Official War Artist

Artists have depicted battle scenes from the earliest of civilisations onwards. In more recent wars such as the Boer and Crimea, they were deployed by newspapers to illustrate the ongoing warfare to their readers. However, it was only with the outbreak of World War I that war art was officially commissioned by governments. The first scheme to be set up was the Official War Art Program of the Canadian Government. This was established by its then Minister of Information, Lord Beaverbrook, who commissioned paintings by both Canadian and English artists, including modernists such as the Vorticists. However, when the British Commission was introduced in September 1914, its officially appointed artists were required to work in terms readily understood by the general public, so that those who had been influenced by the modernists’ movements were forced to retract to a traditionalist style of working. Some artists were seconded from active service while others were either commissioned into uniform as War Correspondents or attached to the Intelligence Department or the Department of Information. The average stay at the Front for an artist was one month and all work was censored, although artists were free to exhibit their work usually after approval. Copyright was reserved for the duration of the war only and most of the work acquired by the Commission was eventually housed in the Imperial War Museum. Artists involved in the scheme included Muirhead Bone, Francis Dodd, John Lavery, Paul Nash, Eric Kennington, Christoper Nevinson, Augustus John and William Orpen who was commissioned to record the Peace Conference at Versailles. Although the official policy helped to bring about a temporary halt in the Modernist art movement of this Britain, which did not get underway again until the 1920’s, the establishment of the War Artists Commission resulted in the production of some of the finest British art of its period.

War Artists Advisory Committee

The War Artists Advisory Committee was set up in 1939 at the outset of World War II and was chaired by Kenneth Clark. Selected artists were put on full-time salaries for periods of some six months at a time and given the rank of Captain while others either received specific commissions or had their completed work purchased by the Commission. Since the brief – to record 'wartime activities' – was a wide one, the subject matter was diverse and ranged from scenes in the war zones to those of the Home Front – such as the auxiliary forces and the Blitz, munitions workers, Bevan Boys (conscripted coalminers) and Land Army girls. The products of these commissions – which included work by artists such as Charles Cundall, Frank Dobson, Ray Howard Jones, Paul Nash, John Piper, Leonard Rosoman and Graham Sutherland – were like their counterparts from World War I, housed in the Imperial War Museum or donated to public art galleries, either in this country or in one of the then Commonwealth countries. Other artists involved included prominent illustrators such as Edward Ardizonne and Anthony Gross. Although for the most part artists usually worked well away from the battlefields, three – Thomas Hennell, Eric Ravilious and Albert Richards – were killed in the course of their duties. WAAC commissions did not cease with the ending of World War II, and although the camera has replaced the artist more and more as a recording medium as the century progressed, nevertheless, artists have still been employed to record scenes of all the conflicts involving British Forces after 1946 and up to the present time. These include Northern Ireland, the Falklands and the Gulf wars. Linda Kitson, Peter Howson, John Keane and Canadian artist Richard Johnson (whose experiences in Kandahar, Afghanistan) are seen on the internet, are among them.

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