FEATURED ARTIST - LADY ELIZABETH BUTLER
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Elizabeth
Thompson, later Lady Butler, was perhaps the leading painter of
this genre of the late nineteenth century. Her famous quartet of
paintings exhibited between 1874 and 1877 (Calling the Roll
after and Engagement in the Crimea - Her Majesty the Queen;
Quatre Bras - National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Balaclava
- City of Manchester Art Gallery; and The Return from Inkerman -
Ferens Art Gallery, Kingston upon Hull) established her
reputation but her subsequent works never quite achieved the
fame of these earlier pictures, in spite of such dramatic scenes
as Scotland for Ever! (Leeds City Art Gallery) and The Defence
of Rorkes Drift (Her Majesty the Queen) She continued to exhibit
at the Royal Academy until 1920 but with few exceptions, all her
pictures had military themes particularly soldiers in battle.
While she never witnessed actual warfare, although she was in
Egypt for some years in the 1880s with her husband, Lieut. Gen.
Sir William Butler, many of her pictures were drawn accurately
using models in some cases, or observing soldiers on maneuvers
or practicing charges at Aldershot. For instance, when Queen
Victoria commissioned the artist to depict the defense of Rorkes
Drift, Elizabeth Butler went down to Gosport where the 24th
Regiment was billeted upon its return from Natal, and made
sketches from life. The soldiers even re-enacted the battle in
their original uniforms worn throughout the campaign. |
Lady
Butler |
Lady
Butler Page |
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FEATURED ARTIST - RICHARD CATON WOODVILLE
WOODVILLE,
Richard Caton Born London 1856; died there 1927. Woodville was
the most prolific battle artist of the nineteenth and early
twentieth century in Britain, producing countless oil paintings
and drawings, many for the Illustrated London News. As was the
case with several history painters of the Victorian period, he
studied at Dusseldorf sometime with Wilhelm Camphausen, the
great German military painter, and later in Paris. He
experienced was first-hand in Albania and Montenegro towards the
end of the Russo-Turkish War in 1877, and later in Egypt during
the war of 1882. During the latter conflict, he made numerous
sketches and obtained photographs of the trenches at Tel-e-Kebir
for his friend, the French military artist, Alphonse de Neuville
(q.v.) who had been commissioned to paint a scene of the battle.
The fruits of both their labours were shown at the Fine Art
Society in 1883, Woodville, exhibiting The Moonlight Charge at
Kassassin. In 1884, Woodville exhibited by Royal Command,
another picture relating to the Egyptian War. The Guards at
Tel-e-Kebir (Royal Collection). His first Royal Academy picture
exhibited in 1879, was entitled Before Leuthen, Dec. 3rd, 1757.
Thereafter, he was a frequent exhibitor at Burlington House,
showing no less than 21 battle pictures, many dealing with
contemporary events such as the Second Afghan War, Candahar
(Private collection) and Maiwand; saving the Guns (Walker Art
Gallery, Liverpool), the Zulu War - Prince Louis Napoleon in
Zululand, and the Boer War - Lindley; Whitsunday 1900 (Oxfordshire
Light Infantry Association), and Dawn of Majuba (Canadian
Military Institute). He painted many historical recreations both
in oil and water-colour including a series on famous British
battles for the Illustrated London News. He depicted The Charge
of the Light Brigade (Royal Collection, Madrid) and The Charge
of the 21st Lancers at Omdurman (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool),
Blenheim, Badajos and several Waterloo pictures. During the
Great War, he turned his talents to depicting the current
events, three of which were exhibited at the Royal Academy. The
2nd Batt. Manchester Regiment taking six guns at dawn near St.
Quentin (The Rings Regiment), Entry of the 5th Lancers into Mons
(16th/5th Royal Lancers), and Halloween, 1914: Stand of the
London Scottish on Messines Ridge (London Scottish Museum Trust)
exhibited in the year of his death. During his life, he was the
most popular artist of the genre and he was the subject of
several articles in magazines and journals. He himself wrote
some memoirs in 1914 entitled Random Recollections. He was
deeply interested in the army and joined the Royal Berkshire
Yeomanry Cavalry in 1879, staying with them until 1914 when he
joined the National Reserve as a Captain. |
Richard Caton Woodville Page |
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FEATURED ARTIST - ERNEST CROFTS
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Crofts
was one of the leading military-historical painters of the late
Victorian and Edwardian periods, exhibiting well over 40
paintings at the Royal Academy and numerous scenes at other
exhibitions depicting soldiers in battle or on campaign. And,
unlike many of his contemporaries, he had had the luxury of
actually witnessing soldiers in battle during the
Franco-Prussian War. In fact it was his Royal Academy
picture of 1877 - Oliver Cromwell at Marston Moor - that brought
the artist to the attention of many art critics. Similarly it
was another Civil War scene, his 1898 painting To the rescue: an
episode of the Civil War, which he painted on election to the
Academy itself, the only late nineteenth century military artist
to achieve this honour. Most of the major battles of the war
such as Edgehill, Marston Moor and Naseby were painted by the
artist as well as siege related scenes, i.e. Oliver Cromwell at
the Storming of Basing House, painted in 1900, The Surrender of
Donnington Castle, painted three years later, and The surrender
of the city of York to the Roundheads, exhibited only three
years before the artist's death. Crofts painted a trilogy of
canvases surrounding the execution of Charles 1 as well as
scenes representing the campaigning at Worcester such as Charles
11 at Whiteladies (1898) and The Boscobel Oak (1889). Crofts
died on March 19, 1911 at Burlington House where he had lived as
Keeper of the Royal Academy. Three years later and almost a
century after Waterloo, Europe went to war again on a scale
unimagined by the artist. The Great War inspired a vastly
different type of art focusing on the horrors rather than the
glory of war. While Crofts' pictures had been popular in the
1870's and 1880's, the public lost its appetite for war pictures
in the early years of the 20th century and during the hideous
war in South Africa. While Crofts continued to paint scenes of
war within the confines of the Royal Academy exhibitions, the
public lost interest in his work and today, with the exception
of a handful of canvases in public galleries, his paintings are
more or less forgotten but they deserve greater attention if
only for their wealth of detail and as windows on late Victorian
attitudes to war and history. (c) Peter Harrington 1991. |
Ernest Crofts |
Ernest Crofts Page |
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FEATURED ARTIST - EDOUARD DETAILLE
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Born
in Paris on 5th October, 1847, the young Detaille was surrounded
by military figures from his grandfather who had worked as a
sutler responsible for organizing Napoleons transports, to a
great aunt who had married Admiral Villeneuve. Nonetheless, his
only ambition was to be an artist and he let it be known that he
wished to study with Cabanel but through various circumstances
ended up in the great Meissoniers studio. It was in 1867 that
the young artist first exhibited a picture, showing a view of
Meissoniers studio but in the following year he showed his first
military piece. While it was based solely on imagination, The
Drummers Halt represented a scene from the French Revolution.
This was to be the beginning of a glorious career painting many
military scenes from French history. The Franco-Prussian War had
a profound effect on the artist particularly as it forced him to
see war in person. On the outbreak of war he enlisted in the 8th
Mobile Bataillon and by November 1870 was attached to General
Ducrots staff seeing action in the fighting around Paris. On the
Marne he saw regiments under fire, groups of skirmishes
dispatched to the front and senseless retreats. These
experiences of war enabled him to produce many striking
portrayals of the actions. Indeed, in 1872, he was forced to
withdraw two paintings of the war from an exhibition so as not
to offend Germany. Over the next few years, Detaille exhibited
some of his finest paintings of the conflict such as Salut aux
Blesses of 1877, La Defense de Champigny of 1879 and Le Soir de
Rezonville. With de Neuville he produced two large panoramas of
the battles at Champigny and Rezonville. Now a celebrity, he
traveled extensively through Europe between 1879 and 1884,
taking time only to visit Tunisia with a French expeditionary
force where he was witness to some fighting. In Britain, he
painted a review of British troops by the Prince of Wales, and a
scene showing Scots Guards in Hyde Park. It was at this time
that Detaille was developing a deep interest in the French army
and he produced all the drawings and plates for Jules Richards
Types et Uniformes de lArmee Francaise, 390 images in all. With
all his work, Detaille painted a slow and methodical way so as
to produce his subjects naturally and realistically, but most
important of all, truthfully. By the 1890s Detaille was turning
more and more to the campaign of Napoleon and he produced many
striking battle scenes including dashing cavalry charges. He
used many original items of uniform and weapons to give
authenticity to his pictures, and many of these artifacts were
used in the creation of the Musee de lArmee in Paris which
Detaille helped to found. Edouard Detaille died on 23rd December
1912. |
Edouard Detaille |
Edouard Detaille Page |
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FEATURED ARTIST - WILLIAM BARNES WOLLEN
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Born
Leipzig, Germany 1857; died London 1936. Along with Woodville
and Hillingford, Wollen may be regarded as one of the most
prolific illustrators and artists of battle pictures of the late
Victorian/early Edwardian era. He studied at the Slade School
and exhibited his first picture at the Royal Academy in 1879.
Two years later came his first military picture. The rescue of
Private Andrews by Captain Garnet J. Wolseley ... at the
storming of the Motee Mahal, Lucknow. Thereafter, he exhibited
over thirty battle and campaign pictures at Burlington House,
his last being in 1922. As was the case with his contemporaries,
Wollen was attracted to the period of the Napoleonic Wars as a
source for many of his pictures such as The Black Watch at bay,
Quatre Bras (The Black Watch), The 28th at Waterloo (Bristol
Museum and Art Gallery), Norman Ramsay at Fuentes Onoro and The
10th Hussars at Benevente. In 1898, he painted The last stand of
the 44th Regiment at Gundamuck, 1842 (National Army Museum), but
for the next five years, he devoted his work to depicting
contemporary events, starting with The 21st Lancers at Omdurman
(The Staff College), although he had painted The Battle of Abu
Klea (National Army Museum) in 1896. During this period, he
served in South Africa as a special artist for a new illustrated
paper, The Sphere, and sent back numerous scenes from the war.
Several oil paintings were a direct result of his experiences:
The Imperial Light Horse at Waggon Hill, January 6, 1900, The
Imperial Light Horse at Elandslaagte (Light Horse Regiment,
South Africa), The Victoria Cross (Durban Art Museum) and The
1st Battalion South Lancashire Regiment, storming the Boer
trenches at Pieter's Hill (Queen's Lancashire Regiment). With
the end of the war, Wollen returned to painting retrospective
battle/campaign pictures such as Scouts (The Royal Hussars)
showing a patrol of the 10th Light Dragoons in the Peninsula,
Ambushed (Sunderland Art Gallery), 18th century cavalry ambushed
on a road, and The first fight for independence, depicting the
engagement at Lexington Common during the American Revolution.
The Great War inspired him to paint several canvases, notably
Defeat of the Prussian Guard, Ypres, 1914 (Royal Green Jackets)
The London Territorials at Pozieres (National Army Museum), and
Semper Fidelis: the last stand of the 2nd Devons at Bois des
Buttes, May 27th, 1918 (The Devon and Dorset Regiment). Wollen
was also an active illustrator and painter in water-colours,
exhibiting many pictures at the various London exhibitions. |
William Barnes Wollen |
William Barnes Wollen Page |
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