World War One - Artists

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Joseph Cummings Chase: Soldiers All (Script, 1942)

Joseph Cummings Chase (1878 - 1965) was an American painter who's name is not likely to be associated with World War I artists but, like Sir William Orpen, he had a comfortable place within fashionable circles and he, too, was commissioned to paint portraits of the anointed within his nations military establishment. This article appeared in 1942 and primarily concerns the W.W. I portrait that Chase painted of Brigadier General Douglas MacArthur during the closing days of the war:

"Joseph Cummings Chase is without doubt one of the world's greatest portrait painters, and as luck would have it, he was in Paris when World War I began, at which time the Government commissioned him to paint the Distinguished Service Cross men, both enlisted men and officers, wherever he could catch up with them; some in dugouts, some in trenches, and some behind the lines."

Drawings from the Soissons Trenches (Vanity Fair, 1915)

French war artist Charles Huard (1875 - 1965) produced theses seven illustrations of French Poilus as they stood guard in the frozen misery of the Soisson trenches during the December of 1914.

World War I Pictures by British Artists Seen in America (Vanity Fair, 1919)

This 1919 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.

"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.

Click here to read about the W.W. I art collected for the Canadian War Memorial (that was never built).

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