Art Blog

01 Work, The Art of War, Leslie Cole's People Sleep out among the Debris, with footnotes

Leslie Cole (1910–1976)

Malta: A Few People Sleep out among the Debris, c. 1943

Oil on canvas

H 76.2 x W 93.9 cm

Imperial War Museum London

Night scene showing civilians sleeping among the ruins of their houses. Rubble lines the streets. Among the rubble is what remains of their homes.

Leslie Cole (1910–1976) was a painter and teacher, studied at Swindon School of Art with Harold Dearden, 1927–32; at Birmingham College of Art, 1932–3, with Harold Holden; then Royal College of Art, 1934–7, with Malcolm Osborne and Ernest Tristram. Exhibited RA, RP and widely abroad. Cole was a notable war artist, working for the Ministry of Information in Malta, then for the Admiralty and War Office. For some time he taught at the Central School of Arts and Crafts. Imperial War Museum and Ferens Art Gallery, Hull, hold his work, which is reproduced widely in anthologies of pictures by war artists. In 1985–6 the War Museum staged an exhibition of Cole’s World War II pictures called To the Front Line. Lived in London. More on Leslie Cole

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01 Work, The Art of War, Charles Ernest Butler's Blood and Iron, with footnotes

Charles Ernest Butler (1864–1933)
Blood and Iron, c. 1916

Oil on canvas

H 191 x W 144.2 cm

Imperial War Museum London

In the foreground Christ nurses a dying woman who holds a child. Above them is Kaiser Wilhelm seated on horseback with the Angel of Death at his shoulder. There are German troops behing him. The Kaiser has a haunted but defiant expression, immune to the chaos around him. Bodies litter the ground and a dying man raises his fist to the Kaiser. Fires rage in a Belgian town, presumably Louvain, a church burns and a flare lights the sky.

In 1886, Count von Bismarck argued that German unification required a stronger military force: 'This policy cannot succeed through speeches and shooting competitions and songs; it can succeed only through blood and iron'. Butler's title links this policy directly to its consequences - the invasion of Belgium. In 1914 Louvain was razed to the ground in retribution for a Belgium uprising against the occupying German forces and the shooting of the German commander of the town.

Butler depicts the horrors of war, not as a pacifist statement but rather to encourage the recruitment of men to fight the evil of German aggression, personified in the Kaiser. Although this was neither a commissioned painting, nor authorised in any respect, it carries a populist message about the war to the extreme. The artist has mythologized and recreated historical events with the specific purpose of supporting the war effort at a difficult time. This painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1917. More on this painting

Blood and Iron is the name given to a speech made by Otto von Bismarck on 30th September 1862, when he was Minister President of Prussia.

Charles Ernest Butler, British, 1864-1933,Oil on Board. signed LR, 10" H by 14" W unframed, 17.25" H by 21.25" W framed. Circa1920's. Provenance:Private Collection, Leslie Hindman Auction, Private Collection, Milwaukee Born in St Leonards on Sea, England in 1864- 1933. He was a painter of portraits, mythological and other figure subjects, genre and landscapes. He studied at St John's Wood School of Art and at the RA Schools. He exhibited at the Royal Academy, 1889 right up until his death in 1933. More on Charles Ernest Butler

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01 Work, The Art of War, Samuel Waller's Sweethearts and Wives, with footnotes

Samuel Waller

Sweethearts and Wives, c. 1882

Oil paint on canvas

1448 × 2019 mm

Tate

Exhibited at the R.A. with the following note: ‘On the first rumour of impending difficulties between the Scotch and English, the Moss-troopers would sweep swiftly over the country taking every head of cattle within reach - frequently plundering both sides with equal impartiality, and returning to the security of their castles to be welcomed home by their wives and sweethearts, who were nearly as enthusiastic in the matter as themselves.- (Border History).’ More on this painting

Samuel Edmund Waller was born and educated in the Cotswolds. He was apprenticed to his father who was an architect. An interest in architecture was to remain with him life-long: mellow Cotswold Manor houses often form the backdrop to his pictures. A love of horses, painted from life and meticulously drawn, also manifests itself in his work.

Waller's pictures capture the spirit of Regency England as seen through 19th century eyes and are the pictorial equivalents of the novels of Jane Austen, Mrs Gaskell and Thackeray with his 'gallant youths, sweet maids, and noble horses'. The popularity of his work is reflected in the success of the printed reproductions of his pictures which found a ready market amongst the urban public. More on Samuel Edmund Waller

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01 Work, The Art of War, Evelyn Gibbs' Women's Voluntary Services Clothing Exchange, with footnotes

Evelyn Gibbs (1905–1991)

Women's Voluntary Services Clothing Exchange, c. 1943

Oil on canvas

H 101.9 x W 76.2 cm

Imperial War Museum London

A scene inside a clothing exchange with women trying clothes on their children. Two WVS volunteers stand behind the counter.

Established shortly before war was declared, the Women's Voluntary Service for Civil Defence undertook wartime duties focused around the aftermath of air raids. Running clothing stores were an integral part of this work. Behind the counter, the volunteers are wearing their distinctive bottle green coats. Clothing was collected and made available in the clothing stores for people who had been 'bombed out' of their homes following air raids. Mothers too could also exchange clothes as their children grew. The painting shows the care and intimacy, as well as the necessity, of women finding clothes to fit their children. More on this painting

Evelyn Gibbs (1905–1991) was a printmaker, draughtsman, painter and teacher, born in Liverpool, where she studied at the School of Art, 1922–6; at Royal College of Art, 1926–9; then at British School in Rome, 1929–31. A pioneering educationalist, her book The Teaching of Art in Schools, 1934, remained in print for almost 30 years. Taught at Goldsmiths’ College School of Art and was married to Sir Hugh Willatt. While evacuated to Nottingham with Goldsmiths’, she founded the Midlands Group of Artists in 1943, while working on commissions as a war artist, one painting and several drawings being acquired by the Imperial War Museum. Showed at RA, NEAC, RE, of which she was a member, and other major galleries and there was a posthumous exhibition at Morley Gallery in 1994, having originated at Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham in 1993, later touring to Williamson Art Gallery, Birkenhead.

There was a further exhibition at Nottingham University, 1997, and a retrospective toured from University of Wales, Aberystwyth, from 2001. Gibbs was a fine draughtsman in the classical tradition and her work is held by Arts Council, Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and other public collections. Lived in London. More on Evelyn Gibbs

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01 Work, The Art of War, Leslie Cole's Scene in a Regimental Aid Post, with footnotes

Leslie Cole (1910–1976)

Scene in a Regimental Aid Post: In a Filthy Cellar at Sallenelle, France, after an Action, c. 1944

Oil on canvas

H 66.6 x W 82.5 cm

Imperial War Museum London

Interior of a cellar being used as a dressing station with wounded lying on stretchers attended by an orderly. A doctor examines another soldier upper background.

A Regimental Aid Post was the first post in the medical chain during the two world wars. They were often set up in buildings and cellars close to the fighting. Casualties would be given basic treatment before being sent further back for more thorough care. This scene was witnessed by the official war artist Leslie Cole as fighting continued in Normandy following the D-Day landings. More on this painting

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01 Work, The Art of War, Horace Vernet's Peace and War, with footnotes

Horace Vernet (1789–1863)

Peace and War, c. 1820

Oil on canvas

H 55 x W 45.8 cm

The Wallace Collection

A former Napoleonic soldier, now a farmer, overturns with his plough the grave of one of his fellow soldiers and finds himself pondering past glories. The subject derives ultimately from Virgil’s 'Georgics', I, 493–497, but it refers specifically to the distressed state of many veterans of Napoleon’s Grande Armée during the Bourbon Restoration. Vernet depicts the soldat laboureur as a peaceful farmer, but also as a hero mindful of the honour and prestige associated with the military events of the Napoleonic era. In nineteenth-century France the subject’s emphasis on the bonds between the army and the peasantry was to have particular resonance, especially for Bonapartists who stressed the popular aspects of Napoleon’s rule. More on this painting

Émile Jean-Horace Vernet (30 June 1789 – 17 January 1863), more commonly known as simply Horace Vernet, was a French painter of battles, portraits, and Orientalist subjects.

Grandson of Claude-Joseph Vernet and son of another eminent artist, Carle Vernet (1758-1836), he soon developed an extraordinary facility as a painter which he used to depict a wide range of subjects including scenes taken from literature, the Bible, contemporary Italy, North Africa and the Middle East.

He is best known, however, for his many paintings celebrating French military prowess, including a series of large battle pieces for Versailles. Louis-Philippe, who had first bought his work in 1817, favoured him with many commissions. Although he achieved notoriety when some of his paintings were rejected by the Paris Salon jury of 1822, allegedly because of their anti-Bourbon character, he received a number of honours from the restored Bourbon monarchy, including in 1828 the Directorship of the French Academy in Rome (which he retained until 1834).

His many foreign journeys included visits to Algeria (1833, 1837, 1839, 1845 and 1853), the Middle East (1839-40), Russia (1836 and 1842-3) and the Crimea (1854-5). More on Émile Jean-Horace Vernet

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03 Works, The Art of War, Niccolò Mauruzi da Tolentino at the Battle of San Romano, with footnotes

Paolo Uccello (1397–1475)

Battaglia di San Romano/ Battle of San Romano, c. from 1436 until 1440

Tempera on panel

height: 188 cm (74 in); width: 327 cm (10.7 ft)

Uffizi Gallery

Particularly lovely are the background landscapes, especially in the Florence panel, with scenes of grape harvesting and hunting rediscovered after the 1954 cleaning.

The Battle of San Romano is a set of three paintings by the Florentine painter Paolo Uccello depicting events that took place at the Battle of San Romano between Florentine and Sienese forces in 1432. They are significant as revealing the development of linear perspective in early Italian Renaissance painting, and are unusual as a major secular commission. The paintings are in egg tempera on wooden panels, each over 3 metres long. According to the National Gallery, the panels were commissioned by a member of the Bartolini Salimbeni family in Florence sometime between 1435 and 1460. The paintings were much admired in the 15th century; Lorenzo de' Medici so coveted them that he purchased one and had the remaining two forcibly removed to the Palazzo Medici. They are now divided between three collections, the National Gallery, London, the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, and the Musée du Louvre, Paris. More on this painting

Paolo Uccello, about 1397 - 1475

Niccolò Mauruzi da Tolentino at the Battle of San Romano, c. probably about 1438-40

Egg tempera with walnut oil and linseed oil on poplar

182 × 320 cm

The National Gallery

In all three the battle scene is interpreted in terms of a chaotic melee of horsemen, lances and horses in a desperate struggle, portrayed through an endless series of superimposed and intersecting perspective planes. As in the stories from the life of Noah in Santa Maria Novella, here too the movement which should animate the scenes appears to be frozen, as it were, by the isolation of the individual details, all realistically portrayed. See, for instance, the elaborate heavy armour, the leather saddles, the gilded studs, the horses' shiny coats, and of course the splendid "mazzocchi', the huge multifaceted headgear that Uccello often included in his pictyres due to the specific difficulty of painting it in proper perspective. More on this painting

Niccolò Mauruzzi (or Mauruzi), best known as Niccolò da Tolentino (c. 1350 – March 20, 1435) was an Italian condottiero.

A member of the Mauruzi della Stacciola family of Tolentino, he fled from that city in 1370 after a dispute with his relatives. He then fought under several condottieri. In 1406–1407 he commanded the troops of Gabrino Fondulo, lord of Cremona, and subsequently served under Pandolfo III Malatesta, lord of Fano and Cesena.

After obtaining the title of count and the castle of Stacciola near the Metauro river from Malatesta, he was hired by numerous Italian lords. In 1431 he was made seignior of Borgo San Sepolcro by Papal decree, but the following year he lost it when he served under the Florentines, whose armies he led from June 1423 to May 1434, with intervals as Papal commander-in-chief in 1424 and 1428–1432, and commander of Milanese troops in 1432.

For Florence he seized Brescia and won the Battle of Maclodio (October 12, 1427). After these successes he was appointed capitano generale (commander-in-chief) of the Republic in 1431 and in 1432 he was sent as commander of coalition against Francesco I Sforza in Romagna, where he was victorious at the Battle of San Romano, and was commemorated in a painting of the battle by Paolo Uccello. A portrait of Niccolò was executed in Santa Maria Novella in memory of his deeds.

In 1434 he was captured by the Visconti and thrown into a ravine. He survived, but died of the wounds the following year at Borgo Val di Taro. He was buried in Santa Maria del fiore in Florence. A celebrating fresco by Andrea del Castagno was commissioned for his tomb by the Florentine commune. More on Niccolò Mauruzzi

Paolo Uccello (1397–1475)

The Decisive Attack of Micheletto Attendolo at San Romano, c. 1438

Tempera on panel

height: 180 cm (70.8 in); width: 316 cm (10.3 ft)

Louvre Museum

In the Louvre panel there is a formal subtext created by strong decorative elements, such as the tights of contrasting colours worn by the soldiers on the left, or the arrangement of the lances, which form a series of patterns and movements that echo the horses and their riders. As could be expected, foreshortening and perspective are devices favoured by the artist. The landscape has been sacrificed to the figural action. More on this painting

Paolo Uccello combined an International Gothic figure style and love of decorative effects with a profound interest in linear perspective, characteristic of the Early Renaissance. Both these features of his art are shown particularly clearly in 'The Battle of San Romano'.

Uccello was trained under the sculptor Ghiberti from about 1407 to 1414 and worked in Venice as a designer of mosaics (1425-30). A pioneer of studies in linear perspective, he executed major fresco commissions utilising the technique to different ends. The equestrian 'Sir John Hawkwood' in Florence Cathedral, (1436), manipulates perspective for the sake of illusionism; 'The Flood' in the cloister of Santa Maria Novella, (1447) uses it to enhance expression, probably under the influence of Donatello. His domestic decorations, however, devalue these effects by stressing colour and surface pattern. More on Paolo Uccello

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02 Works, The Art of War, Eugène Delacroix's The Battle of Taillebourg , with footnotes

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863)

The Battle of Taillebourg, 21st July 1242, c. 1837

Oil on canvas

489 × 554 cm (16 × 18.1 ft)

Palace of Versailles

The Battle of Taillebourg, a major medieval battle fought in July 1242, was the decisive engagement of the Saintonge War. It pitted a French Capetian army under the command of King Louis IX, also known as Saint Louis, and his younger brother Alphonse of Poitiers, against forces led by King Henry III of England, his brother Richard of Cornwall and their stepfather Hugh X of Lusignan.

The battle was fought on the bridge built over the river Charente, a point of strategic importance on the route between northern and southern France. Later it was fought near the city of Saintes. According to Charles Oman; the English and their allies were routed and forced to make peace, but the King of France contented himself of leaving things as they had been before the war. The battle put down the Poitevin revolt and marked the end of Henry III's hopes of restoring the Angevin Empire, which had collapsed during his father's reign. More on The Battle of Taillebourg

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863)

The Battle of Taillebourg (draft), c. between 1834 and 1835

Oil on canvas

height: 53 cm (20.8 in); width: 66.5 cm (26.1 in)

Louvre Museum

When Louis-Philippe created the Muse de l'Histoire de France at Versailles, two paintings were commissioned from Delacroix: The Battle of Taillebourg and The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople. For these vast canvases, Delacroix was obliged to open a studio, and train his own assistants. This time, the critics were completely won over. The derring-do of Louis IX on his white charger riding down the English defenses on the Taillebourg bridge and the famous capture of Constantinople (1204) acted as a balm after the terrible defeat of Waterloo. And yet Delacroix's method in these paintings is unchanged; again the implications of the event are focused in a single scene, again he shows the catastrophes of war and the women delivered over to the victors. His goal is not to describe the event - though the details are carefully researched and the armor and standards historically correct - but to make the spectator feel its emotional consequences. The inspiration flowing through these 'grandes machines' is no less personal and romantic than it was in The Barque of Dante and The Death of Sardanapalus. More on this painting

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

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01 Work, The Art of War, Eugène Delacroix's Exercices militaires des marocains/ Moroccan Military Exercises, with footnotes

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863)

Exercices militaires des marocains/ Moroccan Military Exercises, c. 1847

Oil on canvas

height: 53 cm (20.8 in); width: 73 cm (28.7 in)

Fabre museum

In 1832, Delacroix spent almost six months in North Africa, mainly in Morocco, as well as in Algeria and Andalusia. From this trip during which he accompanied a French diplomatic delegation

Delacroix brought back numerous drawings and watercolors from his trip to Morocco which inspired this masterpiece created very shortly after his return. The fantasia are both martial and ritual exercises where the riders, launched at dizzying speed, demonstrate their skill in shooting rifles.

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01 Work, The Art of War, Piero della Francesca's Battle between Heraclius and Chosroes , with footnotes

Piero della Francesca

Battle between Heraclius and Chosroes, c. 1452-66

Fresco

329 x 747 cm

San Francesco, Arezzo

In representing the Battle between Heraclius and Chosroes, Piero has chosen to represent the grim mechanics of the slaughter: there are no beautiful patterns, no lovely light, and the armour has little allure. The legs of horses and people fill the lower part of the composition, while above masses of steel and flesh collide. There are incidents of utter brutality, as when a soldier near the throne jabs his dagger into the throat of another, or of pathos, as we watch the dying figure below the rearing horse. The dethroned monarch on the far right awaits the executioner's sword. Above him the True Cross is blasphemously incorporated into his throne. More on this painting

The Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 was the final and most devastating of the series of wars fought between the Byzantine / Roman Empire and the Sasanian Empire of Iran. The previous war between the two powers had ended in 591 after Emperor Maurice helped the Sasanian king Khosrow II regain his throne. In 602 Maurice was murdered by his political rival Phocas. Khosrow declared war, ostensibly to avenge the death of the deposed emperor Maurice. This became a decades-long conflict, the longest war in the series, and was fought throughout the Middle East: in Egypt, the Levant, Mesopotamia, the Caucasus, Anatolia, Armenia, the Aegean Sea and before the walls of Constantinople itself. More on The Byzantine–Sasanian War

Piero della Francesca (1415 – 1492) was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. As testified by Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, to contemporaries he was also known as a mathematician and geometer. Nowadays Piero della Francesca is chiefly appreciated for his art. His painting was characterized by its serene humanism, its use of geometric forms and perspective. His most famous work is the cycle of frescoes The History of the True Cross in the church of San Francesco in the Tuscan town of Arezzo. More on Piero della Francesca

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01 Work, The Art of War, George Grosz's Eclipse of the Sun, 1926, with footnotes

George Grosz

Eclipse of the Sun, c. 1926

Oil on canvas

Museum Purchase

The Heckscher Museum of Art

Eclipse of the Sun is a masterpiece of political art. As signaled by the dollar sign darkening the sun, a symbol of life, the artwork critiques the greed and violence of the military, politicians, and industrialists. The tilted perspective, dissonant color, and ambiguous sense of space underscore the instability of period following a war.

Grosz depicts mindless bureaucrats in a grim setting surrounding the decorated general Paul von Hindenburg, who was Field Marshall during World War I, served as second president of the Weimar Republic, and later named Adolf Hitler chancellor in 1933. An industrialist carrying weapons whispers in Hindenburg’s ear. A donkey representing the German people stands near a bloody sword and listens with big ears, yet wears blinders of ignorance. Confined and stepped on, the fearful face of a youth juxtaposed with a skeleton warns of the fate of future generations. More on this painting

George Grosz, American, born Germany. 1893–1959, was a painter, draftsman, printmaker known for pointed political satire and social criticism. Early work, from about 1914 to 1917, shows influence of Expressionism and Futurism, as well as caricature. Volunteered for war in 1914; discharged in 1915 after a sinus operation. Recalled in January 1917; suffered nervous breakdown, declared unfit for military service. In 1916 adopted American spelling of his first name and de-Germanized his last name. Joined Communist Party in 1918, although became disillusioned after 1922 trip to Soviet Union. Experience of war fueled aversion for German militarism and philistinism. As member of Berlin Dada from 1918 to 1920, created mordantly satirical collages. In 1920s style became more naturalistic in caustic, caricatured studies of corrupt officers, war profiteers, exploitative industrialists, and prostitutes.

Most of his prints were photolithographs after drawings; was uninterested in printmaking techniques, but wanted work distributed to large audiences. Published eight portfolios, fifteen illustrated books, and about 120 single prints, many with Malik-Verlag between 1917 and 1928. Ran afoul of censorship laws three times in 1920s with his print portfolios, including God with Us, which was seized from First International Dada Fair in 1920.

Emigrated to New York in 1933. Declared an “enemy of the state” by Nazis, who confiscated his works in German museums; some destroyed. One month before his death in 1959, returned to Berlin. More on George Grosz

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