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 (8.0 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).
The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was the six-divisions the British Army sent to the Western Front during the First World War. Planning for a British Expeditionary Force began with the 1906–1912 Haldane reforms of the British Army carried out by the Secretary of State for War Richard Haldane following the Second Boer War (1899–1902).
During the First World War, the Second Battle of Ypres was fought from 22 April – 25 May 1915 for control of the tactically important high ground to the east and south of the Flemish town of Ypres in western Belgium. The First Battle of Ypres had been fought the previous autumn. The Second Battle of Ypres was the first mass use by Germany of poison gas on the Western Front.
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.
Major Sir William Newenham Montague Orpen, was an Irish artist who worked mainly in London. Orpen was a fine draughtsman and a popular, commercially successful painter of portraits for the well-to-do in Edwardian society, though many of his most striking paintings are self-portraits.
John Northcote Nash was a British painter of landscapes and still-lives, and a wood engraver and illustrator, particularly of botanic works. He was the younger brother of the artist Paul Nash.
The Ypres Salient around Ypres in Belgium was the scene of several battles and an extremely important part of the Western front during the First World War.
Sir Muirhead Bone was a Scottish etcher and watercolourist who became known for his depiction of industrial and architectural subjects and his work as a war artist in both the First and Second World Wars. Bone was an active member of both the British War Memorials Committee in the First World War and the War Artists' Advisory Committee in the Second World War. He promoted the work of many young artists and served as a Trustee of the Tate Gallery, the National Gallery, and the Imperial War Museum.
Claud Lovat Fraser was an English artist, designer and author.
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.
Lone Tree Cemetery is a Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) burial ground for the dead of the First World War located in the Ypres Salient on the Western Front in Belgium. It is located at Spanbroekmolen, on one of the highest points of the Messines Ridge.
Gassed is a very large oil painting completed in March 1919 by John Singer Sargent. It depicts the aftermath of a mustard gas attack during the First World War, with a line of wounded soldiers walking towards a dressing station. Sargent was commissioned by the British War Memorials Committee to document the war and visited the Western Front in July 1918 spending time with the Guards Division near Arras, and then with the American Expeditionary Forces near Ypres. The painting was finished in March 1919 and voted picture of the year by the Royal Academy of Arts in 1919. It is now held by the Imperial War Museum. It visited the US in 1999 for a series of retrospective exhibitions, and then from 2016 to 2018 for exhibitions commemorating the centenary of the First World War.
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.
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."
The Menin Road is a large oil painting by Paul Nash completed in 1919 that depicts a First World War battlefield. Nash was commissioned by the British War Memorials Committee to paint a battlefield scene for the proposed national Hall of Remembrance. The painting is considered one of the most iconic images of the First World War and is held by the Imperial War Museum.
Ernest Stafford Carlos was a British painter and war artist. He is best known for his works depicting the early days of the Scout Movement. He joined the British Army and was killed during the First World War.
Hill 60 is a World War I battlefield memorial site and park in the Zwarteleen area of Zillebeke south of Ypres, Belgium. It is located about 4.6 kilometres (2.9 mi) from the centre of Ypres and directly on the railway line to Comines. Before the First World War the hill was known locally as Côte des Amants. The site comprises two areas of raised land separated by the railway line; the northern area was known by soldiers as Hill 60 while the southern part was known as The Caterpillar.
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.
