to all men? If your answer to all three is yes then you condemn art to a non-existent future - if you are one of those who seek factual perfection in all you see and read, you are doomed to be eternally disappointed by your own delusions of reality.


Cheers-salesie.

Classic reportage photographs of the Great War a la Malins etc are as carefully composed and lighted as any 17thc tenebristi painting - that does not mean to say they do not contain an element of 'truth' but it ought to be recognised that they often tell the viewer/reader as much about the society which produced them as the subject they purport to describe.

All cultural froms are essentially artificial constructs informed by the conventions of their medium (but in turn they can modify their specific vehicle - be it art, design architecture, photography, music or literature - hence the transcendent work tends to challenge its genre conventions). In terms of painting, Matania, Jack and Wylie are highly conventional while Nash, Dix and Rogers challenge the structuring genre. Likewise Baker was a 'workmanlike' architect while Lutyens is generally regarded as something just a little bit special. In terms of literature, try contrasting 'In Parenthesis' with anything by Newbolt or Kipling - obvious but apt contrasts.


I would maintain that paintings/composed photographs are valid historical fare as long as there is measurable material evidence from other sources in support of the thesis.

At the risk of adding to this debate and extending it, one might consider the photographs of Frank Hurley, Official Australian Photographer. Charles Bean, the Official Australian Historian found it most frustrating that Frank often produced posed images and also often produced composite images from a number of original images, the end result lacking true accuracy but achieving great effest. I know one of his common changes was to ad a more dramatic sky or cloudline and he kept a tock of select skyline pictures just for this purpose. There is nothing wrong with doing this, but it becomes a grey area when veracity and artistic creation become mixed in photographs which we generally assume to be truthful in nature.

As an example of how unrepresentative of the actuality a painting, whatever its artistic merit, might be, here`s what Clio describes as "a transcendent artwork" by Picasso. It represents, of course, the bombing of Guernica.

unrepresentative of the experience of war ?????

You are of course entitled to your views but the firmament beyond the armchair generalship of planet Baker, tends to regard this painting as one of the cultural milestones of western civilisation
- but hey, thats johnny foreigner for you !

I will concede that Picasso has not quite managed to capture the Kondor Legion markings on the HEIIIs blowing the crap out of the city as they swoop in on their bomb run.

Inherent in the fact that a painting is a painting, it cannot be accurate. It attempts to depict a moment, which could be no more than a few seconds long, by a process that takes a comparatively long time to complete. A photograph can capture a second, but a painting can't. So within that depicting process, in which a second or two is conveyed by numerous blobs of paint or whatever the artist is using, interpretation and motive comes in. We then add our own inferences to decode and make those blobs of colour meaningful.

I have rarely, if ever, seen any war art where it's possible to see regimental badges clearly. If the painting is so detailed and close-up that you can, I think they ought to be accurate.

Where do you include mental health? Max Beckmann's work communicates the desolation and torments of war, sometimes drawing and re-drawing in an attempt to break through the barriers of his wrecked mind and what results is deeply profound but apparently shallow. The sun isn't black, but to someone in his devastated state, it was.

Gwyn

An interesting thread.

My own take on this is that artistic licence and inaccuracy is perfectly acceptable when depicting an idea, atmosphere or emotion. This may take the form of a carefully considered technical approach to create a particular effect or some individual twist from within the artists head. I'm not a lover of Picasso's style or Dix's but accept their work is their way of expressing an idea or feeling and allows people to see events from a totally different perspective where accuracy is irrelevent. However, I'm in the 'painting it true' camp if the painting is intended to represent to the viewer a particular action or event, ie: it is meant to provide a factual illustration of a time and place rather than create an emotional response from the viewer.

For example, given the title of David Rowlands' painting 'The last stand of Capt. Dyer and 'A' Company 1/Cheshire of 15 Brigade at Audregnies, 4 pm, 24 August' you should be reasonably confident that the artist has taken considerable effort to get every detail correct down to cap badges, weapons, weather, location and a reasonable semblence of Capt Dyer himself.

Although less specifically titled I would also expect the above example of second Ypres to be accurate in regard to the weapons shown, ammo boxes, the uniforms and general environment. (I'm not an expert in weapons but what type of machine gun is shown....it's not what i'd've expected to see but might be a good example of the artist representing exactly what was used at that point in time...or has he got it wrong?)

The only opportunity for artistic licence I think available to the artist for this type of painting is in regard to the poses of those depicted. In all other aspects the artist has a responsibility to the viewer to get it right. However, this is my own view of what should be, not what is and as mentioned in the topic opening comments there are many paintings that although superb pieces of art are of little value to a researcher.

cheers, ET

It is accurate - it's a Colt "Potato Digger" - although the following article is American specific, it was also used by the Canadians in the early part of the war:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1895_Colt-Browning_machine_gun

Andrew

Thanks for the reply and the link. I wasn't familier at all with that make of gun so thanks again broadening my knowledge. Potato digger!!....that's one I won't forget.

cheers, ET