“Dominated by the new engines of war, by giant guns and tanks, aeroplanes and submarines, poison gas and liquid fire, it required a new artistic method and a new style.”
Paul Konody, Advisor to the Canadian war art program
Since the First World War, and continuing to this day, the Canadian Government has commissioned artists to depict and make sense of war. It all began with The Canadian War Memorials Fund initiated by Sir Max Aitken (Lord Beaverbrook), and the largest art project in Canadian history.
The First World War impacted all Canadians in some way. Food was rationed, jobs were hard to find, sons and brothers were sent to the front, injured and lost. Artists were not immune to the circumstances they lived in, for they were, after all, people first. Artists too had families to feed, bills to pay, and loved ones to worry over.
A group of men, commercial artists, who worked together and who met often at Toronto’s Arts and Letters club had to endure the circumstances of the war just like everyone around them. But, this group of men was exceptional for their ideas on art, their close comaradre, and their association at this time in Canadian history. These were all factors that would influence their growth into status as national icons. Together these men would come to be known as The Group of Seven.
The Group of Seven's art would come to define a nation, and has been widely written about and known. What is largely unknown is the deep influence the First World War had on the group as men, and more importantly as artists.
The Group of Seven was formed less than two years after the end of the First World War and their post-war landscapes quickly created an identifiable and distinctly Canadian art style. The iconic features of the Group of Seven’s art — disturbed ground, prominent rocks, muddy colours, and skeletal tree trunks — have not been widely acknowledged as originating in the landscape of the First World War, yet it seems no accident of chronology that these men painted many of their seminal art works directly following the war. We find insight into the emergent Group of Seven in the mud of First World War trenches.
The following links provide starting points for further information. Below these are images and information about those members of The Group of Seven who participated as official Canadian War Artists in the First World War.
From my little art heart,
Colleen Sharpe, host of ART BEAT
HISTORY OF THE CANADIAN WAR MEMORIALS FUND
http://www.warmuseum.ca/firstworldwar/history/after-the-war/history/lord-beaverbrook/
CANADA'S CURRENT WAR ART PROGRAM
I mentioned contemporary artist Dick Averns in this episode of ART BEAT. Learn more about him and his body of work "WAR ART NOW" in the 2008-2009 section of this site.
http://www.cmp-cpm.forces.gc.ca/dhh-dhp/gal/ap-pa/index-eng.asp
THE CANADIAN WAR MUSEUM'S WAR ART COLLECTION
http://www.warmuseum.ca/cwm/exhibitions/artwar/collections/collection_canada_e.shtml
DOCUMENTARY FILMS ABOUT CANADIAN WAR ART and THE GROUP OF SEVEN
http://www.soundventure.com/onlinestore/videos/?category=8
WAR AS VIEWED THROUGH ART HISTORY
http://www.metmuseum.org/connections/war_and_conflict#/Feature/
FILM FOOTAGE OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR
http://www.canadaatwar.ca/footage/10/national-film-board-world-war-i/
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE GROUP OF SEVEN AS WAR ARTISTS
“The War Records Unit moved to [a British military center], Popeinghe, [Belgium], at the time Canadian Corps took over the Passchendaele operation. We were given an isolated house near the railway station; it was not a very comfortable location as German bombers were around every night trying to get the station, and if there were bombs left over they dumped them in our vicinity.”
A.Y. Jackson, from “A Painter’s Country”,1958
Left: "A Copse Evening" by A.Y. Jackson
Left, "Fire Swept Algoma", 1920, by Frank Johnston. Though a member of The Group of Seven who painted the war on the homefront, this artwork clearly shows the influence of war paintings byfellow Group of Seven member A.Y. Jackson.
Alexander Young Jackson
Painting: A Copse, Evening, 1914-1919
Beaverbrook Collection of War Art, Canadian War Museum; Musée canadien de la guerre
“Hill Blast Corner could look serene and colourful on a spring day” Jackson recalled, although he warned that these were only “minor truths which confused one trying to render an equivalent of something crowding on all sides[…] Drizzle, rain and mud and the costly and useless offensive at Passchendaele took the heart out of everybody”.
Though Jackson had served as a soldier before he was a war artist, he still struggled to make sense of the destruction he saw on the front. He admired British war artist Paul Nash, and others, whose modernist techniques seemed able to convey the true annihilation of war. Included among those Jackson felt were “keener works of import…in which line and movement were used with dramatic effect” were Paul Nash’s iconic painting “Void” as well as Nash’s “We are Making a New World”. With amputated trees, churned ground and beams of light connecting ground to sky, these paintings give strong inspiration to Jackson’s “A Copse, Evening”. No doubt, the post-apocalyptic quality in both paintings is borne from Nash and Jackson’s witness to the aftermath of Passchendaele’s battlegrounds. “A Copse, Evening” is the most significant of all A. Y. Jackson’s war paintings.
Frederick H. Varley
Painting: For What?, 1918
oil on canvas
Beaverbrook Collection of War Art, Canadian War Museum; Musée canadien de la guerre
Frederick Varley's For What? portrays a cart filled with bodies collected from the battlefield. It starkly portrays the horror of war and questions its purpose. In a letter dating from mid-May 1919 to his wife, Maud, this eminent Canadian artist summed up his feelings about the war. "I'm mighty thankful I've left France - I never want to see it again. This last trip over has put the tin hat on it. To see the land half cultivated & people coming back to where their homes were is too much for my make up. You'll never know dear anything of what it means. I'm going to paint a picture of it, but heavens, it can't say a thousandth part of a story. We'd be healthier to forget, & that we never can. We are forever tainted with its abortiveness & its cruel drama - and for the life of me I don't know how that can help progression. It is foul and smelly - and heartbreaking. Sometimes I could weep my eyes out when I get despondent... To be normal, to be as those silly cows & sheep that do naught but graze & die, well, it's forgetfulness."
Arthur Lismer
Painting: ‘Olympic’ With Returned Soldiers, 1919
oil on canvas
Beaverbrook Collection of War Art, Canadian War Museum; Musée canadien de la guerre
Arthur Lismer, a future member of the Group of Seven, was Principal of the Victoria School of Art and Design when he heard that Canadian artists were being hired by the Canadian War Memorials Fund. He came up with his own suggestion in a letter to Eric Brown, Director of the National Gallery of Canada, January 1918:
“What I would like to secure is permission to gather material here in Halifax. More than any other city perhaps in the Dominion Halifax is of vital interest as a war city and there is a tremendous amount of activity that I’d like to record - the departure & arrival of troopships, convoys, hospital ships, troopships from Australia & New Zealand, & the States – camouflaged men of war of different nationalities – it’s intensely interesting and graphic & no one is painting it.”
The “Olympic”, seen here docked at Halifax, was a sister ship of the “Titanic”. Its hull shows the dazzle-painting technique, a form of camouflage. Of her, Lismer said: “The Olympic which has carried so many of the Canadians over, docked here last week. It was a magnificent sight and is the most typical of all such subjects.”
Frank Johnston
Painting: Beamsville, 1919
oil and charcoal on canvas
Beaverbrook Collection of War Art, Canadian War Museum; Musée canadien de la guerre
One of the very first Canadian artists to immortalize flight was Francis Hans (Frank) Johnston. He captured the early days of flight training during the First World War for the Canadian War Memorials Fund art program. Johnston’s paintings offered aerial views that were then totally unknown to the common person. Johnston’s inspiration and accuracy came from firsthand experiences as a passenger in the cockpit of a Curtiss JN-4 aircraft 2000 ft. above ground.
In 1917, because there was an absence of a Canadian air force, an extensive system of British-operated flight training units were set up in Canada. Those Canadians and Americans who trained in Canada, flew with the British imperial air forces. Although it was established mainly to train pilots, the system graduated 137 Observers from various training units, that included: a Cadet Wing at Long Branch, Ontario, No. 4 School of Aeronautics in Toronto, an Armament School in Hamilton, the School of Aerial Gunnery at Camp Borden, and the Schools of Aerial Fighting and Artillery Co-operation at Beamsville, Ontario.
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