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PAUL NASH
Kensington
1889 – 1946 Boscombe, Hants
Nash
volunteered in 1914, initially enlisting
in the Artists’ Rifles. After officer
training and a period as a map-reading instructor,
he was gazetted to the 3rd Hampshires and
sent to the St Eloi front in the Ypres salient
in February 1917. A fall, which fractured
a rib, meant he missed the attack on Hill
60, a prelude to Paschendaele, and was sent
home to recover. A successful exhibition
in London of the drawings based on his sketches
at the front, led to his being seconded from
the army and returning to France in November
1917 as an official war artist, when he experienced
the later stages of the battle of Paschendaele,
and recorded the crater damage to Hill 60.
This must have been poignant work, for most
of his division and fellow officers had been
killed in the attack on the hill.
The Mine Crater, Hill 60, Ypres Salient
Postan
1
352 x 455 mm (image; the stone is larger)
Lithograph, 1917. Edition of 25.
Signed in pencil, dated Dec.1917 and numbered
19/25.
On cream laid paper watermarked ANTIQUE
DE LUXE. An abrasion touched in, and a minute
mark in the sky. A few creases in the margins
(hidden by the mount).
Sold
Hill
60 was the largest of three mounds of spoil
from the diggings of 19th century railway
construction and was marked on maps of the
day as a Hill, with an indication of its
height above sea level in metres, so that
on British military maps it read as Hill
60.
In
preparation for the June 7th assault in 1917,
the hill had been extensively tunnelled and
a caterpillar mine and seventeen other mines
laid by Australian troops. The resulting
explosion killed 687 German soldiers and
created a huge crater, 60 feet deep and 260
feet wide.
William
Orpen, who travelled out to France as an
official war artist in April 1917, describes
a similar lifeless landscape in a letter
sent on the 15th April
… all
and everything white with mud, and one
feels the horrors the water in the shell
holes is covering – and
not a living soul anywhere near, a truly terrible
peace in the new and terribly modern desert …
And
Harold Macmillan’s abiding memory, fifty
years later in his memoirs also was the emptiness
One
can look for miles and see no human being…but
in those miles of country lurk…thousands
of men, planning against each other perpetually
some new device of death.
After
the war Hill 60 was given to the British
Government and is owned by the Commonwealth
War Graves Commission.
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WILLIAM THOMAS WOOD
V.P.R.W.S.
Ipswich
1877 – 1958 Burnham, West Sussex
Primarily a landscape and flower painter in oil and watercolour, Wood trained
at the Regent Street Polytechnic and in Italy. He was a regular exhibitor
at the Royal Academy and with the Leicester Galleries. Much of his career
was spent in London.
In
1918 he was appointed an official war artist
to the Balkans and as a result was commissioned
after the War to illustrate A.J. Mann’s book The
Salonika Front, published by A & C Black, 1920.
Searchlights over London 1915
400 x 542 mm
Lithograph, 1915.
The stone monogrammed. Signed in pencil and dated.
On cream laid paper watermarked Antique de luxe.
Faintly
time-toned within the mount opening recto,
overall time-staining verso from the original
backboard.
Sold
A
view of the Embankment , with Cleopatra's
Needle, St Pauls and the Old Shot tower just
visible.
The
first Zeppelin air raid on London took place
on the 31st May, 1915. Zeppelins flew high
at 11,000 feet, to avoid anti-aircraft guns,
and turned off their engines to drift silently
over their targets. In defence against these
terrifying surprise attacks on the civilian
population searchlight units, previously
only at the coast, were deployed in the city.
Street lights were dimmed and the searchlights
blinded the Zeppelin pilots. The searchlight
units became adept at catching Zeppelins
in their lights so that they could be destroyed
and by the Autumn of 1916 the use of Zeppelins
ceased, though they were replaced by action
with bombers.
The
drama of searchlights over London at night
was a theme that attracted a number of artists.
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KERR EBY
Tokyo
1889 – 1946 Norwalk, Connecticut
Eby
was the son of Canadian missionaries. Born
in Japan, he was three when his family returned
to Canada, and he grew up in Vancouver, Kingston,
Toronto and Bracebridge. After working as
a printer’s 'devil' for a Bracebridge
newspaper, still in his teens Eby left for
New York where he attended evening classes
at the Pratt Institute of Art and later at
the Art Students League. His early years
were difficult and he returned to Canada
at intervals before finding employment as
an illustrator for New York magazines in
the years prior to the United States entering
the First World War. Eby was a friend of
the American Impressionists Childe Hassam
and John Henry Twachtman, and spent summers
with them in the artists’ colony
at Cos Cob in Connecticut.
When
America entered the War on Aril 6th 1917
Eby unsuccessfully applied to be a war artist,
but in time was assigned as a sergeant to
the 40th Engineers Artillery Brigade Camouflage
Division. He saw action in France in 1918,
camouflaging big guns at Château-Thierry and Bellau Wood, and in the battles of Saint-Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne.
His
drawings done while at the Western Front
inspired the series of etchings and lithographs
he began at the end of the war after his
return to America. They established his reputation
as a leading American printmaker.
The
lasting impact of his first-hand experience
of the horror, brutality and futility of
the war would lead him to publish his book
War in 1936, issued by Yale University Press.
An essay on his abhorrence of war preceded
illustrations of his wartime drawings and
the related etchings.
Dawn,
the 75s follow up
Giardina 28
225 x 328 mm
Drypoint, 1919.
Signed in pencil.
An edition of 75 to 90, printed by the artist.
On thin wove.
£1850
The
first of Eby’s war prints.
Moving artillery through a bomb ravaged French
village.
The ‘75’s were the French
Army’s main artillery guns during World
War I. When the United States entered the war,
space on transport ships was limited and manpower
had priority over heavy equipment, so American
troops often used French heavy equipment, including
the 75mm field gun.
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ERICH BÜTTNER
Berlin
1889 – 1936 Freiberg im Breisgau
Painter,
graphic artist and illustrator, Büttner joined
the Berlin Secession in 1908 while he was
still a student of Emil Orlik at the Berlin
University of Arts, which he attended from
1906 to 1911. Büttner contributed twenty-one
lithographs to Kriegszeit
Künstlerflugblätter.
Über
Paris Over Paris
Söhn 14308-4
350 x 250 mm (image); 482 x 320 mm (sheet)
L
ithograph, 1914. Signed and dated in the stone.
With the title printed below and a further
six lines of text about the publication.
Issued
in Kriegszeit Künstlerflugblätter
Issue No.8, 14 October 1914.
On thin brittle
deep cream wove paper. Time stained and other
small defects at the three open edges of the
sheet.
Sold
A
German Taube and other war planes flying
over Paris.
The
Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico was in
Paris when the war started and recalls in
his Memoires (pp68-69, pub. Margaret Crossland,
London 1971)
we
remained in Paris amidst the great tension
of the first days of fighting; the Germans
were advancing on the capital. Every evening
towards sunset, isolated German aeroplanes
flew over Paris, scattering manifestos and
streamers inciting people to surrender. But
as I was going back home one morning about
11 o’clock I heard
a shot. At first I thought it was the cannon
fired at midday and took out my watch to see
the time; but then I saw many people running
to a place nearby; I joined the crowd. An aeroplane
had dropped a small bomb which had fallen on
the pavement…I heard people in the crowd
cursing the Boches; there were bloodstains
on the ground.
Büttner’s Über
Paris image is on the back page of a complete
issue of Kriegszeit Künstlerflugblätter No.8 (Söhn 14308 - 1-4) The title page
has Strassenkampf (Street Battle) by Rudolf
Grossman (1882-1941), etcher and lithographer,
a frequent visitor to Paris, where he taught
Sonia Delaunay printmaking techniques.
Page
2: Indien und Franz-Afrika (India & French
Africa) by August Gaul.
Page 3: Was ich sah (What I Saw) by Helmuth Stockman.
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WILLIAM
LIONEL WYLLIE R.A.,
R.E.
London
1851 – 1931 London (on a visit)
Precise
information about Wylie’s activities 1914
to 1918 is unavailable, though he painted
and etched throughout the period producing
images of sea, air and land battles, exhibiting
twenty-two paintings at the Royal Academy.
He also had two one-man shows in 1917 at
Robert Dunthorne’s gallery in London (“The
Sure Shield of Britain” and “The
Battle of Bourlon Wood, 30 Nov. 1917”).
Dunthorne also published Wyllie’s etchings,
and several were shown at the annual shows
of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers.
As
an artist Wyllie had already developed connections
with the Navy and merchant shipping when
he lived on the Medway. After he settled
in Portsmouth, moving into The Tower House
at the very entrance to Portsmouth Harbour
in 1907, he was close to one of Britain’s most important naval bases, with views of the shipping lanes from his windows.
Though
aged sixty at the outbreak of the war he
was granted special licences on various occasions
to go to sea aboard different types of naval
vessels and to visit the battlefields in
France. His own first-hand observation was
enlarged with eye-witness accounts and drawings
from serving officers, including Rowland
Langmaid, a naval lieutenant who studied
painting and etching with Wyllie, and Wyllie’s own sons. All five served in the war, two losing their lives. Harold Wyllie served with the Royal Flying Corps and while in the air kept a sketchpad on his knee to jot down the action around and below him, which would provide the basis for some of his father’s pictures of aerial battles and trench warfare.
Admiral Beatty’s Battle Cruisers at Jutland
(with HMS Lion leading, 31 May 1916)
324
x 604 mm
Etching and drypoint.
Signed in
pencil.
Published by Robert Dunthorne, 17th
June 1918.
On cream wove paper. Stained and
marked in the margins. Some cockling inside
the platemark , two abrasions (touched in)
and a few other small marks within the image.
Sold
Towards
the end of the first day of the two-day battle.
Lettered
at the foot of the plate with the names of
the following ships of the British 1st and
2nd Battlecruiser Squadrons. Defence ; Warrior ;
Lion ; Princess Royal ; Barham ; Tiger ;
Valiant ; Warsprite ; New
Zealand ; Malaya
Admiral
David Beatty commanded the 1st Battle Cruiser
Squadron in the Battle of Jutland.
The
Lion was his flagship and Wyllie shows it
with its ‘Q’ turret
on fire. The British had intercepted German
naval messages and knew an attack was planned.
Beatty’s scouting squadron, based in
Rosyth in the Firth of Forth, in the vangard
encountered the German advance cruiser squadron
in the engagement with which the Battle of
Jutland commenced. Lack of full intelligence
on both sides (The British Grand Fleet, had
left their base at Scapa Flow almost at the
same time as the German High Seas Fleet left
Wilhelmshaven) meant that both Fleets were
unaware that they were effectively on a collision
course.
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Designer JEAN-JACQUES
BERNE-BELLECOUR
Saint-Germain-en-Laye
1874 – 1939
A
military painter, Berne-Bellecour was the
son of a military painter, trained by his
father, Gérome and the military painter Édouard Détaille.
Une Panne dans les Lignes
Breakdown
127 x
184 mm
Two-colour ‘chiaroscuro’ woodcut,
c1918.
The artist’s name in the ‘black’ key
block.
Printed within a decorative border, and with
text beneath.
One
of the Visions de Guerre leaves from the
book La Guerre racontée par
nos généraux, published 1919.
On cream wove. Time-stained at the sheet
edges.
Sold
A
Renault F1 tank having come to grief on the
difficult terrain, undergoing emergency repositioning
of its track, under the protection of its
own gun.
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LUDOVIC-RODO (Pissarro)
Paris
1878 – 1952
The
fourth son of the Impressionist painter Camille
Pissarro, Ludovic-Rodolphe Pissarro was known
as Rodo and signed his work Ludovic-Rodo.
A
painter and woodcut artist, his first wood
engravings were published when he was only
sixteen, in 1894. Four years later he moved
into a studio in Montmartre, with his brother
Georges and he got to know artists such as
Vlaminck and Dufy. With them he exhibited
in the first Fauve exhibition in 1905. With
the outbreak of the First World War, Ludovic-Rodo
joined his brother Lucien Pissarro in London
and remained in England for the duration
of the war, returning to Paris in 1919.
He
was an amused observer of war-time characters.
The two prints offered here would seem to
belong to a series – perhaps of women’s war efforts on the Home Front, but these are the only two I have traced.
Munitionnette
176 x 93 mm
Hand-coloured woodcut,
c1918.
The block signed with initials and
entitled.
Signed in pencil and annotated,
in French, 3rd state no.4.
On thin cream
wove paper.
Sold
As
more and more men were needed at the front,
women took over in munitions factories. It
is estimated that in the later stages of
the war 80% of shells were produced by a
female workforce of nearly a million.
The
term Munitionnette probably had its origin
in the earlier term Suffragette, many of whom
suspended their political activities to support
the war effort and may well have ended up in
factories. To accommodate to the practicalities
of work there was a change in dress, skirt
lengths were shortened and women even took
to wearing trousers.
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