The Imperial War Museum (IWM), currently branded "Imperial War Museums", is a British national museum. It is headquartered in London, with five branches in England. Founded as the Imperial War Museum in 1917, it was intended to record the civil and military war effort and sacrifice of the United Kingdom and its Empire during the First World War. The museum's remit has since expanded to include all conflicts in which British or Commonwealth forces have been involved since 1914. As of 2012, the museum aims "to provide for, and to encourage, the study and understanding of the history of modern war and 'wartime experience'."
Military art is art with a military subject matter, regardless of its style or medium. The battle scene is one of the oldest types of art in developed civilizations, as rulers have always been keen to celebrate their victories and intimidate potential opponents. The depiction of other aspects of warfare, especially the suffering of casualties and civilians, has taken much longer to develop. As well as portraits of military figures, depictions of anonymous soldiers on the battlefield have been very common; since the introduction of military uniforms such works often concentrate on showing the variety of these.
The History of the Great War Based on Official Documents by Direction of the Committee of Imperial Defence is a series of 109 volumes, concerning the war effort of the British state during the First World War. It was produced by the Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence from 1915 to 1949; after 1919 Brigadier-General Sir James Edmonds was Director. Edmonds wrote many of the army volumes and influenced the choice of historians for the navy, air force, medical and veterinary volumes. Work had begun on the series in 1915 and in 1920, the first volumes of Naval Operations and Seaborne Trade, were published. The first "army" publication, Military Operations: France and Belgium 1914 Part I and a separate map case were published in 1922 and the final volume, The Occupation of Constantinople was published in 2010.
William Frederick Longstaff was an Australian painter and war artist best known for his works commemorating those who died in the First World War.
Anna Airy was an English oil painter, pastel artist and etcher. She was one of the first women officially commissioned as a war artist and was recognised as one of the leading women artists of her generation.
Albert Henry Fullwood was an Australian artist who made a significant contribution to art in Australia. He painted with Heidelberg School artists around Melbourne and moved with Tom Roberts and Arthur Streeton to live and paint at their camp in Sirius Cove, Sydney. Fullwood was the Australian official war artist to the 5th Division in the World War I.
Arthur John Ensor was a British-Canadian painter and industrial designer.
The Ordnance BL 9.2-inch howitzer was a heavy siege howitzer that formed the principal counter-battery equipment of British forces in France in World War I. It equipped a substantial number of siege batteries of the Royal Garrison Artillery. During World War II a limited number were used in the Battle of France, with the remainder being kept in the United Kingdom.
The First World War, which was fought between 1914 and 1918, had an immediate impact on popular culture. In the over a 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, commonly referred to during his life as J. L. Treloar, 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.
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.
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).
Australian official war artists are those who have been expressly employed by either the Australian War Memorial (AWM) or the Army Military History Section. These artist soldiers depicted some aspect of war through art; this might be a pictorial record or it might commemorate how war shapes lives.
American official war artists have been part of the American military since 1917. Artists are unlike the objective camera lens which records only a single instant and no more. The war artist captures instantaneous action and conflates earlier moments of the same scene within one compelling image.
"We're not here to do poster art or recruiting posters... What we are sent to do is to go to the experience, see what is really there and document it—as artists."
New Zealand official war artists are those whose artwork becomes a part of the record of New Zealanders' lives during times of war. In New Zealand, the title of appointed "war artist" changed to "army artist" after the two world wars.
The Étaples art colony was a fin de siècle artists' retreat situated near the fishing port of Étaples, in northern France. The colony experienced its heyday between 1880 and 1914 before the outbreak of World War I led to its disruption. Although cosmopolitan in composition, the majority of inhabitants were Anglophone artists from North America, Australasia and the British Isles. While some artists settled permanently, others remained at the colony for a sole season, or an even shorter time as it was common for Bohemian painters of this period to lead a peripatetic existence, travelling between the various art colonies situated along the coasts of Normandy and Brittany. Stylistically, the Étaples artists represent a diverse range of schools with certain common interests, including a preoccipation with the landscape of the region, the proper use of natural light, as well as a shared interest in the lives of the common folk, fishermen and peasants, of the region. While most painters left the town in 1914 at the outbreak of WW1, artistic activities continued at Étaples during the conflict, pursued by artists in uniform and war artists. Following the Treaty of Versailles which ended the war, some artists returned to their studios and the persistence of a small colony continued to attract visitors to the area, although little outstanding work now resulted.
The Imperial Gift was the donation of aircraft from surplus stocks in Britain after World War I to the dominions of the British Empire: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India. On 29 May 1919, the Cabinet of the United Kingdom agreed to give 100 aircraft to the dominions in addition to replacements for aircraft donated to Britain during the war. These aircraft formed the core of newly established air forces in several dominions.
Sydney William Carline was a British artist and teacher known for his depictions of aerial combat painted during World War One.
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.
