Cheers! (2)

A reminder that The Frick in New York is continuing its Friday evening ‘Cocktails with a Curator’ – this time the portrait of ‘Sir John Suckling’ by Antony van Dyck – best enjoyed with a pink gin. The episode can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVn9hTcq3EE&list=PLNVeJpU2DHHR_0y_Zvgn3MgZQQFcFx2eI&index=4&t=0s. However, as we are celebrating an ‘unusual’ Anzac Day, I thought we might reflect on Australian artists who were involved in the First World War and look at examples of their work in the collection of the NGV.

In 2016-2017 the National Gallery of Australia staged an exhibition ‘Artists of the Great War’. Information about the exhibition can be found at: https://nga.gov.au/greatwar/default.cfm. The exhibition looked at ‘Australia’s Official War Art Scheme’ which was established, following British and Canadian models, with the intention of preserving a pictorial record of the war.  Ten Australian artists living in London at the time were appointed, and each received an honorary commission in the Australian Imperial Force. The artists included: Will Dyson, George Lambert, Arthur Streeton, John Longstaff, George Bell, Charles Bryant, A Henry Fullwood, Fred Leist, H Septimus Power, and James Quinn. Each artist was expected to produce at least 25 drawings and one major painting. Two significant paintings – one from Leist and the other from Septimus Power are in the NGV collection but not currently on display.

Will Dyson was the first official Australian war artist to visit the front during the Great War. He travelled to France as part of the Australian Imperial Force and spent six months there between December 1916 and May 1917. Dyson experienced the battles at Ypres and the Somme close at hand and was wounded twice.  He produced a large number of drawings and water colours which focused on the daily life of the ordinary Australian and British soldiers and was less interested in heroic acts than the difficult physical and psychological conditions on the Western Front. The NGV has 21 of his war sketches in the collection.

Dyson was primarily a political cartoonist, illustrator and printmaker who worked for newspapers. Many years after the First World War (?1930s) he created caricatures of two of the other Australian artists who were artists of the Great War. Guides will remember the lecture by Julie Dodd-Streeton in 2018 ‘Streeton as a War Artist’ and the many images she showed of his time in France.

George Lambert had a great love for bush life which came from spending several years as a jackaroo on his great-uncle’s farm in Warren, New South Wales. Lambert was in England when the war broke out and, before joining the war effort as an official war artist, he was part of the voluntary ‘United Arts Rifles’ unit where he trained recruits in horsemanship. Subsequently he joined the Australian Light Horse on their campaigns in Palestine, Jordan and Syria. He was entranced by the Middle East and wrote about its beauty: “These sand-hills take on shapes and curves, cut concave and convex, interwoven into an entrancing pattern, here rhythmical, there jagged and eccentrically posed”. He was also fascinated with the ‘sweating, sun-bronzed men and beautiful horses’ of the Light Horse’.

The NGV has six drawings and three paintings from Lambert’s time as a war artist. The best-known work is ‘A sergeant of the Light Horse’, 1920 which has an excellent description in ‘Important Works for Guiding’. Another less well-known alternative is the portrait ‘The official artist’, 1921 where we see the artist in uniform toasting us.

The appropriate drink for the Lambert paintings would of course be beer – XXXX for the Queensland Light Horseman – and Victoria Bitter (as an alternative) is clearly an excellent choice for Anzac Day in Melbourne. So, with apologies to Carlton United:

Lest we forget…