Art Blog: March 2024

01 Work, The Art of War, William Orpen's Zonnebeke, with footnotes

Sir William Orpen 1878–1931

Zonnebeke, c. 1918

Oil paint on canvas

635 × 762 mm

Tate

Zonnebeke is a municipality located in the Belgian province of West Flanders.

In the spring and summer of 1917 Orpen painted the battlefields of the Somme, sometimes at places that had been captured only a short time earlier. Orpen described in a letter the shocking experience of seeing numbers of corpses lying unburied among the flooded shell holes, in a landscape totally empty of life. In his pictures of the blasted battlefields, and in his portraits of the exhausted or shell-shocked men, Orpen got physically and emotionally closer to the full horrors of the First World War than most of the other official artists. More on this painting

Major Sir William Newenham Montague Orpen, KBE, RA, RHA (27 November 1878 – 29 September 1931) 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.

During World War I, he was the most prolific of the official war artists sent by Britain to the Western Front. There he produced drawings and paintings of ordinary soldiers, dead men, and German prisoners of war, as well as portraits of generals and politicians. Most of these works, 138 in all, he donated to the British government; they are now in the collection of the Imperial War Museum. His connections to the senior ranks of the British Army allowed him to stay in France longer than any of the other official war artists, and although he was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1918 Birthday Honours, and also elected a member of the Royal Academy of Arts, his determination to serve as a war artist cost him both his health and his social standing in Britain. More on William Orpen

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01 Work, The Art of War, Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson's La Mitrailleuse/ The Machine Gun, with footnotes

Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson 1889–1946

La Mitrailleuse/ The Machine Gun, c. 1915

Oil paint on canvas

610 × 508 mm

Tate

Christopher Nevinson identified with the Italian futurist art movement. They celebrated and embraced the speed and efficient power of the modern age. Nevinson’s experience as an ambulance driver in the First World War, however, changed his view of the potential of a mechanised world. In this painting, soldiers fighting in France are reduced to a series of angular planes and grey colouring. They lose their individuality and even their humanity as they seem to fuse with the machine gun, which gives this painting its title. More on this painting

Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson (b London, 13 Aug. 1889; d London, 7 Oct. 1946) was a British painter and printmaker. As a student at the Académie Julian, Paris, in 1912–13 Nevinson met several of the Futurists and he became the outstanding British exponent of their style. His work included landscapes, urban scenes, figure compositions, and flowers, but he found his ideal subjects during the First World War. He served in France with the Red Cross and the Royal Army Medical Corps, 1914–16, before being invalided out, and his harsh, steely images of life and death in the trenches received great acclaim when he held a one-man exhibition at the Leicester Galleries, London, in 1916. Stylistically they drew on certain Cubist as well as Futurist ideas, but they are closer to the work of the Vorticists (with whom he had exhibited in 1915).

In 1917 Nevinson returned to France as an Official War Artist, and he was the first to make drawings from the air. Some of his work was considered too unpleasant for public viewing and was censored, but a second one-man exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in 1918 was another triumph. At the end of the war Nevinson renounced Futurism and his later, more conventional paintings are generally regarded as an anticlimax: an example is Twentieth Century (1932–5, Laing AG, Newcastle upon Tyne), an ambitious but rather turgid attempt to portray a world on the brink of catastrophe. More on Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson

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08 Works, The Art of War, Maxwell, Donald's British Navy in Lebanon, 1st World War, with footnotes

During WWI, the Middle East was a battleground for various colonial powers, including the Ottoman Empire, Germany, France, and Britain. The Ottoman Empire, which spanned modern-day Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestinian Territories, and much of Saudi Arabia, was a major player in the war. The war had a significant impact on Ottoman soldiers, the Middle Eastern home fronts, women's issues, disease/public health, and the development of nationalist narratives in the Arab lands, in Turkey, and among Ottoman minority groups.

Maxwell, Donald

British Drifters in Beyrout Harbour

Watercolour

Height 292 mm, Width 406 mm

Imperial War Museums

In the foreground a few local men stand beside two boats moored at the harbourside, a small wooden hut to the left. Beyond, a line of British drifters are moored along a harbour wall, with a mountain range in the background.

A naval drifter is a boat built along the lines of a commercial fishing drifter but fitted out for naval purposes. The use of naval drifters is paralleled by the use of naval trawlers.

Fishing trawlers were designed to tow heavy trawls, so they were easily adapted to tow minesweepers, with the crew and layout already suited to the task. Drifters were robust boats built, like trawlers, to work in most weather conditions, but designed to deploy and retrieve drift nets. They were generally smaller and slower than trawlers. If requisitioned by navies, they were typically armed with an anti-submarine gun and depth charges and used to maintain and patrol anti-submarine nets. More on British Drifters

Maxwell, Donald

The Bombing of Beyrout Harbour

Watercolour

Height 279 mm, Width 330 mm

Imperial War Museums

A view of the harbour by night. In the left foreground is a watchtower with mast and flag, while across the harbour is a cityscape of buildings and port installations. A seaplane is approaching from the left, while two others wheel away in the distance. Smoke and flames are seen amongst structures in the harbour.

Maxwell, Donald

Seaplanes Bombing the Customs House, Beyrout

Watercolour

Height 285 mm, Width 342 mm

Imperial War Museums

Four Royal Naval Air Service seaplanes are in the sky in the upper right, having dropped bombs that are exploding in the lower right, damaging wooden buildings. There are ships in the harbour, including one that has partially sunk. Mountains are visible in the background.

Maxwell, Donald

Sunken Tugs in Beyrout Harbour

Watercolour

Height 374 mm, Width 279 mm

Imperial War Museums

A view of Beirut from the water of the harbour, with two sunken tug boats in the right foreground, with little more than their funnels visible above the water. The masts of another vessel are just visible above the water's surface to the left. Just beyond, three local wooden boats are dry-docked on the harbourside, the two to the left supported with wooden struts. Buildings of Beirut are visible behind, including a Mosque with a crescent moon in the night sky just above it.

Maxwell, Donald

Sunset. The Harbour of Beyrout

Watercolour

Height 254 mm, Width 406 mm

Imperial War Museums

A view across Beirut harbour, with a variety of shipping moored within it. To the left is a large dazzle camouflage painted merchant ship, with a partially sunk ship in the centre. To the right an assortment of shipping is moored closely together. Mountains are visible across the horizon.

Maxwell, Donald

ML 248 Entering Tyre

Watercolour

Height 215 mm, Width 336 mm

Imperial War Museums

A view from the deck of a Royal Navy motor launch, with members of the crew standing on deck looking towards the buildings of the city of Tyre in the background.

Maxwell, Donald

ML 206 Entering Tyre

Watercolour

Height 222 mm, Width 342 mm

Imperial War Museums

A Royal Navy motor launch approaches the harbourside at Tyre, shining a bright light at a crowd of local men, who appear to be standing beside piles of supplies. There is a local sailing boat to the left and a line of ships in the distance, in the middle of the composition.

The ML.206 was the second British vessel to enter Tyre after ML.248, during the Palestine campaign

Maxwell, Donald

Motor-launches off Sidon

Watercolour

Height 222 mm, Width 342 mm

Imperial War Museums

Two Royal Navy motor launches sail just off the coast of the walled city of Sidon. The outer walls of the city are sandy-coloured, with white buildings beyond.

Donald Maxwell (1877-1936) was a painter, etcher and illustrator, born in Clapham, south London the son of a Methodist minister. Maxwell studied at Clapham School of Art, the Slade School of Fine Art, and the Royal College of Art all towards the close of the 19th century. After his marriage in 1907, he and his wife resided on a yacht moored on the River Thames before relocating to Rochester, Kent. He soon began writing and illustrating extensively for The Yachting Monthly and other magazines and in 1909, he came to the public's attention with his dramatic sketch, 'The Battle Fleet off Southend', published by the Daily Graphic in 1909. He thereafter embarked on a career as a naval artist and correspondent and became a regular correspondent for the Daily Graphic and the weekly illustrated paper The Graphic continuing to do so until the latter's closure in the 1930's. During World War I was an Official War Artist attached to the Admiralty, visiting Palestine and Mesopotamia. He accompanied the Prince of Wales on his tour of India and illustrated The Prince of Wales' Eastern Book and wrote and illustrated many books on travel and topography and also received poster commissions from Southern Railways. He showed at the Royal Academy, Manchester Academy of Fine Arts and at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. Examples of his work are in the collection of the Imperial War Museum. More on Donald Maxwell

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01 Work, The art of War, Jacek Malczewski's Death, with Footnotes

Jacek Malczewski (1854–1929)

Death, c. 1902

Oil on canvas

height: 75 cm (29.5 in); width: 98 cm (38.5 in)

National Museum in Warsaw

Death is frequently imagined as a personified force. In some mythologies, a character known as the Grim Reaper, a berobed skeleton wielding a scythe, causes the victim's death by coming to collect that person's soul. Other beliefs hold that the spectre of death is only a psychopomp, a benevolent figure who serves to gently sever the last ties between the soul and the body, and to guide the deceased to the afterlife, without having any control over when or how the victim dies. Death is most often personified in male form, although in certain cultures death is perceived as female. Death is also portrayed as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Most claims of its appearance occur in states of near-death. more on the personification of death

Jacek Malczewski, a Polish Symbolist painter, was born on this day, 15 July, 1854. He is considered to be one of the most revered painters of Poland and had strong associations with the patriotic Young Poland movement following a century of Partitions of Poland. Regarded as the father of Polish Symbolism, his creative output combined the predominant style of his times with historical motifs of Polish martyrdom, the romantic ideals of independence, Christian and Greek mythology, folk tales, as well as his love of the natural world.

Malczewski moved to Kraków at 17, and began his artistic education in 1872 under several great masters. He also enrolled in an art school and spent a year studying in Paris. He was greatly influenced by Jan Matejko’s style as well as that of the earlier Polish Romantic painter Artur Grottger. Between 1885 and 1916, Jacek regularly made trips to Paris, Munich, Vienna, Italy, Greece, and Turkey.

He also drew inspiration from a wide variety of sources often exotic or biblical, and translated them back into Polish folklore, tradition and motifs in his own paintings. Many of his paintings prominently feature grandiose self-portraits that reveal his sense of humor and capacity to laugh at himself.

During the periods of 1897-1900 and 1912-1921, Malczewski served as professor of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. He was elected Rector of the Academy in 1912. His art has been compared to many great contemporaries and his paintings won many awards at international exhibitions. Malczewski died on 8 October 1929. More on Jacek Malczewski

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01 Work, The art of War, The Battle of Yarmouk between the army of the Byzantine Empire and the Arab Muslim forces of the Rashidun Caliphate, with Footnotes

Anonymous Catalonian illustrator

Detail; The Battle of Yarmouk (636)

Parchment

Bibliothèque Nationale

The Saracens are shown with a star and crescent banner, the Byzantines (anachronistically in Crusader era armour) with a star banner.

The Battle of the Yarmuk (also spelled Yarmouk) was a major battle between the army of the Byzantine Empire and the Arab Muslim forces of the Rashidun Caliphate. The battle consisted of a series of engagements that lasted for six days in August 636, near the Yarmouk River, along what are now the borders of Syria–Jordan and Syria-Israel, southeast of the Sea of Galilee. The result of the battle was a crushing Muslim victory that ended Roman rule in Syria after about seven centuries. The Battle of the Yarmuk is regarded as one of the most decisive battles in military history, and it marked the first great wave of early Muslim conquests after the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, heralding the rapid advance of Islam into the then-Christian/Roman Levant.

To check the Arab advance and to recover lost territory, Emperor Heraclius had sent a massive expedition to the Levant in May 636. As the Byzantine army approached, the Arabs tactically withdrew from Syria and regrouped all their forces at the Yarmuk plains close to the Arabian Peninsula, where they were reinforced, and defeated the numerically superior Byzantine army. The battle is widely regarded to be Khalid ibn al-Walid's greatest military victory and cemented his reputation as one of the greatest tacticians and cavalry commanders in history. More on The Battle of the Yarmuk

Anonymous Catalonian illustrator

The Battle of Yarmouk (636)

Parchment

Bibliothèque Nationale

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01 Work, The art of War, Nicolas Poussin's The Victory of Joshua over the Amalekites, with Footnotes

Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665)

The Victory of Joshua over the Amalekites, c. between 1623 and 1626

Oil on canvas

height: 97.5 cm (38.3 in); width: 134 cm (52.7 in)

Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg

The Amalekites, descendants of Amalek, were an ancient biblical nation living near the land of Canaan. They were the first nation to attack the Jewish people after the Exodus from Egypt, and they are seen as the archetypal enemy of the Jews.

Joshua was successor to Moses, who led the Israelites through the Desert and into the Promised Land, Palestine.

Palestine, however, was not uninhabited. According to the Old Testament a local tribe, the Amalekites, lived on the east bank of the River Jordan and in the region between the Dead Sea and Hebron.

Presumably the largest population group in the land Canaan, as Palestine was known, the Amorites were defeated by Joshua in a series of battles. More on the battle with the Amalekites

Joshua's Battle Against the Amalekites was produced as a pendant to The Battle between the Israelites and the Amorites by the same artist during his time in Rome. He fell into dire financial straits after the 1625 death of his patron, the poet Giovan Battista Marino and cardinal Francesco Barberini (1597–1679)'s departure from the city - this forced him to sell both works. They were both acquired by Catherine II of Russia to be kept in Poussin's cousin Gaspar Dughet's home on via Paolina in Rome. The pair was split up in 1927.

Normative Judaism's views on warfare are defined by restraint that is neither guided by avidness for belligerence nor is it categorically pacifist. Traditionally, self-defense has been the underpinning principle for the sanctioned use of violence, with the maintenance of peace taking precedence over waging war. While the biblical narrative about the conquest of Canaan and the commands related to it have had a deep influence on Western culture, mainstream Jewish traditions throughout history have treated these texts as purely historical or highly conditioned, and in either case not relevant to contemporary life. However, some minor strains of radical Zionism promote aggressive war and justify them with biblical texts. More on Judaism and warfare

Nicolas Poussin (June 1594 – 19 November 1665) was a French painter who was a leading painter of the classical French Baroque style, although he spent most of his working life in Rome. Most of his works were on religious and mythological subjects painted for a small group of Italian and French collectors. He returned to Paris for a brief period to serve as First Painter to the King under Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu, but soon returned to Rome and resumed his more traditional themes. In his later years he gave growing prominence to the landscape in his paintings. His work is characterized by clarity, logic, and order, and favors line over color. Until the 20th century he remained a major inspiration for such classically-oriented artists as Jacques-Louis David, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Paul Cézanne. More on Nicolas Poussin

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01 Work, The art of War, Francesco Hayez's The Destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, with Footnotes

Francesco Hayez

Detail; The Destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, c. 1867

Oil on canvas

183 x 282 cm

Venice, Accademia di Belle Arti

After the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, the Jews of the Kingdom of Judea went into exile. In 538 BCE during the reign of Cyrus the Great, the Jews returned to Jerusalem and were able to build the Second Temple on the site of the original one that had been destroyed. Secular accounts place the completion of the Second Temple in approximately 516 BCE but some Jewish sources date the completion much later in 350 BCE. Herod the Great rebuilt the Temple in 20-18 BCE. The Jews led a revolt and occupied Jerusalem in 66 CE initiating the first Roman-Jewish war. In 70 CE the Romans reclaimed Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple with only a portion of the western wall remaining (though recent archeological discoveries date portions of the wall to later periods). The Western Wall remains a sacred site for Jews. More on The Destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem

The painter began the work in 1860 and finished it in 1867, when the painting was exhibited in Brera to critical acclaim. The visually striking composition depicts the destruction of the temple at the very moment the carnage is at its height, the building already engulfed in flames and the destructive fury at its climax. The scene tells the story of the dramatic plight of the Jewish people deprived of freedom and, as had already happened with Verdi’s Nabucco, the painting became a metaphor for the injustices suffered by Italians and stood for the values of the Risorgimento. More on this painting

Francesco Hayez (10 February 1791 – 21 December 1882) was an Italian painter, the leading artist of Romanticism in mid-19th-century Milan, renowned for his grand historical paintings, political allegories and exceptionally fine portraits.

Hayez came from a relatively poor family from Venice. He was brought up by his mother's sister, who had married a well-off shipowner and collector of art. From childhood he showed a predisposition for drawing, so his uncle apprenticed him to an art restorer. Later he became a student of the painter Francesco Maggiotto with whom he continued his studies for three years. He was admitted to the painting course of the New Academy of Fine Arts in 1806. In 1809 he won a competition from the Academy of Venice for one year of study at the Accademia di San Luca in Rome. He remained in Rome until 1814, then moved to Naples where he was commissioned by Joachim Murat to paint a major work depicting Ulysses at the court of Alcinous. In the mid-1830s he attended the "Salotto Maffei" salon in Milan.

Francesco Hayez lived long and was prolific. His output spanned both historic paintings, and Neoclassic style grand themes, either from biblical or classical literature. He also painted scenes from theatrical presentations of his day. More Francesco Hayez

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04 Works, The art of War, Charles de Steuben, Eugène Delacroix and Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld's Bataille de Poitiers, with Footnotes

Charles de Steuben (1788–1856)

Bataille de Poitiers, en octobre 732, c. 1837

Oil on canvas

height: 4.6 m (15.2 ft); width: 5.4 m (17.7 ft)

Palace of Versailles

Muslim empire reaches its furthest extent. Battle of Tours prevents further advance northwards.

The Battle of Tours followed two decades of Umayyad conquests in Europe which had begun with the invasion of the Christian Visigothic Kingdom of the Iberian Peninsula in 711. These were followed by military expeditions into the Frankish territories of Gaul, former provinces of the Roman Empire. Umayyad military campaigns reached northward into Aquitaine and Burgundy, including a major engagement at Bordeaux and a raid on Autun.

The Battle of Poitiers (Battle of Tours) took place over roughly a week.

Charles Auguste Guillaume Steuben (April 18, 1788 – November 21, 1856), also Charles de Steuben, was a German-born French Romantic painter and lithographer active during the Napoleonic Era.

De Steuben was born the son of the Duke of Württemberg officer Carl Hans Ernst von Steuben. At the age of twelve he moved with his father, who entered Russian service as a captain, to Saint Petersburg, where he studied drawing at the Art Academy classes as a guest student.

The poet Friedrich Schiller was a family friend who at once recognized De Steuben's artistic talent and instilled in him his political ideal of free self-determination regardless of courtly constraints.

In 1803 Steuben traveled with a letter to his friend, painter François Gérard, in Paris. Gerard took in many penniless aspiring artists and students for training. After two years of preparation, in February 1805 Steuben enrolled in the prestigious École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, where he learned from renowned teachers, including Jacques-Louis David and Pierre-Paul Prud'hon.

De Steuben in 1812 debuted at the Salon de Paris with his painting of Peter the Great, which garnered attention in the professional world. Encouraged by this first success, Steuben continued with a number of historical paintings.

De Steuben's Bataille de Poitiers shows the triumphant Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours, also known as the Battle of Poitiers. He painted Jeanne la folle around the same time and he was commissioned by Louis Philippe to paint a series of portraits of past Kings of France.

Steuben became a French citizen in 1823. However, the irregularity of his income as a freelance artist was in contrast to his sense of duty and social responsibility. To secure his family financially, he took a job as an art teacher at the École Polytechnique, where he briefly trained Gustave Courbet.

In 1840 he was awarded a gold medal at the Salon de Paris for his highly acclaimed paintings. More on Charles de Steuben

Unknown artist

Charles Martel, King of the Franks, 7th century, c 19th century

28 x 44.7 cm | 11 x 17.6 inches

Jupiterimages

Charles Martel, 7th century King of the Franks, 19th century. Charles Martel (the Hammer) (c688-741) depicted in a chain mail tunic carrying a mace and shield. Founder of the Carolingian dynasty and grandfather of Charlemagne, he defeated the Moors at the Battle of Poitiers in 732, turning back their expansion north of the Pyrenees. More on this painting

Charles's victory is widely believed to have stopped the northward advance of Umayyad forces from the Iberian Peninsula and to have prevented the Islamization of Western Europe

Eugène Delacroix (French, Charenton-Saint-Maurice 1798–1863 Paris)

The Battle of Poitiers, c. 1830

Oil on canvas

44 7/8 × 57 1/2 in. (114 × 146 cm)

Musée du Louvre, Paris,

Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix (26 April 1798 – 13 August 1863) was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school.

As a painter and muralist, Delacroix's use of expressive brushstrokes and his study of the optical effects of colour profoundly shaped the work of the Impressionists, while his passion for the exotic inspired the artists of the Symbolist movement. A fine lithographer, Delacroix illustrated various works of William Shakespeare, the Scottish author Walter Scott and the German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Delacroix took for his inspiration the art of Rubens and painters of the Venetian Renaissance, with an attendant emphasis on colour and movement rather than clarity of outline and carefully modelled form. Dramatic and romantic content characterized the central themes of his maturity, and led him not to the classical models of Greek and Roman art, but to travel in North Africa, in search of the exotic. Friend and spiritual heir to Théodore Géricault, Delacroix was also inspired by Lord Byron, with whom he shared a strong identification with the "forces of the sublime", of nature in often violent action.

However, Delacroix was given to neither sentimentality nor bombast, and his Romanticism was that of an individualist. In the words of Baudelaire, "Delacroix was passionately in love with passion, but coldly determined to express passion as clearly as possible." More on Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix

The Battle of Tours, also called the Battle of Poitiers and, by Arab sources, the Battle of the Highway of the Martyrs was fought on 10 October 732, and was an important battle during the Umayyad invasion of Gaul. It resulted in the victory for the Frankish and Aquitanian forces, led by Charles Martel, over the invading forces of the Umayyad Caliphate, led by Abdul Rahman Al-Ghafiqi, governor of al-Andalus.

"About the time of the battle of Tours, internal dissensions broke out within the Arabian Empire, for though the Arabs were united by the bond of Islam they continued to maintain their tribal institutions and with them their old feuds and factions. Of the latter the two most important were the Maadites and the Yemenites…When the Maadites gained the upper hand, the Berbers of Africa refused to obey them, rose in revolt and most of what is now Morocco seceded…But the most important point to note is that, because of the revolt immediately after Abd-al-Rahman’s defeat at Tours, the Arab leaders in Spain were cut off from the Caliph in Damascus, and because of the revolution in Morocco they were no longer able to recruit their Berber armies. (347)"

Details of the battle, including the number of combatants and its exact location, are unclear from the surviving sources. Most sources agree both armies were roughly the same size, between 20,000 and 30,000 men.. Notably, the Frankish troops apparently fought without heavy cavalry. The battlefield was located somewhere between the cities of Poitiers and Tours, in northern Aquitaine in western France, near the border of the Frankish realm and the then-independent Duchy of Aquitaine under Odo the Great.

Al-Ghafiqi was killed in combat, and the Umayyad army withdrew after the battle. The battle helped lay the foundations of the Carolingian Empire and Frankish domination of western Europe for the next century. Most historians agree that "the establishment of Frankish power in western Europe shaped that continent's destiny and the Battle of Tours confirmed that power."

Debate over this battle questions the significance of Tours as an influential turning point in history. Charles’s victory in 732 did help to deter Umayyad settlement in Frankish territory, at least for that year. However, Tours was not necessarily the decisive conflict it is sometimes portrayed to be. For instance, Arab raids were launched in 734, 736, and their largest invasion occurred in 739 where they almost reached as far as Dijon before being beaten back by Frankish and Lombard forces. These were not the actions of a defeated or even a demoralized force.

Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1794–1872)

The Saracen Army outside Paris, 730-32 AD, c. 1626

Oil on canvas

57 x 66 cm

Casino Massimo Lancellotti

The dark exoticism of Saracen invaders is stressed in this detail from The Saracen Army outside Paris, by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, painted 1822-27, which actually depicts a fictional incident from Ariosto (Cassino Massimo, Rome)

Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (26 March 1794 – 24 May 1872) was a German painter, chiefly of Biblical subjects. As a young man he associated with the painters of the Nazarene movement who revived the florid Renaissance style in religious art. He is remembered for his extensive Picture Bible, and his designs for stained glass windows in cathedrals.

At the beginning of his time in Rome, Schnorr was particularly influenced by his close study of fifteenth-century Italian painting, especially the works of Fra Angelico. Soon however, he abandoned this refined simplicity, and began to look towards more elaborate High Renaissance models.

The second period of Schnorr's artistic output began in 1825, when he left Rome, settled in Munich, entered the service of Ludwig I of Bavaria, and transplanted to Germany the art of wall-painting which he had learned in Italy. He showed himself qualified as a sort of poet-painter to the Bavarian court; he organized a staff of trained executants, and covered five halls in the new palace – the "Residenz" – with frescoes illustrating the Nibelungenlied. He also painted a series of scenes from the lives of Charlemagne, Frederick Barbarossa and Rudolph of Habsburg. More on Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld

Through his actions after Tours, Charles helped pave the way for his famous successor Charlemagne (r. 768-814) to rule over a relatively stable and powerful kingdom upon assuming the throne. Charles was so successful in his efforts that he established a new Frankish dynasty replacing the Merovingians with one centered around his family, known as the Carolingian Dynasty (c. 750-887).

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02 Works, The art of War, Angus McBride's Egyptian War Chariot in Action, with Footnotes

Angus McBride

Egyptian War Chariot

Based on z historical wall paintings, the armor and chariot from Tutankhamun's tomb

World History Encyclopedia

Chariots were very expensive, heavy and prone to breakdowns, yet in contrast with early cavalry, chariots offered a more stable platform for archers. Chariots were effective for archery because of the relatively long bows used, and even after the invention of the composite bow the length of the bow was not significantly reduced. Such a bow was difficult to handle while on horseback. A chariot could also carry more ammunition than a single rider. The chariot had a driver and one man with a bow.

Wheels and chariots at the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun

Chariots would eventually form an elite force in the ancient Egyptian military. Infield action, chariots usually delivered the first strike and were closely followed by infantry advancing to exploit the resulting breakthrough, somewhat similar to how infantry might operate behind a group of armed vehicles in modern warfare. These tactics would work best against lines of less-disciplined light infantry militia. Chariots, much faster than foot-soldiers, pursued and dispersed broken enemies to seal the victory. Egyptian light chariots contained one driver and one warrior; both might be armed with bow and spear. More on Chariotry in ancient Egypt

Angus McBride (11 May 1931 – 15 May 2007) was an English historical and fantasy illustrator.

Born in London to Highland Scottish parents, Angus McBride was orphaned as a child, his mother dying when he was five years old, and his father in World War Two when he was 12. He was educated at the Canterbury Cathedral Choir School. He served his National Service in the Royal Fusiliers, and afterward got a job as an advertising artist.

Due to Britain's poor economic state immediately following World War II, McBride found it necessary to leave for South Africa. In Cape Town, he became a fairly well known and successful artist. However, he felt that he could not expand on his artistic plans in South Africa's small publishing industry. Consequently, in 1961, McBride moved back to England. He made his first works in educational magazines. In 1975, he began to work with Osprey Publishing's Men-at-Arms series.

As England's economy again suffered in the 1970s, McBride moved with his family back to Cape Town, and continued to work with British and American publishers. He continued to do realistic, historical illustrations for Osprey Publishing, as well as other such work for other military-history publishers.

Although a few of his paintings are in oils, McBride mostly preferred to work in gouache colours on illustration boards, making numerous detailed sketches of the composition before starting to paint.

In 2006, McBride moved to Ireland, where he continued to work. He died from a heart attack on 15 May 2007. More on Angus McBride

Images are copyright of their respective owners, assignees or others. Some Images may be subject to copyright

I don't own any of these images - credit is always given when due unless it is unknown to me. if I post your images without your permission, please tell me.

I do not sell art, art prints, framed posters or reproductions. Ads are shown only to compensate the hosting expenses.

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