The Third Battle of Ypres, also known as the Battle of Passchendaele, was a campaign of the First World War, fought by the Allies against the German Empire. The battle took place on the Western Front, from July to November 1917, for control of the ridges south and east of the Belgian city of Ypres in West Flanders, as part of a strategy decided by the Allies at conferences in November 1916 and May 1917. Passchendaele lies on the last ridge east of Ypres, 5 mi (8 km) from Roulers, a junction of the Bruges-(Brugge)-to-Kortrijk railway. The station at Roulers was on the main supply route of the German 4th Army. Once Passchendaele Ridge had been captured, the Allied advance was to continue to a line from Thourout to Couckelaere (Koekelare).
Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson was an English figure and landscape painter, etcher and lithographer, who was one of the most famous war artists of World War I. He is often referred to by his initials C. R. W. Nevinson, and was also known as Richard.
Paul Nash was a British surrealist painter and war artist, as well as a photographer, writer and designer of applied art. Nash was among the most important landscape artists of the first half of the twentieth century. He played a key role in the development of Modernism in English art.
The Ypres Salient, around Ypres, in Belgium, was the scene of several battles and a major part of the Western Front during World War I.
The Battle of Poelcappelle was fought in Flanders, Belgium, on 9 October 1917 by the British Second Army and Fifth Army against the German 4th Army, during the First World War. The battle marked the end of the string of highly successful British attacks in late September and early October, during the Third Battle of Ypres. Only the supporting attack in the north achieved a substantial advance. On the main front, the German defences withstood the limited amount of artillery fire achieved by the British after the attack of 4 October. The ground along the main ridges had been severely damaged by shelling and rapidly deteriorated in the rains, which began again on 3 October, turning some areas back into swamps.
Passendale or Passchendaele is a rural Belgian village in the Zonnebeke municipality of West Flanders province. It is close to the town of Ypres, situated on the hill ridge separating the historical wetlands of the Yser and Leie valleys. It is also commonly known as a battlefield and the name of a campaign during World War I, the Battle of Passchendaele.
Hooge Crater Cemetery is a Commonwealth War Graves Commission burial ground for the dead of the First World War located in the Ypres Salient in Belgium on the Western Front. Hooge Crater Cemetery is named after a mine crater blown nearby in 1915 and located near the centre of Hooge, opposite the "Hooge Crater Museum" and separated from it by the Menin Road. Hooge itself is a small village on the Bellewaerde Ridge, about 4 kilometres east of Ypres in the Flemish province of West Flanders.
The Second Battle of Passchendaele was the culminating attack during the Third Battle of Ypres of the First World War. The battle took place in the Ypres Salient area of the Western Front, in and around the Belgian village of Passchendaele, between 26 October and 10 November 1917. The Canadian Corps relieved the exhausted II Anzac Corps, continuing the advance started with the First Battle of Passchendaele and ultimately capturing the village. Beyond gaining favourable observation positions, the battle was intended to gain drier winter positions on higher ground.
British official war artists 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. Official war artists have been appointed by governments for information or propaganda purposes and to record events on the battlefield; but there are many other types of war artist.
The Hall of Remembrance was a series of paintings and sculptures commissioned, in 1918, by the British War Memorials Committee of the British Ministry of Information in commemoration of the dead of World War I.
The British War Memorials Committee was a British Government body that throughout 1918 was responsible for the commissioning of artworks to create a memorial to the First World War. The Committee was formed in February 1918 when the Department of Information, which had been responsible for war-time propaganda and also operated a war artists scheme, became the Ministry of Information with Lord Beaverbrook as its Minister. Beaverbrook had been running, from London, the Canadian Government's scheme to commission contemporary art during the First World War and believed Britain would benefit from a similar project. Beaverbrook wanted the British War Memorials Committee to change the direction of Government-sponsored art away from propaganda of short-term value only during the conflict to a collection with a much longer lasting national value. Arnold Bennett, alongside Beaverbrook, was the driving force behind the BWMC and was instrumental in ensuring young artists, including those seen as modernist or avant-garde, were commissioned by the Committee over older British artists, many of whom were associated with the Royal Academy.
We Are Making a New World is a 1918 oil-on-canvas painting by Paul Nash. The optimistic title contrasts with Nash's depiction of a scarred landscape created by a battle of the First World War, with shell-holes, mounds of earth, and leafless tree trunks. Nash's first major painting and his most famous work, it has been described as one of the best British paintings of the 20th century, and compared to Picasso's Guernica. "Yet it is worth remembering that the picture was a piece of official art and that it first appeared, untitled, as the cover of an issue of British War Artists at the Front, published by Country Life. ... [It] was promulgated in 1917 as covert propaganda for the Allied cause."
In World War I, the area around Hooge on Bellewaerde Ridge, about 2.5 mi (4 km) east of Ypres in Flanders in Belgium, was one of the easternmost sectors of the Ypres Salient and was the site of much fighting between German and Allied forces.
The Gheluvelt Plateau actions, July–August 1917 took place from 31 July to 27 August, during the Third Battle of Ypres in Belgium, in the First World War. The British Fifth Army and the German 4th Army fought for possession of the plateau at the highest part of the ridges to the south-east, east and north-east of Ypres in West Flanders. The 4th Army had been building defensive positions in the Ypres Salient since 1915 and the Gheluvelt Plateau was the most fortified section of the front. The Fifth Army had made the plateau its main objective during the Battle of Pilckem Ridge but the II Corps advance was contained short of its objectives and German counter-attacks later recaptured some ground.
The Capture of Westhoek took place on the Gheluvelt Plateau near Ypres in Belgium, during the Third Battle of Ypres, in the First World War. The British Fifth Army attacked the Gheluvelt Plateau at the Battle of Pilckem Ridge but the German 4th Army had fortified its positions in the Ypres Salient since the Second Battle of Ypres. The British reached the first objective in the south and the second objective on the northern flank, losing some ground to German counter-attacks. A British attack due on 2 August was postponed because torrential rains from the afternoon of 31 July until 5 August washed out the battlefield.
The Action on the Polderhoek Spur, was a local operation in the Ypres Salient, by the British Fourth Army against the German 4th Army during the Third Battle of Ypres in Belgium during the First World War. Two battalions of the 2nd New Zealand Brigade of the New Zealand Division attacked the low ridge from which German observers could view the ground from Cameron Covert to the north and the Menin road to the south-west. A New Zealand advance of 600 yd (550 m) on a 400 yd (370 m) front, would shield the area north of the Reutelbeek stream from German observers on the Gheluvelt spur further south.
The action of 22 August 1917, took place during the First World War, in the Ypres Salient on the Western Front as part of the Third Battle of Ypres. The engagement was fought by the Fifth Army of the British Expeditionary Force and the German 4th Army. During the Battle of Langemarck, the British had advanced north of the village but had been defeated further south and failed to capture the Wilhelmstellung, the third German defensive position. At a conference with the Fifth Army corps commanders on 17 August, Gough arranged for local attacks to gain jumping-off positions for another general attack on 25 August. At the action of the Cockcroft on 19 August, XVIII Corps and the 1st Tank Brigade had captured five fortified farms and strongpoints for a fraction of the casualties of a conventional attack.
A Battery Shelled is a 1919 painting by the English artist Wyndham Lewis. It depicts a scene from the Western Front of World War I. It was commissioned for the proposed Hall of Remembrance.
Sunrise, Inverness Copse is a 1918 watercolour by English artist Paul Nash, which was produced during World War I. It depicts a scene from the Western Front near Ypres in Belgium, and was developed from an eye-witness sketch which Nash drew whilst at the scene in 1917. The drawing is in the collection of the Imperial War Museum, in London.
The Ypres Salient at Night is a 1918 watercolour by English artist Paul Nash, which was produced during World War I. It depicts a scene from the Western Front near Ypres in Belgium, and was developed from an eye-witness sketch which Nash drew whilst at the scene in 1917. The drawing is in the collection of the Imperial War Museum, in London.
