The lithographic series Britain’s Efforts and Ideals in the Great War containing a total of 66 lithographic prints, produced by the country’s leading artists of the day and commissioned by His Majesty’s Government were produced in 1917. The scheme was led by Thomas Derrick, the Art Editor at Wellington House which was the government department responsible for commandeering literature and art all in the name of war propaganda. The aim of Britain’s Efforts and Ideals in the Great War embodied Wellington House’s ambition to strengthen national morale amongst the general public at home and throughout the allied nations.
Lithographic printing was favoured during the war because of its ability to reproduce images on a large scale. It was an art form often manipulated in order to advertise political opinions. During WW1 prints would be disseminated throughout newspapers and journals, available to buy as limited edition folios and postcards, enlarged to make graphic posters and also became the focus of their own art exhibitions.
Britain’s Efforts involved nine artists, including the Official War Artists Muirhead Bone, C.R.W. Nevinson and Eric Kennington. Each artist produced an individual series of six lithographic prints illustrating the country’s war efforts and encompassed everything from women’s work and land work to the making of the country’s great guns and aircrafts. The Ideals series which was smaller in scale, involved 12 artists composed of the Royal Academician George Clausen and 7 future Royal Academicians producing a single print each to illustrate the ideals which had inspired the country’s efforts.
First exhibited at the Fine Art Society, London on 6th July 1917, Britain’s Efforts and Ideals in the Great War would later tour the country’s main cities before heading to New York and Los Angeles. When the show opened it was heralded as “the first concerted effort on the part of prominent British artists to do justice to the great theme offered by a proud and determined nation applying all its energy and resources to the achievement of final victory in a just cause.”[1] However the praise received was reserved for the Efforts series rather than the Ideals. The press believed that the 12 individual lithographs “on the whole do not attain to as high a level of excellence.”[2] They were “on the whole less successful”[3] and described as everything from “incomplete”, “disappointing”, “distorted” and “too exotic.”[4] What were the reasons behind these undesirable reviews and were they justified?
William Rothenstein, ‘The Triumph of Democracy’, 1917, lithograph, © The Hunterian, University of Glasgow, GLAHA 55626
“Mr Rothenstein’s ‘Triumph of Democracy’ is shown in too early and incomplete a stage to allow fair judgement to be passed.”
Augustus John, ‘The Dawn’, 1917, lithograph, 83.0 x 56.0, © The Hunterian, University of Glasgow, GLAHA 55621
“Mr Augustus John’s ‘The Dawn’ in spite of that beauty of style which is never absent from his drawings, is disappointing both as an imaginative invention and from the point of view of execution. The anatomy of the chief figure is distorted in a manner for which it is difficult to find any excuse.”
One factor to consider would be the experience of the artists selected. Of the Efforts artists we know that Muirhead Bone, George Clausen, Charles Pears, William Rothenstein, C.R.W. Nevinson and Eric Kennington were either Official War Artists or had experienced the war first hand. The same cannot be said of the Ideals artists who spent the war years at home continuing more or less with their pre-war artistic priorities.[5] What the Efforts artists depicted in their prints is what they had witnessed first-hand. Of course their task was one that required first-hand witnessing in order to document the country’s various efforts.
How does one witness an ideal? By its very definition an ideal is an idea or a concept, confined to thought or imagination. Allegorical works would be heavily relied upon by the Ideals artists in order to make these invisible ideals visible. The artists relied heavily upon personification as featured in the prints of Augustus John, Charles Shannon and Edmund Sullivan whereby hope and despair are represented by classical female figures. Symbolism was also a common characteristic in allegorical works and examples of this can be seen in the way the enemy is depicted as a terrible octopus like sea monster in Frank Brangwyn’s work or as a formidable eagle in the prints by Edmund Dulac, Francis Ernest Jackson and Charles Ricketts.
Edmund Dulac, ‘The Soul of Poland’ or ‘Poland: A Nation’, 1917, lithograph, 83.0 x 56.0, © The Hunterian, University of Glasgow, GLAHA 55619
“Taken as an independent design, Mr Dulac’s ‘Poland a Nation’ deserves unstinted praise, but as a unit in a series it strikes too exotic a note in its close adherence to Japanese tradition.”
Frank Brangwyn, ‘The Freedom of the Seas’, 1917, lithograph, © The Hunterian, University of Glasgow, GLAHA 55617
“Mr Brangwyn’s ‘Freedom of the Seas’ – a band of sailors slaying a monstrous octopus – and Mr Clausen’s ‘Reconstruction of Belgium’ are amongst the most effective and most carefully considered designs.”[6]
We can see how decorative designs were blended with medieval, Renaissance, romantic and contemporary imagery which led these prints to inhabit a type of stylistic no man’s land. There is no unity between the twelve prints and they remain individual. It was recognised and deemed praiseworthy that of the artists selected “not one of them has sacrificed his individual outlook.”[7] Yet this may have also signalled the series ultimate failure as a series; these twelve works were bound together physically in limited edition volumes and in exhibitions and were never supposed to be viewed as individual statements.
Some critics suspected that the less than impressive allegorical themes may have been imposed on the artists; “several of the artists must have been working under restrictions which kept their imagination enchained.”[8] The theme of government patronage having a negative influence on artists executing war work is common in discussions of the period and often proves to be a lazy and unconvincing argument, especially in this case where there is no supporting evidence. “Little evidence remains on the commissioning of these artists and what was asked of them which the art historian Sue Malvern believes “leaves a serious gap in the history of employment of war artists.”[9]
William Nicholson, ‘The End of War’, 1917, lithograph, 83.0 x 56.0, © The Hunterian, University of Glasgow, GLAHA 55624
“For a subject as inspiring as ‘The End of War’ Mr Nicholson might have been reasonably expected to find a happier allegorical interpretation than a soldier standing in a pool of blood and barricading a door against the destructive and murderous intruder.”
Gerald Moira, ‘The Restoration of Serbia’, 1917, lithograph, 83.0 x 56.0, © The Hunterian, University of Glasgow, GLAHA 55623
“Professor Moira in, ‘The Restoration of Serbia,’ has made excellent decorative use of the semi-Oriental splendour of colour that is still retained in the national costume of the Serbian peasantry.”
The theme of witnessing was and still does dominate debates concerning the authenticity and success of war art. Witnessing marked the difference between a recorded view of the war and an imagined one and in terms of a propagandist artwork; those that relied on record would be deemed more successful and persuasive than one which did not. Was the Ideals series therefore always deemed to be unsuccessful as propagandist works of art? Perhaps so, but that does not mean that this eclectic series of twelve prints should be neglected in the larger arenas of British Modernism and British War Art. It may have needed an early government failure such as Britain’s Ideals in order for them to advance in the further patronage of British war art during the years 1916-1919 which ultimately led to a collection of art now regarded as “one of the most important representations of twentieth century British art in the world.”[10]
Britain’s Efforts and Ideals in the Great War are currently in storage in the Hunterian Art Gallery’s Print Room and can be viewed by appointment
[1] P.G. Konody, ‘Art & Artists: “Britain’s Efforts and Ideals”’, The Observer, 8th July 1917, 5.
[2] ibid.
[3] ‘Britain’s Effort In Drawings’, The Times, 11 July 1917, 8.
[4] P.G. Konody, ‘Art & Artists: “Britain’s Efforts and Ideals”’, The Observer, 8th July 1917, 5.
[5] With the exception of Clausen, Rothenstein and Brangwyn who contributed works to both the Efforts and Ideals series
[6] P.G. Konody, ‘Art & Artists: “Britain’s Efforts and Ideals”’, The Observer, 8th July 1917, 5.
[7] ibid.
[8] ibid.
[9] Sue Malvern, Art, Propaganda and Patronage: A history of the employment of British War Artists 1916-1919, PhD Thesis, University og Reading, September 1981, 168
[10] http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections-research/about/art-design
The University of Glasgow's World War One collections 