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British official war artists were a select group of artists who were employed on contract, or commissioned to produce specific works during the First World War, the Second World War and select military actions in the post-war period. Official war artists have been appointed by governments for information or propaganda purposes and to record events on the battlefield; but there are many other types of war artist.
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A war artist will have depicted some aspect of war through art; this might be a pictorial record or it might commemorate how war shapes lives. A war artist creates a visual account of war by showing its impact as men and women are shown waiting, preparing, fighting, suffering and celebrating.
The works produced by war artists illustrate and record many aspects of war, and the individual's experience of war, whether allied or enemy, service or civilian, military or political, social or cultural. The rôle of the artist and his work embraces the causes, course and consequences of conflict and it has an essentially educational purpose.
First World War
Throughout the early years of the First World War, the British Government did not support an official war artist scheme. This began to change after artists who had served on the Western Front, such as Paul Nash and Christopher R. W. Nevinson exhibited paintings based on their experiences in France. The public acclaim that Eric Kennington received when his painting The Kensingtons at Laventie was first exhibited in London in April 1916 prompted Charles Masterman, head of the British War Propaganda Bureau, acting on the advice of William Rothenstein, to appoint Muirhead Bone as Britain's first official war artist in May 1916. After Bone returned to England he was replaced by his brother-in-law, Francis Dodd, who had been working for the Manchester Guardian. In 1917 arrangements were made to send other artists to France including Kennington, Nash, Nevinson, William Orpen and William Rothenstein. John Lavery and others were recruited to paint pictures of the home front.
Early in 1918, responsibility for the British war artists was passed to the British War Memorials Committee, BWMC, when the Department of Information became the Ministry of Information with Lord Beaverbrook as its Minister. Rather than focus on short-term propaganda, the main aim of the BMWC was to create a lasting memorial to the war in the form of a national Hall of Remembrance. To this end younger artists, including Stanley Spencer and Wyndham Lewis, were commissioned by the BWMC to produce a series of large artworks, After the War, when the BWMC was wound up, this series of artworks, which included The Menin Road by Paul Nash and Gassed by John Singer Sargent, became part of the Imperial War Museum collection.
Second World War
The British War Advisory Scheme (WAS) was administered by the War Artists' Advisory Committee, WAAC, of the Ministry of Information. The project was devised and run by Kenneth Clark, Director of the National Gallery. When the committee was dissolved in December 1945 its collection consisted of 5,570 works of art produced by over four hundred artists, who had been employed on either full-time contracts, short-term contracts or commissions for individual works.