Australian official war artists are those who have been expressly employed by either the Australian War Memorial (AWM) or the Army Military History Section (or its antecedents). [1] These artist soldiers depicted some aspect of war through art; this might be a pictorial record or it might commemorate how war shapes lives. [2]
War artists have explored a visual and sensory dimension of war which is often absent in written histories or other accounts of warfare. [1] Official war artists have been appointed by governments for information or propaganda purposes and to record events on the battlefield; [3] but there are many other types of war artist.
A war artist creates a visual account of war by showing its impact as men and women are shown waiting, preparing, fighting, suffering, celebrating, [4] The works produced by war artists illustrate and record many aspects of war, and the individual's experience of war, whether allied or enemy, service or civilian, military or political, social or cultural. The rôle of the artist and his work embraces the causes, course and consequences of conflict and it has an essentially educational purpose. [2] For example, C.E.W. Bean's Anzac Book influenced the artists who grew up between the two world wars; and the war art of their childhoods provided a precedent and format for them to follow as war artists of the Second World War. [5]
The AWM have appointed war artists to record the activities of Australian forces in Korea, Vietnam, East Timor and Afghanistan; and both the AWM and the Australian Army have appointed official war artists to depict Australian forces in Iraq.
The Australian tradition of war artists started during First World War, with the collection by Charles Bean of contributions by soldiers at Gallipoli to what became The Anzac Book, published in May 1916.
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.
The Australian War Records Section was created in 1917, largely as a result of lobbying by Bean, to implement the Commonwealth's war art scheme, and ten expatriate volunteers already in England were nominated as "official artists". In August 1917 H. C. Smart selected two, Leist and Power, to cover the European theatre. Their contracts ended in November, and Bryant volunteered to work there over winter. Lambert left for Egypt on Christmas Day 1917. [6] This scheme was expanded by appointing artists who were already in uniform, designated "AIF artists".
Men who worked officially for Australia with troops in the field, specially appointed to visit the front for periods ranging from three months upwards:
Mainly younger artists who had enlisted in the A.I.F., and fought through with the troops, later being detailed specially for the work upon pictures for war records:
Both worked on dioramas for which Louis McCubbin painted the backdrops.
Special work was also done for A.I.F. publications by David Barker (Gallipoli and Palestine), Leyshon White (Gallipoli and France), [7] and others.
During the Second World War, 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. Other venues have honored Australian participation in the war. [8]
Charles Edwin Woodrow Bean, usually identified as C. E. W. Bean, was an historian and one of Australia's official war correspondents. According to the Online International Encyclopedia of the First World War, no other Australian has been more influential in shaping the way the First World War is remembered in Australia. He was a primary advocate in establishing the Australian War Memorial (AWM).
Frederick McCubbin was an Australian artist, art teacher and prominent member of the Heidelberg School art movement, also known as Australian impressionism.
A war artist is an artist either commissioned by a government or publication, or self-motivated, to document first-hand experience of war in any form of illustrative or depictive record. War artists explore the visual and sensory dimensions of war, often absent in written histories or other accounts of warfare.
Sir John Campbell Longstaff was an Australian painter, war artist and a five-time winner of the Archibald Prize for portraiture. His cousin Will Longstaff was also a painter and war artist.
George Washington Thomas Lambert was an Australian artist, known principally for portrait painting and as a war artist during the First World War.
Frederick William Leist was an Australian artist. During the First World War, he was an official war artist with Australian forces in Europe.
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William Frederick Longstaff was an Australian painter and war artist best known for his works commemorating those who died in the First World War.
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Francis Rossiter Crozier was a war records artist who is represented in the Australian War Memorial's art collection along with other Australian official war artists such as H. Septimus Power, Arthur Streeton, George Washington Lambert and Ivor Hele.
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The First World War, which was fought between 1914 and 1918, had an immediate impact on popular culture. In over the hundred years since the war ended, the war has resulted in many artistic and cultural works from all sides and nations that participated in the war. This included artworks, books, poems, films, television, music, and more recently, video games. Many of these pieces were created by soldiers who took part in the war.
John Linton Treloar, OBE was an Australian archivist and the second director of the Australian War Memorial (AWM). During World War I he served in several staff roles and later headed the First Australian Imperial Force's (AIF) record-keeping unit. From 1920 Treloar played an important role in establishing the AWM as its director. He headed an Australian Government department during the first years of World War II, and spent the remainder of the war in charge of the Australian military's history section. Treloar returned to the AWM in 1946, and continued as its director until his death.
Canadian official war artists create an artistic rendering of war through the media of visual, digital installations, film, poetry, choreography, music, etc., by showing its impact as men and women are shown waiting, preparing, fighting, suffering, celebrating. These traditionally were a select group of artists who were employed on contract, or commissioned to produce specific works during the First World War, the Second World War and select military actions in the post-war period. The four Canadian official war art programs are: the First World War Canadian War Memorials Fund (CWMF), the Second World War Canadian War Records (CWR), the Cold War Canadian Armed Forces Civilian Artists Program (CAFCAP), and the current Canadian Forces Artists Program (CFAP).
Isobel Rae was an Australian impressionist painter. After training at Melbourne's National Gallery of Victoria Art School, where she studied alongside Frederick McCubbin and Jane Sutherland, Rae travelled to France in 1887 with her family, and spent most of the rest of her life there. A longstanding member of the Étaples art colony, Rae lived in or near the village of Étaples from the 1890s until the 1930s. During that period, Rae exhibited her paintings at the Royal Society of British Artists, the Society of Oil Painters, and the Paris Salon. During World War I, she was a member of the Voluntary Aid Detachment and worked throughout the war in Étaples Army Base Camp. She and Jessie Traill were the only Australian women to live and paint in France during the war, however they were not included in their country's first group of official war artists. Following Hitler's rise to power, Rae moved to south-eastern England, where she died in 1940.
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