This month, in honour of National Remembrance Day, we will be focusing on the lives and works of several artists that served during the First World War, putting their bodies on the line in the field of combat. Then, we'll move on to the symbolism of the poppy, and how it became synonymous with the conflict.
Art by Jo Brown, printed by us.
First, we're happy to introduce you to Otto Dix.
Volunteering for the Army as soon as war broke out, he became a non-commissioned officer in charge of a machine-gun regiment in 1915, where he would participate in the Battle of the Somme. He spent some time afterwards on the Eastern Front in the fight against Russia before returning West to participate in the German Spring Offensive. In August 1918, we was wounded in the neck, the fifth time he'd been injured during the war. He received the Iron Cross, 2nd Class and was promoted to Sergeant. More importantly, the sketch pads that he brought with him were now filled with over 600 sketches inspired by the horrors he saw as he returned home for Christmas.
The profound effect of the war on his life can be gleaned from his continuing exploration of the subject years after the fighting had ended. Work aside, he was reportedly said to have described a recurring nightmare in which he crawled through destroyed houses. However, his first collection of works was not published until 1924, under the title Der Krieg.This was a series of 50 etchings created through the process of aquatint, a style that produces areas of tone rather than lines.
One of these works was titled Stormtroopers Advancing Under Gas, and left the author with an unsettling feeling upon first seeing it. In it, five stormtroopers wearing gas masks are put under a gas attack while behind enemy lines. The gas masks, that look suspiciously like skulls with their enlarged eyes, remove any sign of individuality and uniqueness among them, signifying, in my opinion, the sheer scale of loss. So many fought and died during the war, it's difficult to imagine that each one had their own life, dreams and aspirations. The piece is almost monochrome, using extremely dark etchings. This could have been Dix's way of replicating the intense smoke caused by constant artillery, especially the smoke as described during the Somme.
For our next artist, we turn to Australia to meet Will Longstaff. Born on Christmas in Ballarat, Victoria, Longstaff began studies in art at the Ballarat School of Mines before enlisting in the military to join the ongoing Boer War as a member of the South African Light Horse.
Shortly after returning to Australia to take up teaching art, he was once again pulled into the sphere of a brutal war, the First World War. He enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force at the outbreak of the First World War and was injured in the Gallipoli campaign. This didn't stop him though. He continued his service in France and Egypt before eventually being evacuated to England in 1917.
His time there would help to produce one of the most famous artworks surrounding the war, Menin Gate at Midnight (1927). It garnered immediate popularity with the public, and there's no mystery to that. The ghostly soldiers walking across the barren field look deceptively like flowers at first glance, mixing the different emotions of calm and serenity with the shock of the vast scale of operations that once took place there.
Henry Tonks, our next artist, started his career as a surgeon, but eventually found his true calling when he became a Professor of Fine Art at University College, London. That was, until the war broke out.
The start of fighting forced him to restart his medical career, first at a prisoner of war camp in Dorchester, and then at Hill Hall in Essex, where he made pastel drawings of Auguste Rodin and his wife, who were refugees. However, it was during his time working for Harold Gillies producing pastel drawings recording facial injury cases at the Cambridge Military Hospital in Aldershot and the Queen's Hospital, Sidcup, where he was to have the opportunity to engrave his personal experiences into paintings.
It was during this period that he was witness to the treatment of a wounded soldier, which he documented in Saline Infusion: An incident in the British Red Cross Hospital, Arc-en-Barrois. In it, the soldier is writhing in pain as a doctor is sewing up a wound in his hip, with the supervision of a nurse and an unidentified mn, presumably a personal connection to the soldier. Tonks reserved his use of white primarily on the soldier, who sits directly under the window, giving him a ghostly pale look, as if all the blood has been drained out of him. This must have been just one of many similar occurrences to transpire during his time working in hospitals.
Now, we take our focus to the poppy, long-known as the symbol for those we lost in the war. Its origin stems from the battlefield, in the aftermath of the Second Battle of Ypres, and has lasted over 100 years since.
Art by Tracey Smart printed by us.
Many battles of the war took place on fields, destroying the soil with artillery and gunfire. However, it was from these same crater-filled plains that a red flower began to rise again: the poppy.
Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, a Canadian who served as a brigade surgeon for an Allied artillery unit, spotted a cluster of poppies in the spring of 1915. This would spark an inspiration in him that would eventually be published in Punch as a poem called "In Flanders Field". The poem would be used at countless memorial ceremonies and is one of the most famous poems to come out of the war.
But the story didn't end there for the poppy. Moina Michael read “In Flanders Field” in the pages of Ladies’ Home Journal that November, just two days before the armistice. Inspired, she wrote a poem in response entitled “We Shall Keep Faith.” Along with this came a vow...to always wear a red poppy as a rememberance. After the war ended, she returned to the university town of Athens and came up with the idea of making and selling red silk poppies to raise money to support returning veterans. This would only be the start of a campaign to make the poppy the national symbol of remembrance. A campaign that, evidently, succeeded.
The First World War was a global event that left permanent scars on the landscape. Not only on the fields of Europe, but on our collective psyche. It was a gruesome lesson that, unfortunately, had to be retaught only 20 years later. A century later, that time continues to hold our attention, and thanks to the three artists included in this blog, plus many more, we have been able to glean at least a semblance of understanding of the sacrifices millions of soldiers made in the name of peace.