Many people ask why I am preoccupied with the First World War and, indeed, with all wars. The main reason is my utter revulsion of the cruel injustice of it in the infliction of pain and suffering on innocent, ordinary people who get drawn into it.

The following constitutes a brief and necessarily over-simplified explanation.

For the first five years of my life, my parents and I lived in a small terraced house with my grand-parents who were of the generation which lived through that terrible War of 1914-18

Hanging on the wall of their sitting-room was the beautiful seascape oil painting (above). It was painted in 1913 by my Grandmother’s cousin, Billy Warren, when he was 16 years old. Three years later, at the age of 19, he was dead, just one of the thousands of young men who died in the slaughter that was the Battle of the Somme, 1916.

My Grandmother was the sheet-anchor of the family and has been a lasting influence on me. Her collection of faded photographs and press cuttings and her reminiscences about her four dead cousins, victims of that vile War meant that my awareness of the tragedy of War began at a very early age.

Three of the cousins died in the disastrous Battle of the Somme,  William (Billy) Warren, Killed aged 19,  Robert (Bob) Dean, killed aged 27 and his brother Charles (Charlie) killed aged 20, The fourth cousin lost was Thomas Harry Laing, a pilot in the newly formed Royal Air Force who was shot down and killed near Metz in 1918.

The Artist’s Grandmother aged 86. Painted from life in1983 (detail above left) EW.Archive.A1-02

Reading a history of the 1914-18 War when I was 16 I came across a photograph that particularly struck me and prompted me to make the small gouache painting illustrated below. It showed British troops entering the village of Beaumont-Hamel on The Somme in 1916 and I remember thinking, even as a youth, how clearly it illustrated not only mans’ inhumanity to man but his blind and reckless power to wreak havoc on nature and the environment.

Already studying Art seriously and becoming influenced by the dramatic images created by J M W Turner, (1775 – 1851) I exaggerated the differences in scale between the four soldiers and the massive, hellish destruction through which they were picking their way.

When I made this painting I little thought that one day I would be making paintings at the very village in France whose name had now, unbeknown to me, been indelibly imprinted in my consciousness.

This isolated example remained my only visual reference to the War until I was in my early 20s when my full-time job as an art teacher and very active participation in the care of our infant daughter and setting up home etc curtailed my painting activities considerably.

I continued to pursue my main interest, painting the landscape on location whenever weekends allowed.  But, ever artistically restless, I also utilised my evenings to extend my interest in and knowledge of the First World War by working in cramped conditions on the kitchen table which severely restricted the size of work I was able to make. The work was all based on historic photographs gleaned from reference books and the size of work dictated the use of simple media, pencil, pen or brush-and-ink or gouache on paper. The imagery I produced ranged from portraits of doomed young soldiers to shattered landscapes and mutilated corpses. I read avidly the War Poets, Histories and the personal accounts of participants and survivors.

 

The two studies above give an idea of what the soldiers had to contend with when they attempted to cross “No Mans Land” the name given to the machine-gun swept and shell-shattered areas between the two opposing defensive lines of trenches and barbed wire entanglements which each side had installed.

The photograph (above left) shows the typical zig-zag pattern of the trenches which was an attempt to minimise casualties incurred when exploding shells containing shrapnel exploded in the midst of sheltering soldiers.  The soldiers often had to spend weeks in such trenches sleeping in small niches scraped into the trench walls or in “dugouts”, underground chambers-which they had excavated and in which some would be buried alive if an enemy high-explosive shell landed near their positions.

The photograph (right) shows the virtually impassable barbed wire entanglements which lined both sides of the machine-gun swept killing grounds of No Man’s Land.

It was the continuous strengthening of these impregnable defensive lines of trenches, tunnels and barbed wire which resulted in the four-year murderous stalemate and horrific casualties which characterised the Western Front of the Great War.

Around 1997 I managed to rent a long-disused blacksmith’s workshop as a studio near to our home and was able to start working on a larger scale in oils, some of them based on smaller studies including some those above.

Two or three years later a very enlightened family, Margaret and Stewart Currin with their two young sons moved into a house just up the road from us. They converted their double garage into a study area with a piano and photographic dark room.

Although I was in my 20s and Stewart in his 40s, we had many interests and attitudes in common and became very close friends. He was an architect and an enthusiastic water-colour painter. He invited me to work in his study area which I frequently did and there I made a life-size portrait of him.

His commitment to social justice and his generosity of spirit were an inspiration to me.  I suppose we were kindred spirits and I remember that once when introducing me to a friend he said, “This is Rob, I’ve only known him for six months but I feel that I’ve known him all my life.”  The feelings were mutual.

During this period, late 1960s – early 70s, (my 20s) as well as my anti-war work, I continued my “mainstream” work, mainly “on-the-spot” landscape painting, occasional portraits, still life and even small scale sculpture and ceramics.

I made a serious but unsuccessful attempt at combining part-time teaching with landscape and portrait painting for a living but family and financial commitments eventually necessitated a return to full-time employment. However, these life adjustments did not deter me from continuing all the strands of my work; they just made it a bit more difficult.

 

 

In the painting above (also photograph-based) I tried to express the mind-numbing drudgery and misery which soldiers and horses had to endure for weeks and months on end, particularly in Flanders during the winter months of the war. Most of the artillery and supplies had to be horse-drawn or transported by pack horses and this resulted in vast numbers of animals suffering the same hideous injuries and deaths from shell-fire and shrapnel as the troops.

The painting above is based on a well-known and iconic photograph.  Unlike my on-site landscape paintings which are all completed in one intense session (Premier Coup) these larger anti-war paintings were more considered and executed in a number of periodic sessions.

As the painting progressed I became more and more aware of the cruciform nature of the figure’s attitude and its echoes of great depictions of The Crucifixion and triptychs of the past such as the “Isenheim Altarpiece” by Matthias Grunewald (1470 – 1528).  I envisaged making this painting the centre panel of a triptych, flanked by two side panels of the same height but narrower.

The most appropriate, obvious and traditional practical solution to this format seemed to be two single standing figures, one on either side.

I decided that whoever was to occupy a side panel should be firmly based on a real (though probably anonymous) person from an original photograph from the time.

But who should they be?  

Should they be two inexperienced, innocent and eager young soldiers from the opposing armies proudly posing in their new, immaculate uniforms, standing with fixed bayonets, polished buttons and boots, as yet unsullied by mud, flies, congealed blood and corruption?

Or two slightly older but wiser and sadder solders whose stance displays disillusion and resignation, looking fatalistically towards the centre panel or questioningly out of the picture towards the viewer?

Or the unknown, broken mother and father of the dead soldier?

Or the wife and child of the dead soldier?

Or a woman working in a munitions factory and another as a front-line Nurse?

Or Images of devastated environments, woodlands, homes or cathedrals?

The list and choice was, and is, endless

It is now more than fifty years since I painted this picture and I have been thinking about the possible creation of the side panels ever since.    I have not even yet come to any firm conclusions nor found really appropriate photo references.

Likewise, the designation of an appropriate title.   

Perhaps it might be a title that alludes to paintings by past artists who have also contemplated the seemingly eternal, unending cycle of human tragedy and cruelty,  often using historical or biblical events such as “The Massacre of the Innocents” by Pieter Brueghel the Elder  (circa 1525 – 1659) or “The Descent from The Cross” by Rembrandt  (1606 – 1669)

Or perhaps a non-aligned title which alludes to the poetry of men who participated and died in the nightmare such as “Anthem for Doomed Youth” by Wilfred Owen (18 Mar 1893 – 4 Nov 1918) or “Who Made the Law?” by Leslie Coulson (19 July 1889 – 8 October 1916).

There were many other titles which I have considered over the years but current human tendencies towards extremism, exacerbated by media hysteria and misinterpretation combined with cultural, religious and political over-sensitivity and intolerance makes me dismiss them.

And so I leave the title simply just as what it is, leaving viewers to draw their own conclusions and maybe make their own judgment as to what the side panels should feature or what a more appropriate and universalist title might be.

 

GLIMMERS OF HOPE

In spite of all the horror and cruelty, there were isolated instances of compassion that transcended the tragedy of war and showed the strange empathy which can exist between opposing common soldiers.

This empathy is often evoked in the writings of the War Poets, two of whom I mentioned earlier, but also in the paintings and drawings of War Artists such as C R Nevinson 1889 – 1946

Paul Nash 1889-1946  John Nash 1893-1997 Otto Dix 1891-1969  Ernst Ludwig Kirchner 1880 –1938  and numerous powerful post-war novels by writers such as Erich Maria Remarque 1898 – 1970 (All Quiet on the Western Front)  Siegfried Sassoon 1886 – 1967 (Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man)  Robert Graves  1895 – 1985 (Goodbye to All That).  David Jones 1895 – 1974 (In Parenthesis)

This empathy was often apparent in the way that prisoners were generally treated humanely by the soldiers entrusted with guarding them.   There were other examples of the humanity of the ordinary soldiers, the most notable being that which occurred during the first Christmas of the War when significant sections of the front lines saw lower-ranking German and British Infantrymen cautiously entering No Mans Land, exchanging cigarettes, good wishes and drinks, in one sector even playing a game of football.

Needless to say, as soon as this spontaneously improvised and unofficial three-day truce became known to the High Command, disciplinary measures were instituted and any further instance of fraternisation was forbidden on pain of death.

The event was widely reported in the British Press.

Note made at the time by Second Lieutenant Cyril Drummond “They were very nice fellows to look at….& one of them said “We don’t want to kill you and you don’t want to kill us. So why shoot?”   “I lined them all up and took a photograph”

The painting above, also based on an original photograph, shows just one such small instance of mutual respect and human fellowship between young men and this is why in spite of its small size (21x27cm)  I consider it a painting of real significance.

CONCLUDING NOTES.

I loaned this body of work for exhibition to numerous educational institutions and theatre groups including a Birmingham Youth Theatre to accompany their productions of “Oh what a Lovely War” (a powerful drama/musical originated by Joan Littlewood and made into a film   by Richard Attenborough)

Sections of it have also been included in many of my solo exhibitions of later work (the painting by Billy Warren in all of them) including the Espace Culturel d’ Albert (Somme) (Echoes de la Guerre, Espoir de la Paix) the Amnesty International UK AGM at Warwick University (1998), Le Centre Mondial de la Paix, Verdun (1999) the Council of Europe, Strasbourg (2004) and The National Memorial Arboretum at Alrewas (2017)

This subject matter faded from my output (though never from my mind) until the 1990s when I began my long-running and continuing series of working visits to the First and Second World War Battlefields.