Painting War: A History of Australia's First World War Art Scheme 9781108471503, 1108471501

Table of contents :
Cover
Half-title
Series information
Title page
Copyright information
Dedication
Contents
Figures
Preface
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
Agents of memory
Commemorating the First World War in art
Imperial and dominion imaginings
Chapter 1 A record for posterity, 1916–17
A commemorative impulse
Collecting records of war
The Canadian influence
Imperial versus national collections
Ideas for an Australian war museum
War art: ‘An Australian point of view’
Competing ideas
A visual record of war
The permanency and prestige of painting
Establishing the art scheme, May 1917
Chapter 2 Implementing the art scheme, 1917–18
One scheme, two sections
Smart and the National War Records Office art section
Bean as art adviser
Treloar and the Australian War Records Section art
Aims for the art scheme
Witnesses to the battlefront
Neglecting the war experience at home
Appointing the Australian war artists
Selecting AIF artists
A conspicuous absence
Style and genre
Chapter 3 Gazing on strange and terrible lands, 1916–18
Painting during the war
Working for the Australian art scheme
Instructions to artists
Artists at war
Travelling to the front
Painting on the battlefield
Witnessing war
Ways of seeing war
Exhibiting official art during the war
Chapter 4 A beautiful graveyard, 1919
Memorials of canvas and paint
Contested commemoration
Composition memorial canvases
Speaking for the AIF
Identifying the gaps
The model scheme
Alterations
Commissioning the composition canvases
Retrospectively painting war
Return to Gallipoli: The Australian Historical Mission, 1919
The making of an icon: Lambert on the peninsula
Chapter 5 A suitable memorial, 1920–22
Keeping ‘green the memory’: Plans for a war museum
Finding accommodation for the art collection
Plans to exhibit the war paintings
Two committees, one collection
Changing collecting policies
Factual accuracy and artistic quality
Fading memories
Editing the art collection
Acquisitions
‘A Mecca for all Australians’: The opening of the Australian War Museum
Conclusion
Appendix A Artists at the front, 1916–19
Appendix B National War Records Office Art Committee canvases, 1917–18
Appendix C List for composition memorial canvases, December 1918
Appendix D Bean’s five lists, May 1919
Appendix E Treloar’s amendments to the third list of paintings, c. 1920
Appendix F Images displayed in the War Museum, Melbourne, 1922
Notes
Introduction
1 A record for posterity, 1916–17
2 Implementing the art scheme, 1917–18
3 Gazing on strange and terrible lands, 1916–18
4 A beautiful graveyard, 1919
5 A suitable memorial, 1920–22
Conclusion
Bibliography
Archival sources
Australian War Memorial, Canberra
Imperial War Museum, London
Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa
National Archives of Australia, Canberra
National Archives of Australia, Melbourne
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
National Library of Australia, Canberra
Parliamentary Archives, London
State Library of New South Wales, Sydney
State Library of Victoria, Melbourne
Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, Toronto
Published sources
Australian government records
Articles and book chapters
Books
Theses
Newspapers and magazines
Online sources
Index
Color Plates

Citation preview

PAINTING WAR A HI ST O R Y O F A U ST R A L I A ’S F IR S T WO R LD WA R AR T SC HE M E

During the First World War the Australian Government established an official war art scheme, sending artists to the front lines to create a visual record of the Australian experience of the war. Around two thousand sketches and paintings were commissioned and acquired between 1916 and 1922, forming the basis of a national collection that continues to have a central place in the way Australians interpret their nation’s role in war. In Painting War, Margaret Hutchison examines the official art scheme as a key commemorative practice of the First World War and argues that the artworks had many makers beyond the artists. Government officials and military officers commissioned soldier artists and eminent Australian painters to create images for a collection of art that represented Australia’s part in the war for posterity. Their selection of artists and subjects for the war paintings and their emphasis on the eyewitness value of the images over their aesthetic merit profoundly shaped the character of the art collection. Their approach continues to influence the manner in which successive official war artists have represented the Australian Army and other services in their work. Richly illustrated, Painting War is the first book to examine in depth the genesis of one of Australia’s most enduring forms of commemoration. It provides an important understanding of the individuals, institutions and the politics behind the war art scheme that helped shape a national memory of the First World War for Australia. Margaret Hutchison is a lecturer in History in the School of Arts at the Australian Catholic University, Brisbane. Her research focuses on the history of war, culture and memory.

OTHER TITLES IN THE AUSTRALIAN ARMY HISTORY SERIES Series editor: Peter Stanley Phillip Bradley The Battle for Wau: New Guinea’s Frontline 1942–1943 Mark Johnston The Proud 6th: An Illustrated History of the 6th Australian Division 1939–1946 Garth Pratten Australian Battalion Commanders in the Second World War Jean Bou Light Horse: A History of Australia’s Mounted Arm Phillip Bradley To Salamaua Peter Dean The Architect of Victory: The Military Career of Lieutenant-General Sir Frank Horton Berryman Allan Converse Armies of Empire: The 9th Australian and 50th British Divisions in Battle 1939–1945 John Connor Anzac and Empire: George Foster Pearce and the Foundations of Australian Defence Peter Williams The Kokoda Campaign 1942: Myth and Reality Karl James The Hard Slog: Australians in the Bougainville Campaign, 1944–45 Robert Stevenson To Win the Battle: The 1st Australian Division in the Great War, 1914–1918 Jeffrey Grey A Soldier’s Soldier: A Biography of Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Daly Mark Johnston Anzacs in the Middle East: Australian Soldiers, Their Allies and the Local People in World War II Mark Johnston Stretcher-bearers: Saving Australians from Gallipoli to Kokoda Christopher Wray Pozières: Echoes of a Distant Battle Craig Stockings Britannia’s Shield: Lieutenant-General Sir Edward Hutton and Late-Victorian Imperial Defence Andrew Ross, Robert Hall and Amy Griffin The Search for Tactical Success in Vietnam: An Analysis of Australian Task Force Combat Operations William Westerman Soldiers and Gentlemen: Australian Battalion Commanders in the Great War, 1914–1918 Thomas Richardson Destroy and Build: Pacification in Phuoc Tuy, 1966–72 Tristan Moss Guarding the Periphery: The Australian Army in Papua New Guinea, 1951–75 Kate Ariotti Captive Anzacs: Australian POWs of the Ottomans during the First World War

PAINTING WAR A HISTORY OF AUSTRALIA’S FIRST WORLD WAR ART SCHEME

MARGARET HUTCHISON

University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108471503 Copyright © Margaret Hutchison 2019 This publication is copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2019 Cover designed by Anne-Marie Reeves Typeset by SPi Global Printed in Singapore by Markono Print Media Pte Ltd, September 2018 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia ISBN 978-1-108-47150-3 Hardback Reproduction and communication for educational purposes The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10% of the pages of this work, whichever is the greater, to be reproduced and/or communicated by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or the body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. For details of the CAL licence for educational institutions contact: Copyright Agency Limited Level 11, 66 Goulburn Street Sydney NSW 2000 Telephone: (02) 9394 7600 Facsimile: (02) 9394 7601 E-mail: [email protected] Reproduction and communication for other purposes Except as permitted under the Act (for example a fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review) no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, communicated or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All inquiries should be made to the publisher at the address above. Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

To Tristan

CONTENTS

List of figures

viii

Preface

xiii

Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction

xv xvii 1

1 A record for posterity, 1916–17

16

2 Implementing the art scheme, 1917–18

49

3 Gazing on strange and terrible lands, 1916–18

79

4 A beautiful graveyard, 1919

109

5 A suitable memorial, 1920–22

142

Conclusion

174

Appendix A: Artists at the front, 1916–19

180

Appendix B: National War Records Office Art Committee canvases, 1917–18

182

Appendix C: List for composition memorial canvases, December 1918

184

Appendix D: Bean’s five lists, May 1919

192

Appendix E: Treloar’s amendments to the third list of paintings, c. 1920

202

Appendix F: Images displayed in the War Museum, Melbourne, 1922

206

Notes

210

Bibliography

247

Index

259 vii

FIGURES

Figure 1 George Lambert, Anzac, the Landing 1915 Figure 2 Australian and New Zealand troops in the Anzac Day parade march along Whitehall to Westminster Abbey, London, 25 April 1916 Figure 3 Will Dyson, Stepping Stones to Higher Things Figure 4 Henry Smart and Charles Bean in a sandbagged dugout at Montauban, December 1916 Figure 5 Lord Beaverbrook, c. 1914–18 Figure 6 Charles Bean, The Silver Lining – Sunset Over Imbros as Seen from Anzac 1915 Figure 7 Lieutenant John Treloar, c. March 1916 Figure 8 George Coates, Australian Official War Artists 1916–1918 Figure 9 Iso Rae, Cinema Queue Figure 10 Hilda Rix Nicholas, A Mother of France Figure 11 Grace Cossington-Smith,The Sock Knitter Figure 12 Grace Cossington-Smith, Reinforcements: Troops Marching Figure 13 David Bomberg, Study for ‘Sappers at Work: A Canadian Tunnelling Company, Hill 60, St Eloi’ Figure 14 David Bomberg, Sappers at Work: A Canadian Tunnelling Company Figure 15 Will Longstaff, Study of Dismembered Leg Figure 16 James Scott, Enemy Machine-Gun Position Figure 17 C.R.W. Nevinson, Paths of Glory Figure 18 Frank Crozier, The Search for Identity Discs

viii

LIST OF FIGURES

ix

Figure 19 Will Dyson sketching close to the German lines on the Western Front, 29 May 1918 Figure 20 James Quinn working among the debris of war on Mont St Quentin, France, 7 September 1918 Figure 21 George Lambert sketching in the field, Palestine, c. 1918 Figure 22 George Lambert, Study of Camel Head Figure 23 George Lambert, Also Ran Figure 24 Arthur Streeton, The Somme Near Corbie Figure 25 Arthur Streeton, The Somme from Above Corbie Figure 26 Arthur Streeton, The Somme Valley Near Corbie Figure 27 Will Dyson, Dead Beat, the Tunnel, Hill 60 Figure 28 Will Dyson, Wine of Victory (wounded German prisoners near Ypres) Figure 29 Will Dyson, Coming Out on the Somme Figure 30 Elizabeth Thompson, The 28th Regiment at Quatre Bras Figure 31 A.Y. Jackson, A Copse, Evening Figure 32 Paul Nash, Void Figure 33 George Lambert, Magdhaba Figure 34 George Lambert, Wadi Bed Between El Arish and Magdhaba Figure 35 Frank Crozier, The Beach at Anzac Figure 36 Arthur Burgess, HMAS Australia at the Surrender of the German Fleet in the Firth of Forth Figure 37 Fred Leist, Australian Infantry Attack in Polygon Wood Figure 38 Ellis Silas, Roll Call Figure 39 Henry Fullwood, Attack on Péronne Figure 40 Will Longstaff, Night Attack by 13th Brigade on Villers-Bretonneux Figure 41 Australian War Records Section artists working in their studio in St John’s Wood, London, 1919 Figure 42 Members of the Australian Historical Mission on Hill 60, Gallipoli, 22 February 1922

x

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 43 George Lambert, Study for Dead Trooper and Detail of Turkish Trench, Gallipoli (Pro patria) Figure 44 George Lambert, The Nek, Walker’s Ridge, Site of the Charge of the Light Horse Figure 45 George Lambert, Achi Baba, from Tommy’s Trench, Helles Figure 46 Bean’s sketch for the layout of the Australian War Museum, c. 1920 Figure 47 Rickards’ sketch for the exterior design of the proposed Canadian Memorial Gallery Figure 48 Rickards’ sketch for the interior layout of the proposed Canadian Memorial Gallery Figure 49 Rickards’ floor plan for the proposed Canadian Memorial Gallery Figure 50 Florence Rodway, Major General Sir William Bridges Figure 51 Charles Wheeler, Battle of Messines Figure 52 Charles Wheeler, Battle of Fromelles Figure 53 Richard Jack, The Second Battle of Ypres, 22 April to 25 May 1915 Figure 54 Septimus Power, Bringing Up the Guns Figure 55 George Coates and Dora Meeson, General William Bridges and His Staff Watching the Manoeuvres of the 1st Australian Division in the Desert in Egypt, March 1915 Figure 56 George Lambert, Study for ‘Anzac, the Landing 1915’ Figure 57 George Coates, First Australian Wounded at Gallipoli Arriving at Wandsworth Hospital, London Figure 58 George Coates, Casualty Clearing Station Figure 59 Interior of the Australian War Museum, Exhibition Building, Melbourne, c. 25 April 1922 Figure 60 Exhibit of trophies and paintings in the Australian War Museum, Exhibition Building, Melbourne, c. 25 April 1922 Figure 61 Will Longstaff, 8th August 1918

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 62 Will Dyson, Small Talk Figure 63 Septimus Power, First Australian Division Artillery going into the 3rd Battle of Ypres Figure 64 Hilda Rix Nicholas, Major George Matson Nicholas

xi

PREFACE

The Australian Army has a long and admirable record of fostering serious research and publication about its history. For more than a century the Army has seen the relevance of history to its future. From its outset ‘Military History’ was part of the formal education of officers at RMC Duntroon, and for a time officers’ advancement depended upon candidates being able to give a coherent analysis of Stonewall Jackson’s Shenandoah Valley campaigns in promotion exams. An understanding of the Army’s history and traditions remains central to its esprit de corps in its most literal meaning. From the 1970s (as a consequence of educating officers at university level) the Army has produced several generations of educated soldiers, several of whom became historians of note, including John Coates, Robert O’Neill, David Horner, Peter Pedersen, John Mordike, Bob Hall, Jean Bou, Chris Roberts, Bob Stevenson and Craig Stockings. The creation of the Army History Unit in the late 1990s demonstrated the Army’s commitment to encouraging and facilitating serious history. AHU has had a profound influence in managing the Army’s museums, supporting research on Army history and in publishing its history. One of the most impressive demonstrations of the Army’s commitment to history has been its long association with several major publishers, and notably with Cambridge University Press. This has been a productive relationship between AHU and the former long-standing General Editor of the Army History Series, Professor David Horner. The Cambridge Army History Series brings to an academic and popular readership historical work of importance across the range of the Army’s interests and across the span of its history. The series, which I now have the honour to edit, seeks to publish research and writing of the highest quality relating to the Army’s operational experience and to its existence as an organisation and as a part of its contribution to the national narrative.

xiii

xiv

PREFACE

The Army History Unit has created a community of writers and readers (including soldiers in both roles), the product of whose questions, research, debate and writing informs the Army’s understanding of itself and its part in Australia’s history. It is a history to be proud of in every sense. Margaret Hutchison’s Painting War makes us realise something that is too often simply taken for granted: that the collection of First World War art at the very heart of the Australian War Memorial depicts, almost exclusively, Australian soldiers. Soldiers – including the generals who directed the AIF, its renowned figures, its nurses and aviators, as well as the broad mass of those who fought – constitute the subjects of the first and most evocative works that document and commemorate the Australian Army in its first great conflict. As we approach the end of the centenary of that war, Dr Hutchison’s pioneering research shows the relationships between artists, the officials who created the war art scheme, and the men and women of the Australian Army whose enduring memorial those works became. Professor Peter Stanley General Editor, Australian Army History Series UNSW Canberra

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Just as the process of creating an art collection involves the interaction of many individuals, so too does the process of researching and writing a book. This volume started life as a doctoral thesis, which I undertook in the School of History at the Australian National University. My mentor and friend, Joan Beaumont, has more energy and passion for the discipline of history – and indeed life – than anyone I know, and I owe her a debt of gratitude for her erudite advice, which has made me reach further and think more deeply about my research. I am also deeply indebted to Anne Brennan for her contagious curiosity and love of art. I would also like to thank Peter Stanley for including this book in the Australian Army History Series and for his sage advice on the manuscript. Thanks also to the wonderful staff at Cambridge University Press for their guidance through the many stages of producing this book, in particular Olivia Tolich, Jodie Fitzsimmons and Cathryn Game. I am also indebted to scholars in Australia and overseas for their interest in and support of my research. I would like especially to thank the historians at the Australian National University: Frank Bongiorno, Karen Downing, Barry Higman, Pat Jalland, Amanda Laugesen, Peter Londey, Carolyn Strange and Angela Woollacott for their invaluable advice and their encouragement, and Douglas Craig and Nicholas Brown for their belief in my ability not only to research history but also to teach it. I would also like to thank my colleagues and the band of incredible historians at the Australian Catholic University for all their encouragement during the final stages of this project, and especially Maggie Nolan and Michael Ondaatje for their support. Laura and Rob Brandon’s generosity in letting me stay during a chilly research trip to Ottawa made my Canadian research possible, and I would especially like to thank Laura for sharing with me her passion for war art. I am also indebted to Brian Foss at Carleton University for the many invigorating discussions about art, and Charlie Hill for sharing his research, knowledge and extraordinary recipes with me.

xv

xvi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am thankful for the assistance of the staff at the Australian War Memorial, particularly Alex Torrens, Anthea Gunn, Ryan Johnson and Stuart Bennington for their untiring help; the National Archives of Australia, Canberra and Melbourne; the National Library of Australia; the State Library of New South Wales; the State Library of Victoria; the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto, especially Sharon Lee; the National Gallery of Canada, particularly the always enthusiastic Philip Dombowsky; Library and Archives Canada; the Canadian War Museum; the Imperial War Museum, particularly Sara Bevan; and the Parliamentary Archives, London. A number of scholarships and grants supported my research for this book. I would like to express my gratitude to the Australian Prime Minister’s Centre at the Museum of Australian Democracy for a Summer Scholarship; to the International Council for Canadian Studies for awarding me a Graduate Student Grant in support of my overseas research; and the Australian Academy of the Humanities for a Travelling Fellowship. The number of images in this book was made possible by an award from the Australian Academy of the Humanities Publication Subsidy Scheme for which I am very thankful as well as the generosity of the Army History Unit. Special thanks go to Andrew Richardson of the AHU for tracking down the paintings and sketches. I am deeply grateful for the constant support and understanding of my friends and family. Thank you especially to Meleah Hampton, who has been there to encourage and commiserate since day 1; and to Alessandro Antonello, Alexis Bergantz, Robyn Curtis, Kim Doyle and Emily Robertson for the many inspiring conversations about all things academic or otherwise. Thank you to my father whose own passion for learning and fine, inquiring mind inspired me to take this path and for his patient reading of numerous drafts; to my mother whose strength, resolve and unwavering love I simply cannot live without; and to Abbey and Steve for their indulgence and the many welcome distractions of life outside the history department. Finally, thank you to Tristan, my fellow explorer on this quest for knowledge, for sharing the excitement and challenges of the life of the historian. This book is dedicated to him because without his patience, counsel, understanding and love, it would simply not have been possible. Margaret Hutchison Brisbane, 2018

ABBREVIATIONS

ADB

Australian Dictionary of Biography

AFC

Australian Flying Corps

AIF

Australian Imperial Force

ANZAC

Australian and New Zealand Army Corps

AWM AWMAC

Australian War Museum (after 1925, Australian War Memorial) Australian War Museum Art Committee

AWMC

Australian War Museum Committee

AWRS

Australian War Records Section

BBK

Beaverbrook Papers

BWMC

British War Memorials Committee

CEF

Canadian Expeditionary Force

CWM

Canadian War Museum

CWMF

Canadian War Memorials Fund

CWRO

Canadian War Records Office

FRBL

Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library

IWM

Imperial War Museum

LAC

Library and Archives Canada

NAA

National Archives of Australia

NGC

National Gallery of Canada

NLA

National Library of Australia

NWRO

National War Records Office

PA

Parliamentary Archives

SLNSW

State Library of New South Wales

SLV

State Library of Victoria

VC

Victoria Cross xvii

INTRODUCTION

Duncan Chapman enlisted as a lieutenant in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) on 21 August 1914, part of the first wave of enthusiastic enlistments that followed the declaration of war on 4 August that year. Born in 1888, he grew up in Maryborough, Queensland, and at the age of 26 set sail for war less than a month after enlisting. On 25 April 1915, he was the first man ashore when Australian soldiers set foot on the beaches of Gallipoli.1 We know that he was promoted to captain the day after the landing and fought on the peninsula until he became sick with influenza in the final months of the campaign. In early 1916, he joined the 45th Australian Infantry Battalion, where he was promoted to major and transferred to France, arriving on the Western Front in the middle of that year during a period of intense fighting. Duncan was killed almost immediately upon reaching the front line at Pozières on 6 August 1916.2 At home in Australia, his family heard the news of his death weeks after he was killed. His father, anxious to learn of the exact date his son died and where he was buried, penned a poignant letter that surely echoed the sentiments of many parents of this generation: ‘[M]y son Major Duncan K. Chapman was killed in action. Kindly let me know the particulars. It is a great blow to me as he was my sole support. Still I gave him freely for the cause. Still we are human and would almost grudge what we gave, my heart is not very strong being 73 years of age.’3 Because Duncan had been ‘very much knocked about’ when he was killed, his place of burial was not precisely known. The official dispatch

1

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PAINTING WAR

vaguely stated it was ‘approximately 400 yards East of Pozières’.4 Both Duncan’s parents died before knowing the exact place of his grave. His sister continued to write to Australian authorities requesting information about Duncan’s death and final resting place. The family did not receive an answer until December 1924, when they learned that he was buried in the Pozières British Cemetery, Plot 3, Row M, Grave 22.5 Duncan was one of 6800 Australians killed or wounded at Pozières between July and September 1916.6 Duncan’s war was relatively brief and, like 60 000 of his fellow Australians, it cost him his life. But it was not unremarkable. In a letter to his brother that was later published in Mackay’s Daily Mercury, he wrote about the great honour of being the first Australian to land on the beach at what would become known as Anzac Cove: To me was given the extreme honour of being actually the first man to put foot ashore on the peninsula, and to lead a portion of the men up the hill in that now historic charge. What a living Hell it was, too, and how I managed to go through it from 4 o’clock in the morning of Sunday, April 25, to Wednesday, the 28th, under fire the whole time, without being hit, is a mystery to me.7

In 2015, a hundred years after Duncan set foot on the peninsula, a bronze life-sized statue of him was unveiled in his home town of Maryborough – part of an outpouring of regional commemorative activities to celebrate the centenary of the conflict. The memorial captures Duncan, hand on his revolver, looking ahead as if stepping ashore on Gallipoli.8 The story of Duncan’s experience on the peninsula is exceptional, and few men could claim to leave behind such a celebrated personal record or to have been so individually commemorated. For most soldiers who landed on Gallipoli on 25 April 1915 and the many Australians who served during the eight-month campaign, and in the Middle East and later on the Western Front, their war experience was commemorated more broadly and in a variety of forms. Some men appeared in official war correspondent and historian C.E.W. Bean’s astounding twelve-volume history of the war. The experience of others was captured in their letters, diaries, poems, memoirs and collected artefacts sent home to their families or donated to and displayed in the Australian War Museum.9 The nature of the circumstances in which these men fought and died was also depicted in visual media. Photography, film and art served an important role in capturing and commemorating their experience of war.

INTRODUCTION

3

In fact, in painting, the men who fought in the Gallipoli campaign have been well remembered. Although he was killed before any officially commissioned Australian painter visited the peninsula, Duncan and other soldiers of the 3rd Brigade were immortalised after the war in official artist George Lambert’s canvas of the landing on Gallipoli, Anzac, the Landing 1915 (1920–22). In Lambert’s rendering of the dawn scene, the men, Duncan presumably among them, are caught struggling up the steep cliffs. The peaks stand out starkly against the pale dawn sky, shell bursts scattering the background, the soldiers’ khaki uniforms blend with the olive green of the scrub and ochre of the earth, making them appear almost at one with the landscape. Lambert worked with the Australian Army, both during and after the war, to produce the canvas. No official artists were employed during the Gallipoli campaign, and Lambert was commissioned with painting the first moments of the fateful landing only in 1919. By then he had been working as an honorary officer in the AIF for two years as part of Australia’s official war art program. In this role, he had seen first-hand the fighting in the Middle East and lived alongside Australian soldiers, enduring the difficulties and dangers of army life and sketching what he witnessed of the war. He was one of fifteen artists employed by the Australian official art program; under this scheme, government officials and military officers worked with soldier artists already serving in the ranks of the AIF as well as renowned expatriate artists who were given honorary commissions in the army to create a collection of images that captured an Australian experience of the war. Lambert’s canvas was the product of long and careful research. He was one of the members of Bean’s party who returned to Gallipoli in 1919 to retrace the steps of those Australians who had fought there. He spent more than a month on the peninsula, walking the ground and making sketches of the contour and patterns, the light and mood, and details of the distinctive landscape. Back in Australia, he spent time reading accounts of the fighting and studying photographs from the campaign. Yet, for all this research, Lambert used some artistic licence in representing the scene. He painted the cliffs steeper than they appeared in reality, and the men were all depicted as wearing the slouch hat later typical of the Australian digger but not of the early AIF army uniform – a point Lambert debated with Bean at the time.10 The painting was an instant hit. When the Australian War Museum first opened in 1922 in Melbourne’s Exhibition Building on the seventh anniversary of Australian soldiers landing on the beaches at Anzac Cove,

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PAINTING WAR

Lambert’s canvas drew particular praise from critics, who thought it ‘one of the finest’ pieces in the museum’s collection. Almost upon its unveiling, it became one of the most iconic images of Australians in the war.11 Capturing the drama and pathos of a key moment in Australian military history, the painting represents an event that sparked a commemorative tradition, and a national myth that has endured for more than a hundred years. The artwork has hung ever since its unveiling in every iteration of the Australian War Memorial’s First World War Galleries. In the post-war years, the canvas – and indeed the exhibition within which it was displayed – was aimed at people, perhaps like Duncan’s family, who sought solace in the objects and art displayed in the Australian War Museum in the absence of any hope of visiting the sites where Australians had fought and died. Lambert’s image, like Duncan’s statue in Maryborough, captures and commemorates one of Australia’s most celebrated episodes of the First World War. Along with other paintings held in the Australian War Memorial’s collection, it continues to be an important ‘site of memory’, and to play a significant role in how and what we remember of men like Duncan and their war.12 *** This book is about the creation of an official collection of war paintings during and immediately after the First World War and the role these images played in shaping a memory of the war for Australia. When it was officially established in May 1917, Australia’s war art scheme was the most comprehensive government-funded art project the nascent nation had seen, comparable in scale only to the Historic Memorials Committee founded six years earlier in 1911, which commissioned paintings of eminent men in Australia’s history.13 Under the war art program, government officials and military officers worked with soldier artists and celebrated Australian painters to fundamentally define how the war was represented in sketches and paintings.14 Their collective aim was to amass a national collection of paintings that would add to the visual record of the war, which they believed should consist of photography, film and art. From the scheme’s inception, they imbued the images with a commemorative purpose, intending that the sketches and canvases would visualise Australia’s part in the conflict for posterity.15 Australia’s official war paintings had many makers beyond the artist, and this book focuses on the individuals involved in their commissioning and production, exploring the way in which what appeared in paint was

INTRODUCTION

5

subject to and the product of the intentions and motivations of a range of actors.16 Rather than exploring the paintings for their place in art history, this volume examines their creation as a case study through which to consider the politics at play in commemorating the First World War in Australia. It focuses on the men, the ‘agents of memory’, who initiated and managed the commissioning of the official art, tracing their role in shaping the character of the collection.17 I contend that these men, primarily Charles Bean, Australia’s official war correspondent (1914–19) and official historian (1919–42), Henry Smart, Publicity Officer at the Australian High Commission in London (1910–30), and John Treloar, officer in charge of the Australian War Records Section (1916–19) and Director of the Australian War Museum (1920–52), were responsible for amassing a collection that was inherently national in focus. I argue further that the commissioning of paintings that visualised an Australian narrative of the First World War was one manifestation of a wider commemorative trend that aimed to differentiate the Australian war experience from others within the British Empire. The role and influence of the men involved in the production of Australia’s official war art collection and the place of art in the formation of memory has hitherto been overlooked in scholarly writings in favour of analyses of the art and artists themselves. Art historians, including Anne Gray, Catherine Speck, Betty Churcher and Gavin Fry, have focused their attention on the artistic quality of the paintings and their place in Australian art history, finding that these images have not always been seen as an important part of the canon of Australian art. Others, such as Ross McMullin, have published more detailed studies of the significance of participation in the official scheme for artists’ careers, exploring the influence of the war on artists’ work.18 Yet as Anne-Marie Condé suggests, ‘the administrative effort involved in official and commissioned war art has to be recognised as part of the process of cultural production’.19 Building on Condé’s assertion, I examine not only the role of official war artists but also the part played by the politicians, government officials and military officers commissioning them. In so doing, I approach the creation of a collection of war paintings as one of the commemorative practices or ‘acts of remembrance’ of the war.20 For the purposes of this book, the term ‘commemoration’ is understood to be the act of mourning, celebrating and preserving memories of people and events. The concept of a ‘commemorative practice’ is defined as a process through which an image or object – or indeed a tradition – is produced or invented to honour and celebrate people or events, a process involving the interaction

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between individuals at various levels of society who assume positions of influence in narrating and shaping a memory for the collective.21 For any study of commemoration, who does the work of remembering and why, and how individuals assume positions of influence within such practices, are important questions.22 Such questions raise further issues about who has the right to act as a witness to war and, more importantly, who decides who is a valid witness and who is not. Often what is collected and preserved has more to do with who assumes the role of witness and who has lived experience than whether a collection sufficiently captures a historical narrative or event.23 The men who assumed positions of influence, or, in some cases, appropriated roles for themselves in the management of the official art scheme during the First World War, were responsible for determining which aspects of the war were represented in the collection and thereby for shaping a memory of the war for Australia.24 Exploring such questions can tell us much about the priorities and values of commemoration – and the individuals who shaped it – in this period. Memories are selective, often serving personal, political or ideological agendas.25 The decisions of the men managing Australia’s art program were based on a desire to present a narrative in the paintings that was distinctly Australian, thereby differentiating the dominion’s war experience from that of others within the British Empire. This book traces the patterns of selection and rejection, inclusion and exclusion, that determined the character of the collection, specifically focusing on what these men deemed important to commemorate and what aspects of the war they did not.26 It examines their choice – as well as rejection – of artists and the subject of their work, investigating the ways in which the official paintings came to depict a national experience of the war.

AGENTS

OF MEMORY

Charles Bean has assumed a central place in Australian scholarly writings on the commemoration of the First World War. Seen as a ‘colossus’ who has shaped Australia’s history and memory of the war, his dominance owes much to his role in shaping the myth or legend of Anzac through his official dispatches when war correspondent and his later official histories.27 Although other politicians, military leaders and journalists during and after the war embraced and promulgated this version of Australian battlefront experience, it was Bean who expressed this myth most persistently and most persuasively.28 When war broke out in August 1914, he

INTRODUCTION

7

was working for the Sydney Morning Herald and was appointed Australia’s first official war correspondent, a position he narrowly won over fellow journalist Keith Murdoch in a ballot taken by the Australian Journalists’ Association. The Minister of Defence, George Pearce, expressed to Bean his hope that he would later write an official history of Australia’s role in the war. Bean was given the honorary rank of captain, although he remained a civilian, and sailed to Egypt with the first contingent of the AIF. He was present on the first day of the landings at Anzac Cove and lived near the soldiers at the front for most of the war, experiencing the fighting on Gallipoli and closely observing it in France and Belgium.29 He was deeply impressed by the fighting abilities of the soldiers of the AIF and by what he came to see as the inherently Australian virtues that underscored their prowess on the battlefield: their loyalty to their mates, their inventiveness and resourcefulness, and their almost playful disregard for authority – characteristics that had supposedly developed as a result of Australia’s distinctive environment.30 He articulated this vision of the AIF in his diaries, notebooks and editing of the twelve-volume official history – volumes 1 to 6 of which he wrote himself – as well as his numerous other publications. Further, in his editing of The Anzac Book in 1916, a collection of humorous writings and sketches created by AIF troops stationed on Gallipoli, his preparation for his writing of the official histories, and his work amassing a collection of records for a national war museum, Bean was able to shape a near-mythic narrative of Australians in the war.31 Bean’s interwar writings and his role in developing the Australian War Museum have, to some extent, overlaid his wartime actions with a significance not entirely justified. Although his influence is undeniable, it was not inevitable that he should assume such an important place in the construction of Australia’s memory of the war. While Bean played a key role in facilitating the construction of an Anzac myth, historians have overlooked the cultural processes happening around him.32 This volume does not deny Bean’s central role in Australia’s commemoration of the First World War nor his progressive eclipsing of others, such as Treloar. Instead, by exploring his part in the direction and management of the art scheme as one example of his early commemorative activity, it reveals a more nuanced view of his rise as arbiter of Australia’s memory of war. For all his acknowledged importance, there remain few studies solely dedicated to Bean as a subject.33 Until the recent publication of Peter Rees’s and Ross Coulthart’s biographies, Bean’s own diaries and collected writings were the major source on his intentions and motivations.34

8

PAINTING WAR

Historians knew Bean through Bean and, in a sense, allowed him to control his own narrative. While much of the literature on Bean addresses his role as official war correspondent and historian, this book details the complexities of memory construction by examining how and why he was able to carve out a role for himself in the art scheme and where and when he was able to exert influence on the production of the paintings. In doing so, it seeks to cast his influence against the other men involved in the management of the art scheme, exploring the dynamic interaction between them. When war broke out in 1914, Australia had been a nation for only thirteen years and its federal institutions were embryonic. Hence there were numerous opportunities for individuals to exert an influence on these still forming institutions. The art scheme presented one such opportunity. Bean was one of several men behind the production of the paintings and, although only an adviser to the scheme, his later dominance in commemorative activity has somewhat overshadowed the other men who shaped the program. Henry Smart and John Treloar were both directly involved in the management of the art scheme, and at different times and in various ways were responsible for shaping the character of the collection. Smart was a significant figure in the management of the art scheme during the war years. Although the art program was ostensibly under the supervision of Andrew Fisher, former prime minister and Australia’s High Commissioner in London from 1916 to 1921, it was Smart, in his position as Publicity Officer at Australia House, who managed the art scheme.35 Smart had a long record with the public service, having worked as a civil servant since 1892, with the exception of two years from 1900 to 1902 when he had served in the Boer War.36 He was responsible not only for employing artists to work for the scheme but also for making arrangements for their visits to the front, including where they went and the supply of their materials and equipment. John Treloar had joined the Department of Defence in 1911 and was employed as a military staff clerk. At the outbreak of the war, he enlisted in the 1st Division of the AIF and worked as a staff sergeant on Gallipoli from April until September 1915, when he fell ill with enteric fever and was invalided to Australia.37 However, in 1916 he was well enough to take up a commission as lieutenant, working as equipment officer in No. 1 Squadron of the Australian Flying Corps (AFC) where he was stationed in Egypt.38 He was transferred to France in July the same year to work in I Anzac Corps Headquarters as confidential clerk to Brigadier General Sir Brudenell White.39 In 1917 he was encouraged by White to transfer to a

INTRODUCTION

9

position in London that oversaw the establishment and running of an Australian War Records Section (AWRS), and it was in this role that he became involved in the war art scheme. Although Treloar was an important individual in the scheme, it was not until he took on the role of Director of the Australian War Museum that he made a significant contribution to the shape and character of the collection, where, during the early 1920s, he was responsible for commissioning and purchasing paintings that expanded its scope.

COMMEMORATING

THE

FIRST WORLD WAR

IN ART

Collective memory or collective remembrance – terms that describe shared memory that exists beyond that of the individual – are expressions often used but infrequently and imprecisely theorised.40 Many historians, as Timothy Ashplant, Graham Dawson and Michael Roper explain, overestimate the unity and cohesiveness of nations and the ability of governing bodies to tap into popular perceptions held by individuals.41 As Jay Winter argues, it is not states that remember but individuals. He contends that if ‘“collective memory” has any meaning at all, it is the process through which different collectives, from groups of two to groups in their thousands, engage in acts of remembrance together’.42 I employ the term ‘national memory’ with the understanding that it is constructed through processes requiring the interaction and agency of individuals and institutions working at both a community and a state level who articulate and perpetuate it through, to use Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger’s phrase, ‘invented traditions’, such as commemorative rituals and practices.43 National memory relies on a shared sense of a common history among people who have never met but whose collective imaginings define a nation’s character.44 This concept draws on Benedict Anderson’s ‘imagined communities’ where the continuity of a nation is made certain through the ‘ghostly imaginings’ or connections that living generations feel to the dead as well as through a concerted forgetting or ‘collective amnesia’.45 History and memory are, of course, significantly intertwined. For Tom Griffiths, while history is in many ways the discipline of memory, ‘it is also a craft that has a strange, oppositional relationship to memory’.46 History is based on examining the past through evidence, while memory is subjective and based on a feeling of connection to the past that cannot be scrutinised or analysed in the same way.47 As Jay Winter explains, history is memory appraised through verifiable traces of the past – documents, artefacts and images – and ‘[m]emory is history seen through affect’.48

10

PAINTING WAR

Bridging history and memory, this book uses archival sources to explore the processes by which an Australian war art collection was created and draws on memory studies – particularly the body of literature on war and memory – to analyse and interpret the shaping of a national memory that occurred during its development. The processes of constructing national memory are always politicised. As Alon Confino argues, the ‘politics of memory’ is a phrase that ‘reduce[s] memory, which is fundamentally a concept of culture, to the political’.49 The inherently political elements of memory-making cannot easily be separated from its social and cultural elements. Commemorative activity is made up of a combination and synchronisation of individual as well as group memories that might seem harmonious, but they are often the result of deep contests and tensions.50 In terms of war and memory, there is always a politics at work whenever collectives undertake commemorative practices or rituals.51 Ashplant, Dawson and Roper suggest that a redefining of the politics of memory should include an analysis of ‘the existence of cultural politics surrounding representation and meaning making’.52 By exploring not only who wants whom to remember what and why but also how, my study of the creation of a collection of official art takes a broader definition of the politics of memory to include the politics of representation.53 The politics of representation – of meaning-making – are particularly important for a book on war art. War painting is largely unified by subject or theme rather than style and sits uneasily within the modernist trajectory of art history.54 It remains difficult to classify as a genre within the art historical practice, not least because it draws on a variety of wellestablished genres, such as portraiture, landscape and still life.55 The term ‘war painting’ encompasses both private responses to war as well as statecommissioned ones. Further, there is little distinction between aesthetically significant work and more pedestrian responses to war that endure because of their subject matter.56 Yet, as sites of social remembering, the aesthetic qualities of a war painting matter less than the meanings imposed on or derived from it.57 For the purposes of this book and its examination of state-commissioned art, a useful approach to the term is to consider the context and process of the production of war paintings; what is included in collections can tell us more about the values and priorities of those involved in creating them and the anticipated audience than it does about a genre or movement within art history. The wider debate over the commemorative aesthetics of the First World War has centred on whether the conflict altered existing modes

INTRODUCTION

11

and forms of representation.58 Such scholars as Paul Fussell and Samuel Hynes assert that the war generated new modes of expression, and Modris Eksteins contends that the conflict was a catalyst for modernism. However, as Jay Winter argues, there was a remarkable continuity of pre-war, traditional symbols and trends in many forms of commemoration.59 The perceived rupture with pre-existing artistic conventions, especially those in painting, did not always exist uneasily with more established aesthetic trends. Such an approach is a useful way through which to explore the more traditional modes of expression favoured by those managing the Australian scheme. For Australia, the First World War largely entrenched the practices of the nineteenth century rather than ushering in new means of representation.60 Reponses to conflict often adopt already established narratives or images from earlier wars circulating within a culture. What matters most is who chooses which particular narrative template and for what purpose.61 Out of step with the more modernist styles embraced by other national art schemes, the paintings of the Australian scheme reflected the dominant tastes in art of the antipodean dominion during this period. Although some artists in Australia experimented in their work with ideas from overseas, the established painters and critics largely rejected the modernist trends sweeping Europe, and their work continued to draw on the conventions of the nineteenth century, which was seen as being ‘healthy’ art.62 Such ideas endured well into the interwar period of 1919–39, and modernism in most forms of culture was not common or popular in Australia until the 1930s.63 The men managing the art scheme drew on these prevailing cultural trends, favouring Australian artists who worked in a realist tradition. Consequently, unlike the modernism of a number of the works in the Canadian and British war art collections and some of the unofficial Australian war art, Australia’s official war paintings were strictly descriptive. The canvases drew on artists’ training in academic painting and their work in the Impressionist aesthetic and technique made famous by the artists of the Heidelberg School in Melbourne in the 1890s, a visual language that by the outbreak of the First World War was familiar to many Australians.64

IMPERIAL

AND DOMINION IMAGININGS

Australia was not alone in establishing a war art scheme. Many nations fighting the First World War sent artists to the front in an official capacity to paint the conflict. Germany sent an official artist to the front as early as

12

PAINTING WAR

1915. The French also employed official artists under the Mission des Beaux-Arts in 1916. Britain established an official art scheme in mid1916, as did Canada later that year. The United States sent official artists to the front in early 1918, and New Zealand launched its official art program in the same year.65 While it is important to study the local forces at play in the commemoration of war and the formation of memory, new approaches to exploring war and memory should also take into account transnational dynamics and assess how these work within national contexts.66 To avoid an Australian-centric approach, I take the Canadian official art program as a foil or mirror by which to gauge not only the points where the Australian scheme was particularly distinctive but also where it was mirroring wider imperial trends. Such an approach allows me to consider the broader trends within the empire concerning the commemoration of the war in art, while also examining the unique geographical and cultural influences that shaped the nature of Australian memory-making during and after the war. By comparing the Australian scheme with the Canadian one, I position the creation of an Australian art collection in a comparative imperial context and theories of memory-making that transcend the national.67 I find that discussions among Australian artists, government officials and military officers about the development of an art scheme mirrored similar debates among Canadian officials about the use of art to commemorate the war. Such ideas, however, manifested themselves differently in the management of the Australian scheme; that is, the selection of artists, style and content of the official paintings were influenced by local tastes and practices. The Canadian scheme provides an appropriate contrast with the Australian scheme for several reasons. First, and more broadly, as dominion subjects within the British Empire, Canadians had similar imperial duties and loyalties to Britain as Australians. Canada’s entry into the conflict, like Australia’s, was automatic once Britain had declared war. Second, as with Australian soldiers, a narrative of the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) as an ‘elite’ fighting force was developed and promoted by politicians and the media during the war.68 This was based on the perceived qualities inherent in Canadian soldiers as a result of their distinctive way of life on the frontier of the empire.69 Similarly to the Australians, the idea of Canadians as skilled fighters, particularly after several costly battles under British command, gave rise to a growing insistence that the Canadian force have its own commanders and that it be recognised as having an identity independent from Britain.70

INTRODUCTION

13

Third, along with the similarities in experience on the battlefield, there were parallels between the commemorative trends of Canada and Australia. As a sense of national pride in the CEF’s achievements grew, Canadian officials became concerned that the record of this war experience could not be encompassed within that of the empire.71 Influential Canadians in London, pre-eminently media tycoon Max Aitken (later Lord Beaverbrook) and Lord Rothermere, also a media magnate, were responsible for carving out significant roles for themselves in the commemoration of the war. Beaverbrook in particular promoted the Canadian war effort through his collection of records under the Canadian War Records Office (CWRO), which effectively distinguished the Canadian experience of the war from that of the British at a time when the British were attempting to collect records encompassing an imperial war experience. Finally, and most significantly, the Australian authorities involved in the commemoration of the war closely followed the example set by the likes of Beaverbrook, adopting and appropriating the commemorative forms and practices established by the Canadians for Australia. Indeed, Bean, Smart and Treloar were all acutely aware of the Canadian war art scheme, consciously comparing and contrasting their own decisions with those of the Canadians. There is a wealth of textual and visual material on official war art. In focusing on the men and their decisions about the production of the official paintings, much of my research has centred on the papers of the directors and artists as well as the records generated by government departments and institutions, such as galleries and museums. Although the war generated an abundance of material, there was little planning of what records were kept. Consequently, the written archives regarding the art schemes of both Australia and Canada are diverse and eclectic. There remain tantalising gaps in the archive, particularly in relation to the experience of the individuals involved in the scheme. There is, for example, very little personal information on Smart or Treloar, and these men are known to historians solely through their official correspondence and public lives. Further, there is an absence in the archive of material relating to the experience of the official artists. As a way to resolve this, I have consulted many of the finished canvases as well as the sketches artists made at the front. Where the voice of many official artists remains elusive, it has been the paintings and sketches that provide an insight into how they worked under the scheme and their experience in doing so. This book focuses on Australia’s art scheme during its formative period, from 1916 to 1922. Although the Australian War Museum

14

PAINTING WAR

continued to commission official art of the First World War until the outbreak of the Second World War, and there were some alterations to the policies and procedures for commissioning paintings during the interwar years, the earlier period laid the enduring foundations of the art collection. The years between 1916 and 1922 were the most productive in the art scheme’s history, with around two thousand sketches and paintings being collected. Many of today’s displays in the Australian War Memorial include the images that were produced during this era. Further, between 1916 and 1922 the key actors in the creation of an official art collection, Smart, Treloar and Bean, progressively established their positions as the primary arbiters of the scheme, and Australian commemorative practices more generally. During this period, they made critical decisions about the aim of the art scheme, which framed the way in which the art collection commemorated the war. Their emphasis on the eyewitness value of the images, initially attained by artists’ presence on the battlefield, not only entrenched a focus on the fighting front, at the expense of the experience of the war at home, but also established a tradition, which continues to this day, of sending official artists to theatres where Australian troops are engaged in combat. Finally, the majority of those artists who worked for the art scheme, even in the interwar years, were selected during wartime. The dominant aesthetic of the official paintings of the First World War, infused with the academic style in which these artists had been trained, was thereby established in this period. This book charts the official art scheme’s various phases, from its inception in London in 1916 to the first display of the collection in Australia in 1922. Chapter 1 centres on why and how an Australian art scheme was established. It explores the scheme within the context of wartime collecting among Allied officials in London, contrasting it with similar efforts by Beaverbrook for the Canadians. Chapter 2 examines the haphazard and improvised development of the art scheme during the war, and explores the extent of Smart, Bean and Treloar’s influence over the shape and scope of the collection. It casts the aims of the Australian art scheme against those of the Canadian and, to a lesser extent, the British models as a way of showing where Smart, Bean and Treloar were inspired to follow imperial trends and where their decisions were more assertively Australian. Chapter 3 provides an interlude in the narrative of the art scheme, pausing to consider the experience and agency of commissioned war artists on the battlefield. Exploring the ways in which they worked under the patronage of the scheme and the dangerous conditions at the front, it examines how official artists functioned as professionals and

INTRODUCTION

15

what they were able to represent in their work. Chapters 4 and 5 resume the narrative of the scheme immediately after the war. Following the armistice in November 1918, Smart, Treloar and Bean had the opportunity to assess the collection of art they had amassed over the preceding two years. Focusing specifically on 1919, chapter 4 explores the ‘gap filling’ that characterised the commissioning of official art during this year before the evidence on the battlefields faded. The final chapter considers the planning before the Australian War Museum’s first exhibition in Melbourne in April 1922 and the manner in which decisions about acquiring additional war paintings were shaped by their intended display within the museum. This book traces the complexities of amassing a collection of war paintings during the war and in its immediate aftermath, analysing the shifts in the intentions and motivations of those responsible for commissioning and purchasing the art and the way these manifested themselves in the collecting practices of this era. And it speaks to a current trend in Australian war commemoration. The images, narratives and practices that emerged during and after the war have shaped, and continue to shape, the way in which subsequent conflicts have been imagined and commemorated.72 The scheme that emerged in 1916 was the first in a long tradition of sending Australian artists to theatres of conflict. It framed the manner in which successive Australian artists have represented war in their work and has shaped a national collection that continues to have a central place in the way Australians interpret their nation’s role in conflict. As such, it is important to understand the individuals responsible for establishing this trend – their invention of a tradition – and the way in which their intentions, motivations and actions shaped the genesis of such an enduring commemorative practice.

CHAPTER

A

|

1

R E C O R D F O R P O S T E R I T Y,

1916–17

‘I am an Australian artist resident at present in England’, wrote Will Dyson to Australia’s High Commissioner, Andrew Fisher in August 1916, and ‘I write to suggest that it would be of interest to the people of Australia of today and in the future to see sketches illustrating the relationship of the Australians to the war and interpreting the feelings and character of the Australian troops in France’.1 Born in Ballarat, Victoria, in 1880, Dyson was a self-taught artist who, after working in Australia as a cartoonist for the Adelaide Critic and the Bulletin, had moved to London in 1910 to further his career. At the time of writing to Fisher, he was employed by the Daily Mail and was well known in London for his satirical cartoons. In his letter he argued that images such as he proposed, which captured the special characteristics of the AIF in France, ‘could only be fittingly done by an Australian artist’ and declared his readiness to accept such a commission.2 Dyson’s letter was the first formal suggestion that art might be used to interpret and preserve the Australian experience of the war, and it also identified the opportunity of creating a particularly Australian account of the conflict in art – one created by and for Australians. It was the first step in the development of a comprehensive art scheme for Australia, but it was by no means the only idea circulating among Australian officials and artists in 1916 about the potential use of sketches and paintings to capture a national experience of the conflict. The emergence of an art scheme occurred during a year of increased commemorative efforts. As casualties on the battlefield increased, so too did the desire to differentiate Australia’s experience of the war within the

16

A RECORD FOR POSTERITY, 1916–17

17

British Empire. Commemorative rituals, such as Anzac Day which was the occasion of a plethora of commemorative events in 1916, fed both the government’s political agenda for increased recruitment and greater recognition of Australia’s war effort, as well as the public’s anxiety for more to be done officially to commemorate Australian soldiers’ part in the conflict. The success of such events sparked plans for more tangible commemorative practices, such as developing a collection of war records, which were accompanied by a variety of ideas about their permanent home in a museum in Australia – the term ‘record’ was variously used during the war to describe official documents, diaries, artefacts, maps, photographs, film and art. These initiatives initially met with some opposition from British authorities, who favoured an ‘imperial’ collecting policy and saw no need for separate national collections of war records for its dominions and colonies. Consequently, the art scheme that was ultimately established in May 1917 was the product of debates between individuals both in Britain and at home about how to commemorate Australia’s war experience officially. There was no single architect of the Australian war art scheme. Rather its emergence during 1916 and 1917 was inspired by collaboration between various Australian public servants, military officers and artists working in London during the war. Scholars of Australia’s official war art have often glossed over its origins and attribute its early creation to either Dyson or Bean, overlooking the dynamic exchange of ideas among Allied officials and artists during this period.3 This chapter explores the origins of Australia’s official art scheme, focusing on how and why it became a central commemorative practice of the First World War and the people involved in its development. In particular, it contests the idea that any individual was solely responsible for the invention of the scheme, and instead explores the interaction between and motivations of multiple actors whose initiative and support led to the establishment of an official war art scheme for Australia.

A

COMMEMORATIVE IMPULSE

The commemorative impulse that seized Australian officials in 1916 was to some degree politically motivated. Prime Minister W.M. (Billy) Hughes’ six-month-long visit to Britain and France from January to July 1916 was stimulated by his desire not only to discuss the conduct of the war, economic matters and the containment of Japan with the British and other dominion leaders, but also to consider ‘the future of the British

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PAINTING WAR

Empire’.4 Hughes was the model dual nationalist, deeply committed to the British war effort, although equally ‘proud of Australia’s distinctive achievements and convinced that Australia’s and Britain’s interests were not always one and the same’.5 He believed that Australia’s commitment to the conflict should give it a greater say over its own war effort and, more significantly, in imperial matters. Hughes was not satisfied with ‘the present system’, and he argued that under it Australia had ‘no voice’ and instead ‘the Parl of Gt [sic] Britain determines our destiny’.6 During his time in Britain, Hughes’ frenzied schedule of tours around the country allowed him to speak publicly about his ideas for the future of imperial relations. Arriving in London in January 1916, he stated these views in his speech to the British Empire Parliamentary Association: ‘I hold very decided opinions upon the relations between the Mother Country and the Dominions after the war. I hope you will have a policy which will make the word “Empire” mean something more than it has meant hitherto.’7 Although Hughes agitated for a change in imperial relations, he was not specific about what these changes might be.8 Yet his view that the dominions were ‘really independent nations, bound to Great Britain only by the ties of kinship, of self-interest and of common ideals’, highlighted his conviction that the dominion war effort and war experience could no longer be simply integrated into that of the empire.9 Hughes’ political agenda largely shaped the commemorative activity in London during 1916. The first Anzac Day on 25 April that year was a way to promote as well as commemorate the Australian war effort and proved a triumph of propaganda, acknowledging Australian soldiers’ sacrifice on an international stage and at the heart of the empire.10 Hughes and Keith Murdoch, correspondent for the Sun and Herald and Hughes’ unofficial press agent in London, were largely responsible for initiating the celebrations.11 After an unsuccessful year of costly battles for little strategic gain, a formal commemorative event in London allowed the British to celebrate the defeat on Gallipoli as a success of sorts. It also publicly recognised the role of Australia and New Zealand in the war effort, and allowed Hughes to consolidate his place in Whitehall.12 In conjunction with the New Zealand High Commission, Murdoch, with assistance from Fisher, planned the official event in London.13 More than a thousand Australian and around seven hundred New Zealand soldiers arrived at Waterloo Station and from there marched to Westminster Abbey, by way of the Strand, Trafalgar Square and Whitehall.14 An excited crowd, made up largely of women and said to be the greatest in London since the coronation of the King in 1911, greeted them.15 King

A RECORD FOR POSTERITY, 1916–17

19

George V and Queen Mary, as well as a number of important military and political figures, including the Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener, the Commander of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, General Sir Ian Hamilton, and Lieutenant General (later Field Marshal) William Birdwood, commander of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) attended a service in the Abbey.16 Afterwards Australian soldiers marched past Buckingham Palace, up the Mall and through Trafalgar Square to the Hotel Cecil. To the crowd assembled at the hotel, Hughes extolled the virtues of the Australian troops, proclaiming that the Anzacs had ‘won a place in the temple of the immortals’.17 Revelling in his role as a military leader and emphasising the distinct place of Australian soldiers within the British Empire, he declared: ‘The world has hailed you as heroes. The British Army has claimed you as brothers-in-arms. The citizens of the Empire are proud to call you kinsmen. Your glorious valour has uplifted your fellow-citizens to heights unseen before, inspiring them with a newer and nobler conception of life.’18 Hughes dominated proceedings and Fisher, increasingly sidelined by Hughes and Murdoch, was allowed to speak only briefly while Birdwood was given time for merely a short address. These Anzac Day activities in London were unique, and no other Allied troops were to be comparably honoured during the conflict.19 However, although the day was ostensibly to commemorate both the Australian and New Zealand soldiers, Hughes hijacked the day’s celebrations to promote the Australian war effort. Indeed, the New Zealand troops were significantly absent from the speeches at the Hotel Cecil and, rather than marching with Australian troops past the palace after the ceremony at Westminster Abbey, they returned to their base.20 The celebration of Anzac Day and the valorising narrative associated with it ‘did not unsettle the imperial imagining’.21 Rather it served to reinforce Australian soldiers as worthy sons of the empire.22 However, while the celebrations promoted the imperial cause, they also demonstrated the duality of Anglo-Australian loyalty – at once passionately imperial and deeply national. The day’s activities were indicative of a growing desire by Australian politicians and military officers to commemorate the Australian war experience as distinct within the broader experience of the British Empire. Dyson captured this sentiment in his cartoon entitled Anzac Day at the Abbey (1916), which depicts a distinctly Anzac soldier with a slouch hat in Westminster Abbey asking John Bull whether ‘all Britain’s illustrious

20

PAINTING WAR

dead lie here’. John Bull replies, ‘Not all, some lie at Gallipoli.’23 The image was part of a successful exhibition of Dyson’s war cartoons, held in 1916 at the Savoy Hotel and supported by the British-American Peace Centenary Committee – this was one attempt by the British to use Dyson’s cartoons as anti-German propaganda to encourage the United States to join the war as Britain’s ally.24 Fisher was so struck by the cartoon that he organised a full-page reprint of it in the British-Australasian in 1916.25 It was a summation of the complex loyalties of Anglo-Australia in this period, its popularity indicating a deep sense of pride at Australian soldiers having proved themselves worthy subjects of the British Empire as well as supporting the idea that they were distinct within it. Anzac Day celebrations in London as well as those in Australia indicated a public desire and need to commemorate the war and were not solely exercises in propaganda. The day’s activities spoke to a deep bedrock of personal loss. Patriotism was not the only theme, and Anzac Day celebrations were a powerful example of state-orchestrated commemoration converging with personal grief and private acts of remembrance – a reminder that official wartime commemorative practices were necessarily underpinned by powerful forms of unofficial activity.26 In Britain, the day’s rituals were not limited to the march in London but also focused on local sites of commemoration, primarily cemeteries where Australian and New Zealand soldiers were buried.27 In Australia, celebrations were, as Pearce described to Fisher, ‘informal’, organised by individual state governments.28 There was no centralised commemoration, although officials, such as the Governor-General, Sir Ronald Munro Ferguson, and the Governor of Victoria, Sir Arthur Stanley, attended the march in Sydney.29 However, despite the day’s message of imperial loyalty, the anniversary of the landings on Gallipoli was a day of mourning for many Australians.30 The presence of the Gallipoli campaign loomed large in the Australian imagination in 1916, and there was a lingering anxiety among many Australians about the campaign on the peninsula during the conflict and in the post-war years.31 This unease stemmed from the evacuation of the Gallipoli peninsula in December 1915 and was focused on the thousands of Australian graves there, which, with the withdrawal of Allied troops, were no longer tended by ‘comrades of the dead’ but by an unchristian enemy.32 Anzac Day was for some Australians ‘a substitute funeral’, and participants in the ceremony, particularly women, were aware of their role as mourners in the day’s activities.33 In 1916, the day was especially important in this sense, coming only four months after the withdrawal from Gallipoli.

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21

Anzac Day celebrations in 1916 were the first step in formalising the commemoration of Australia’s part in the war. As a commemorative ritual supported by the state and the people, the day sparked ideas about more tangible forms of commemoration and, in particular, commemorative practices that would capture Australia’s war experience in a permanent fashion. Australian soldiers had unofficially begun collecting artefacts of the fighting as soon as they landed on Gallipoli, seeing it as one way to ensure that there was a record of their experience on the peninsula.34 This had yet to be mirrored in official collecting practices and, according to Bean, the only official records from Gallipoli – collected on orders from General White – were unit diaries. The originals and their attached documents, such as operational orders, messages, aerial photographs, maps and reports, were held by British authorities, and the Australians were able to keep only duplicates of these diaries without the valuable attachments.35 Fuelled by Australian casualties on the Western Front in the second half of 1916, as Bean later argued, politicians and military leaders ‘felt that her records were a sacred possession to Australia’ and should be under Australian control.36 On 19 July at Fromelles, the 5th Australian Division incurred 5533 casualties in twenty-four hours in a feint to divert German troops away from British forces fighting on the Somme.37 Four days later, the Australians went into action at Pozières where, in under three months, they would suffer their greatest losses yet: 23 000 casualties in six weeks. To put this into context, these figures were greater than the 26 111 casualties incurred during the eight-month Gallipoli campaign.38 In many ways, the Somme rather than Gallipoli was the Australians’ real baptism of fire.39 With these mounting casualties, there was a growing concern in Australia as well as among expatriates in London that more needed to be done by the government to rescue the artefacts, documents and images that made up the history being created by the AIF on the battlefields of France.40 This concern was not specific to Australia alone, and people from many fighting nations desired to view or touch artefacts and images from the war as a way of attaining as close and as genuine or authentic a link as possible to the conflict. Bean’s comment that the records – or the generally used term at the time, ‘relics’, with all its quasi-religious connotations – contained a sense of the sacred stemmed from such objects being used by soldiers in the heat of battle. By virtue of their very proximity to the fighting, they were in many ways testaments to the events of the conflict, and directly viewing them could provide those at home

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with a sense of connection to the immensity of the First World War and to those fighting it.41

COLLECTING

RECORDS OF WAR

A number of plans for preserving Australia’s part in the war emerged during 1916 from individuals acting largely on their own initiative – indeed, as Winter reminds us, without individuals doing the work of remembrance, collective or shared memory could not exist.42 Fisher, historically an underestimated figure, was key to the emergence of Australia’s commemorative record and, in particular, the early development of an art scheme.43 He felt the need for a comprehensive collection of war records and took it upon himself to establish a war record-collecting section under the High Commission in 1916: ‘in order to make a proper record for national purposes of the Australian Imperial Force in the war, I decided to form a War Records Branch’.44 Initially, the War Records Branch, later known as the National War Records Office (NWRO), was responsible for collecting ‘war relics . . . for later transfer to Australia’.45 When, for instance, the AIF troops captured German artillery at Pozières, Birdwood gave Fisher authority for this equipment to be shipped to Australia.46 As with Hughes’ celebration of Anzac Day, Fisher’s motives in establishing a record collection under the High Commission appear, in part, to have been political. Having resigned as Australia’s fifth prime minister in 1915 owing to ill health, he was appointed to the less strenuous post of High Commissioner in London in October 1915.47 The flurry of press coverage that met his arrival in London in January 1916 allowed Fisher to promote Australia’s war effort, repeating the ‘last man and last shilling’ sentiment with which he had greeted the war as Leader of the Opposition in 1914 and declaring that ‘our job is not to talk but to act’.48 However, relations between Fisher and Hughes, his former deputy, were strained in 1916 and, rather than taking action, Fisher was increasingly sidelined while Hughes dominated the limelight. Fisher had been somewhat critical of the performance of his predecessor at Australia House, George Reid, and came to the position himself with a set of ideas about how to make the Australian High Commission more effective. In particular, and in line with his aim to foster a national sensibility during his prime ministership, Fisher was determined that as High Commissioner he would raise the awareness and status of Australia in Britain.49 However, although Fisher had supported Hughes as his

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23

replacement for Labor leader, Hughes believed that Fisher was hostile to him.50 As a result, Fisher was never Hughes’ ‘trusted ambassador’, and he was not made use of in any official capacity during Hughes’ visit to Britain in 1916.51 Instead, Murdoch played the political role that should have been Fisher’s.52 Neville Meaney writes that ‘Hughes did not, to the best of our knowledge, consult his former leader on any of the issues he took up with the British officials’.53 Indeed, Hughes’ refusal to allow Fisher any part in discussions during his visit, effectively ruined Fisher’s ambition that his position as High Commissioner be taken more seriously by the British Government and that he would play a more significant role in Anglo-Australian relations.54 Yet, if isolated from direct discussions about the conduct of the conflict and Australia’s role in it, Fisher took steps to remain involved in the nation’s war effort. In some cases, such as organising the Anzac Day service in London, his efforts continued to be appropriated by Hughes.55 However, in others he was more successful, seen in his role protecting the use of the word ‘Anzac’ from commercial exploitation and his work as one of the first members of the Imperial War Graves Commission.56 Motivated by a genuine compassion for the Australian soldier, Fisher set about finding avenues to sustain the troops at the front and to promote the AIF’s achievements in the war. Commenting that ‘perhaps the greatest need of the Australian soldier and sailor is current news from his own distant country’, he oversaw the creation in 1916 of the Anzac Bulletin, a newspaper published through the Publicity Branch of the High Commission. It was issued to ‘trench and training camp alike’ and provided news of Australia specifically for the troops.57 Further, he ensured that the Publicity Branch was also responsible for promoting the growing interest in Australia’s ‘effective participation in the War’, particularly in the British press.58 Fisher’s establishment of the National War Records Office must be positioned in this context. In addition to artefacts from the battlefield and dispatches relating to the AIF, Fisher also collected visual material under the National War Records Office, seeing its significance for publicity as well as record. He began amassing both Australian film footage of the war and copies of British official footage as well as photographs relating to the AIF. While he used these to promote Australia’s war effort, for example, in the sale of official photographs to the press in Britain, Canada, the United States and Australia, he was also conscious of their commemorative value and stored copies for a more lasting record. Indeed, he saw the ‘historical value’ of the photographs and the other material beginning to

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be amassed under the National War Records Office as ‘suitable for presentation in an Australian National Museum’.59 Fisher was not alone in his ideas for a national collection of war records, and while he was establishing the National War Records Office in London, on the Western Front Bean was simultaneously developing plans for preserving Australia’s wartime history. Bean’s ideas for a collection of war records developed during the time he spent at Pozières in 1916 – during the same period of fighting in which Duncan Chapman lost his life.60 He was deeply affected by the fighting he witnessed there, later claiming that the Windmill at Pozières – the highest point captured by the 2nd Division on 5 August – marked ‘a ridge more densely sown with Australian sacrifice than any other place on earth’.61 Bean’s ideas for a war collection were motivated by an intense feeling of responsibility to Australian soldiers. He believed the Australian war experience should be differentiated from others within the empire. In his role editing The Anzac Book, his selection of soldiers’ writings and drawings privileged an image of the Anzac as a tough, droll and experienced fighter, compared to the ineffective British.62 Although he personally collected artefacts and took detailed notes in his diary for the war history he would later write, Bean felt that more needed to be done to capture and preserve the Australian experience of the conflict. His ideas had first emerged on Gallipoli, where he had become aware of the absence of any official collection of war photographs, writings from the combatants or objects relating to the Australian involvement in this campaign.63 Influenced by childhood visits to the battlefield of Waterloo and a small military museum he visited with his father while there, Bean was predisposed towards the notion of a war museum as the form a memorial to Australian soldiers might take.64 Bean approached General White about the possibility of a national war museum and contacted Pearce offering ‘to help classify and describe on labels or in catalogues for the public the war exhibits’ should ‘a national museum at Canberra’ be established.65 While both Bean and Fisher’s ideas for a national museum that would house a specifically Australian collection of war objects were vague in 1916, their steps towards amassing a collection emerged at a time when there was a growing interest in war records from Australian state governments. Raphael Samuel has suggested that local histories are, paradoxically, more nationalistic than national histories, given that they do not need to encompass as wide a spectrum of group experiences and memories as national histories must.66 In Australia, a nation so recently

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25

federated, strong local loyalties persisted.67 State interest in war records potentially conflicted with ideas for a federal collection. However, this contest over the memory of the war was soon resolved. In response to the Queensland Government’s request in 1916 for a machine gun captured by the 9th Battalion, a battalion raised almost exclusively by that state, the Department of Defence realised that ‘some policy regarding their disposal [i.e. trophies] should be adopted’. Several methods of distribution were discussed, but it was thought that since ‘the troops were raised by Australia as a whole . . . no state has a claim over another for any trophy’. Although the department acknowledged that state governments might object to ‘undue centralization by the Commonwealth’, in 1917 it decided that ‘by placing them in one place, and that the Federal Capital, they are accessible as a complete collection to all citizens of the country’.68

THE CANADIAN

INFLUENCE

The Canadians, who had established their own war records office separate from the British in early 1916, were a powerful inspiration for Australian officials’ emerging ideas about a national collecting scheme. Like their Australian counterparts, Canadian officials and expatriates in London, particularly Lord Beaverbrook, were motivated by a desire to differentiate their nation’s war effort within the British Empire. Beaverbrook – perhaps one of the clearest examples of the part played by individual agency in shaping national memory – was the self-designated historian and publicist for the CEF overseas.69 Exercising considerable influence in both British and Canadian politics, Beaverbrook, like Hughes and Fisher, was a dual nationalist, committed to the British war effort but deeply patriotic about Canada’s role in it. A millionaire before the age of 30, by all accounts Beaverbrook was an energetic and shrewd man who transformed the fields he turned his hand to, including business and politics. He used his experience as a businessman, his media connections, his position as a Member of Parliament and his close relationships with military leaders and politicians in both Britain and Canada to carve out a role for himself that far exceeded his official appointment as ‘Canada’s Eye Witness’, a position that involved reporting overseas wartime information to the Canadian Government, and allowed him to promote as well as preserve the Canadian war experience.70 Although having undertaken work connected with records of the CEF since 1915 when appointed by the Canadian Privy Council as Eye Witness, Beaverbrook was inspired to do more after the Second Battle of

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Ypres in April 1915, in which Canadian soldiers held the line against the first gas attack targeting British forces in the war.71 The Canadians suffered huge casualties in this attack: approximately 6000 casualties in two days, and Beaverbrook wrote a widely acclaimed account of the battle that, as he himself claimed, met with ‘considerable favour’.72 As a result of this much-admired account and supported by both the Canadian Prime Minister, Robert Borden, and the Minister of Militia and Defence, Sir Sam Hughes, in May 1915 Beaverbrook acquired the new role of Official Canadian Records Officer.73 Convinced by the events at Ypres that a specific and comprehensive Canadian war collection was needed to record and publicise the nation’s part in the war, he became deeply concerned that no attempt was being made systematically to collect the vast amount of material relating to the CEF that he believed would be of ‘extraordinary importance’ to Canada. He was anxious that a comprehensive scheme be established, particularly as he was aware that the Canadian records held by the War Office were ‘already in [a] state of chaos’ and warned Borden that ‘under existing conditions much valuable material will be lost unless [a] proper system is put into shape at once’. He took matters into his own hands early in 1916, requesting a grant of $25 000 from the Canadian Government to establish a specifically Canadian record office for the ‘purpose of compiling historical records of Canadian Troops’.74 Borden granted Beaverbrook these funds, and the Canadian War Records Office was established in London, in January 1916. The Prime Minister was not the only influential figure to favour Beaverbrook’s plans, and Sir Sam Hughes as well as the Canadian High Commissioner to London, Sir George Perley, and the Minister of Overseas Military Forces, Sir Albert Kemp, who were all keen for Canada’s war experience to gain more recognition in Britain, strongly supported Beaverbrook’s efforts.75 However, like Fisher and Bean’s plans, Beaverbrook’s scheme faced potential opposition at home. Canada already had a federal recordcollecting authority in the Public Archives of Canada, established as the Dominion Archives in 1872, which was managed by the dominion archivist Arthur Doughty. Under Doughty, the Public Archives had built up a collection of documents, photographs, maps and even art and artefacts relating to Canada’s history.76 Seeing the collecting of records of the First World War as falling within his purview as dominion archivist, Doughty was convinced that the Canadian War Records Office presented a threat to his role and the Public Archive’s collection and that Beaverbrook was set on taking his position.77 Doughty, with the intention of assuming

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27

control of the Canadian War Records Office, visited London in mid1916.78 On his arrival he announced that ‘as Dominion Archivist, all Canadian records – civil, naval, and military were by statute under his control’.79 However, Beaverbrook, perhaps realising he had exceeded his role in this instance, appeased Doughty by promising that all records collected under the Canadian War Records Office would be handed over at the end of the war to the Public Archives and persuaded him to surrender control until then.80 Doughty appeared satisfied that Beaverbrook had no intention of taking his job or giving the records to a British authority and commented to Borden that Beaverbrook was ‘evidently in earnest about it [Canadian War Records Office] and is determined to make it a success’. He generously stated that Beaverbrook was ‘the right man in the right place’.81 Beaverbrook’s aim for the Canadian War Records Office was to collect and classify war records relating specifically to the part played by Canada in the war. Again acting on his own initiative, and using his new position as CEF Record Officer and his influence in London, Beaverbrook obtained permission from the British Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence to collect the original Canadian war diaries and, significantly, their attachments – the first dominion to take control of its own records. This was a significant move, for, as Canadian historian Tim Cook writes, ‘The nation that oversees its own archives is able to shape and manufacture its own history and eventually guard its own memory.’82 Beaverbrook set about collecting a range of records, claiming that he intended not ‘to supply an essay for the moment, but a possession for all time’ – although he was also acutely aware of the value of the collection for publicity and used it to promote Canada’s war efforts in Britain, particularly in the British press. Under Beaverbrook’s management, the Canadian War Records Office collected official reports, photographs and maps in addition to the original war diaries.83 The task of compiling such a broad record was, as he commented to Borden, ‘extraordinarily intricate and laborious’, but he was convinced that it was essential for Canada and would ‘ultimately be required for the Canadian archives, and for the use of Canadian historians’.84 He later claimed that the work of the Canadian War Records Office had ‘laid up for the enjoyment of posterity a treasure which the Canada of the future will appreciate’.85 The Canadian War Records Office provided a model to which Australian officials aspired, and spurred them on in their plans of recordcollecting for Australia. As Smart declared to Beaverbrook, ‘It was your example which made us get a move on.’86 Beaverbrook not only provided inspiration but also gave generously of his own experience and was

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thanked by Smart on behalf of the High Commission and the Australian War Records Section ‘for the great help you gave Australia in starting our War Records organisation . . . [W]e are ever indebted to you for giving so readily your experience.’87 What was most appealing to the Australians was the fact that Beaverbrook had managed to persuade the British to allow him the authority to collect Canadian records. Further, the fact that he had obtained authority from the British to keep the originals and attachments of the Canadian war diaries, copies of which were kept with British records, was a source of deep inspiration, particularly to Bean. After visiting the Canadian War Records Office in London in mid-1916, Bean was convinced that ‘what had been granted to Canada, would not be denied to us’ and, with the support of General White and help of General Anderson, liaison officer between the British War Office and the Australian Government, successfully lobbied the British for permission to keep the originals of Australia’s war diaries.88 Fisher was also inspired by Beaverbrook’s work for the Canadian War Records Office and, in proposing an expansion of the National War Records Office in 1917, suggested to Hughes that it follow the example set by the Canadians: ‘consider nucleus of War Record Office should be set up as has been already done by Canada for purpose of Collection of historical material, photographs, sketches, trophies etc. of Australia’s part in the War [sic]’.89

IMPERIAL

VERSUS NATIONAL COLLECTIONS

The development and expansion of collections created by and for the dominions were soon stalled by British ideas for their own collection of war records. While the British had been slow to work out their collecting policy, from 1916 ideas about a collection encompassing nearly every aspect of the war effort in a range of forms, including maps, photographs, artefacts, paintings and sculpture, began to circulate. They were formalised in March 1917 when the British Government sanctioned the establishment of a National War Museum (known from 1918 onwards as the Imperial War Museum).90 The proposed scope of the collection was impressive, with Sir Martin Conway, the museum’s director, claiming that it would include records from ‘all parts of the world war’, including the mobilisation of armies and the production of munitions at home and in other parts of the empire as well as the medical services and women’s war work. Significantly, he also declared that the collection would include ‘all activities called forth by the war at home, in the Dominions, and in India, at all the fronts and on the sea’.91 Conway

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29

reiterated his goal for the Imperial War Museum collections to encompass an imperial war experience, stating that ‘[t]he Museum is intended to commemorate the naval and military effort of the whole Empire, and will include representative exhibits exemplifying the work of the Dominions and Indian Contingents’.92 To this end, the Imperial War Museum Organising Committee established a Dominion Sub-Committee officially to ‘deal with the interests of the Dominions’ for the museum’s collection, and the British Government approached the governors-general of Australia and Canada and other dominions and colonies on the issues of the ‘allocation of trophies’.93 This focus on an imperial collecting policy was problematic for the likes of Fisher and Bean as well as Beaverbrook as it threatened to absorb the distinctive dominion war experience into the broader experience of the British Empire. Further, the War Office announcement that ‘the National War Museum shall have the first call on all War Material and Captured Enemy Trophies on the conclusion of the war’ threatened to stymie Australian and Canadian hopes for nationally based collections.94 The Imperial War Museum’s announcement was, not surprisingly, met with indignation from Australian and Canadian officials. Beaverbrook took exception to the appropriation of trophies for the Imperial War Museum. He was particularly displeased at the Canadian Government’s acquiescence with this policy and told Bean that he would ‘fight this tooth and nail’.95 Bean agreed that the practice was unfair, commenting that the Dominion Sub-Committee was ‘very inequitably . . . given first pick of all British and Dominion trophies’.96 However, while the Canadian Government agreed to the policy, the Australian Government had little intention of yielding significant records to the British.97 Although Sir Edward Kemp stated that the policy had not brought Canada ‘any embarrassment or difficulty, as they [the British] have not to date desired to keep any Canadian trophies’, he suggested to Borden that the agreement be cancelled and pointed out that the ‘Australian Government . . . refused outright any consent to this arrangement and insisted on their complete right to dispose of all trophies captured by their own troops’.98 It was only in December 1918 that Doughty was appointed to the Commission on War Records and War Trophies, where he was able to start negotiating the release of records captured by the CEF and to organise their shipment to Canada and distribution across the country.99 The British appear to have assumed that all dominions had agreed to the announcement, and the Australian Government faced some difficulties in clarifying this misunderstanding. Bean acknowledged that it was ‘in the

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interests of all parties that, while the Dominion Museums should not be inferior in rights to the Imperial Museum, there should be a most willing co-operation between all these museums as equals’.100 However, there was a feeling among military leaders and politicians that Australia would have a stronger claim to the nation’s war records if a museum were founded in the same vein as the one in London.101 Consequently, the development of the Imperial War Museum, which had the potential to subsume the dominion’s war experience within that of the empire, inspired Australian officials to begin more serious discussions about a national museum.

IDEAS

FOR AN

AUSTRALIAN

WAR MUSEUM

Bean’s initial suggestions for a national war museum in 1916 were strongly supported by General White, who lobbied the Department of Defence for support for this plan during 1917. White was particularly concerned about the imperial collecting policy adopted by the British and commented that while it was ‘all very well as far as it goes’, it could be argued that ‘for educational purposes, museums in the Dominions to which the Imperial army should contribute would be of greater educational value’. He was adamant that ‘we should at the same time insist that the more important and representative trophies are retained in Australia’. White urged the government to establish a museum ‘on a big and broad scale’, and to make it ‘really national’, the value of which he claimed would be ‘immense’.102 In August 1917 Bean renewed his suggestion to Thomas Trumble, Secretary of the Department of Defence, and Pearce, requesting that steps be taken ‘for the proper preservation in the future of our national records and trophies’, the foundation of which was considered by both Bean and Fisher to be the National War Records Office collection of records.103 Bean outlined his plans for a museum the following month in an article for the Commonwealth of Australia Gazette. An example of the dual loyalties of Australia at this time, the article placed the Australian war experience within an historic British martial tradition, Bean claiming that if Australia had its own war museum it would be ‘as interesting to visitors from Europe or America and to Australians themselves as are the great London collections, with their relics of Nelson and Wellington, the Crimea, the Mutiny, and the Soudan, to-day’.104 However, he also argued that ‘[E]very country after this war will have its war museums and galleries, and its library of records rendered sacred by the millions of gallant

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precious lives laid down in their making’, and declared that ‘[S]ome day a magnificent collection in Australia will be the equal of them all’.105 In addition to the challenge presented by British collecting policies, Fisher, Bean and White’s plans for a federal museum housing Australia’s war records faced potential rivalry from state institutions during this period. Ideas about a national war museum emerged during an era when, as Stuart Macintyre argues, Australians were beginning to ‘institutionalise the past’.106 As Tom Griffiths has explored, the preservation movement in Australia emerged in the late nineteenth century with the establishment of several historical societies, which after Australia federated became state associations. These societies took ‘preserving and recording as their primary aims’ and ‘were more in search of a national past than a local one’.107 During the war, just over a decade after Federation, Australia’s federal institutions remained fairly embryonic. Despite already having announced that any museum would be a national one established in Canberra, the government came under pressure to elucidate its decision about the allocation of trophies in Australia. Sir Harry Weedon and Mr Sutherland, both trustees of the Exhibition Building in Melbourne, approached Pearce in late 1917 suggesting that since ‘the Federal Government has not any Institution where these trophies can be fittingly displayed, the Exhibition be used for this purpose either permanently or temporarily under the care of the Trustees’.108 Weedon made it clear that the aim of the trustees was to aid the government in preserving ‘intact a collection of relics and trophies which will eventually become a fitting memorial to the part Australia has taken in the War’ and that, when the government desired it, the collection would be immediately handed over ‘for permanent exhibition in the Federal Capital’.109 However, while Cabinet approved the trustees’ proposal, they were anxious to confirm that the collection would continue to be the property of the federal government. To ensure this, it established an Australian War Museum Committee (AWMC) to manage developments at the Exhibition Building, made up of the Minister for the Navy, the Minister for Defence, the Minister for Home and Territories and the chairman of the Exhibition Building.110 Those in London and France were unaware of decisions being made in Melbourne. Although Fisher and Bean believed that some of the war records might be allocated to state museums, this would only be ‘after providing for the National one’.111 Weedon’s plan and the Department of Defence’s consideration of ‘more than one collection of war exhibits’ – a decision it deferred until the end of the war – presented potential

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competition.112 Further, while Weedon proposed simply to house and display war trophies, Bean’s suggestion – like Conway’s idea for a British ‘War Museum as a War Memorial’ – was that the government amass a diverse collection of records that would contain both objects suitable for display in a museum as well as documentary material for research purposes as a memorial to the Australian soldiers.113 Yet, when Pearce received Bean’s suggestion, he appears to have been uninterested in or unaware of the divergence between Bean and Weedon’s proposals.114 Possibly believing that the newly formed Museum Committee in Melbourne would perform the function proposed by Bean, he suggested that ‘Capt. Bean could be informed of action taken here [in Melbourne]. High Commissioner . . . ought also be informed [sic].’115 However, as a result of Bean and White’s insistence that an office in contact with the front during the war was necessary to preserve the records immediately, rather than waiting until the war’s end, Pearce eventually acknowledged the difference between the two proposals. Cabling AIF Headquarters in November 1917, he announced that the government had ‘decided [to] establish [a] National War Museum’.116 He explained that arrangements had been made for the local collection and display of letters and photographs – the Australian public having been asked to donate records in their possession – under the trustees of the Exhibition Building and that arrangements had also been made for the overseas collecting of war records for the National War Museum under the auspices of the High Commission and AIF Headquarters.117

WAR

ART:

‘A N A U S T R A L I A N

POINT OF VIEW’

It was among these diverse commemorative endeavours that Dyson made his proposal to Fisher in August 1916 to ‘interpret in a series of drawings, for national preservation, the sentiments and special Australian characteristics’ of the AIF in France. He proposed that to create such a record it was necessary that he, as an Australian artist, witness first-hand the troops in France: ‘My drawings would be such studies of Australian soldiers and their neighbours as would be suggested to me by personal contact with our men in their European surroundings.’118 It is possible that Dyson was inspired by the work of Australian soldier artist Ellis Silas, whose sketchbook and diary from his time on Gallipoli, Crusading at ANZAC Anno Domini 1915, had been published earlier that year with forewords by Sir Ian Hamilton and Birdwood.119 Silas’s aim had been to depict ‘[w]ar as the soldier sees it, shorn of all its pomp

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33

and circumstance’ and to create what he called ‘a truthful record’ of the Australian soldiers during the Gallipoli campaign.120 Dyson was perhaps also stimulated by the power of an artistic record created from first-hand experience. That artists should personally witness the battlefield was a popular idea at the time, particularly as the images in the illustrated press were widely discredited as being imagined and drawn by artists who had never seen a battlefield.121 His plans were also likely influenced in some part by British steps to secure images of the war in 1916. Under the direction of Charles Masterman who managed Wellington House, a branch of the British Government responsible for disseminating war propaganda, the Scottish printmaker Muirhead Bone was sent to the Western Front as the official British war artist in July – one month before Dyson offered his expertise to Fisher. Bone’s task was to produce images not only for use as propaganda but also as a record for posterity.122 Dyson was well known for his satirical cartoons both in Australia and in Britain, his war images in particular having consolidated his reputation during the first years of the conflict. His early career had involved drawing caricatures of notable people for the Bulletin, a nationalist cultural and political magazine that focused on such themes as mateship in the dominion, as well as working for the Bulletin’s sister magazine, the Lone Hand, which contained similar themes. In 1910 he and his wife Ruby (née Lindsey) moved to London, where he worked for a variety of magazines and newspapers, such as the Weekly Despatch. However, it was through his work as chief cartoonist for the Daily Herald from 1912 that he made his name in Britain, as he was given the freedom to articulate his personal views and ideas in his art.123 Dyson’s images were powerful because of his sense of compassion, his humanity and his biting wit. His pre-war cartoons were famous for their satirical comment on the current state of European politics. In 1915, a booklet of these cartoons was published entitled Kultur Cartoons, consisting of twenty works with an introduction by no less than H.G. Wells, one of the most popular and prolific British writers of the time.124 In his introduction to the 1915 exhibition, Wells praised Dyson’s work stating that Dyson ‘turns his passionate gift against Berlin’.125 While drawing on the anti-German sentiment of the war years in such images as Stepping Stones to Higher Things (c. 1915–16), which shows the Kaiser striding up a pile of skulls, Dyson’s cartoons indicated a wider disgust with the conflict and a concern for the soldiers caught up in it, and he strongly satirised the war and those prosecuting it.126 Another example of this is Duel End? ‘Honour is satisfied’ (1915) in which Dyson portrayed two

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generals embracing while standing at the top of a mountain of corpses. London critics described this as ‘a true indictment of all militarism’ and ‘a picture for all time’.127 In the archive Dyson’s is an elusive voice, filtering down only through sporadic correspondence with relatives and friends, so that the reasons that led him to offer his services to the Australian Government remain unclear – although it can be assumed that his motivations were diverse and complex. His compassion for the ordinary man pitted against the powers-that-be, a constant theme in his pre-war work, led him to sympathise deeply with the plight of the ordinary soldier. These sentiments, expressed in his cartoons, go some way towards explaining his desire to sketch the AIF in France. Dyson was also driven by deep nationalistic sentiments that had not diminished despite his time in Britain, and his biographer, Ross McMullin, suggests that he attempted to enlist in the AIF but was unable to do so from England.128 However, Dyson appeared increasingly anxious about the question of his possible military service for the British Army. While awaiting official permission to go to the front as an official war artist, he appeared before the Army Council Tribunal to discuss active service. However, with the support of the High Commission, the War Office excused him.129 Offering his artistic services to the Australian Army was perhaps one way not only of avoiding military service within the British Army but also of, as he commented, ‘utilizing my services with the Australian Army’, combining both his expertise and his patriotism.130 The opportunity to patronise the creation of a series of sketches focusing on the Australian soldier by an Australian artist appealed deeply to Fisher. On receiving Dyson’s proposal, he immediately cabled Pearce, ‘strongly recommend Dyson, Cartoonist, be given authority to visit France to gather impressions of Australians at war from an Australian point of view’.131 Fisher’s keen interest in and support for Dyson’s proposal is not surprising given that while Prime Minister he had emerged as a patron of the arts.132 In line with his desire to cultivate a national sensibility, Fisher championed local art, imposing a duty on imported paintings to encourage wider support of the work produced by Australian artists.133 During his time in parliament, Fisher had awarded a number of valuable commissions to artists of the Heidelberg School, and he himself patronised their work, placing their paintings in his house in St Kilda.134 The use of art to capture and preserve Australia’s history was not new to Fisher. Indeed, he was responsible for founding the nation’s first government-funded art program, which commissioned Australian artists

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35

to paint figures significant to Australian public life and important national events. At a suggestion from renowned Australian artist Tom Roberts, who urged the government to ‘consider the importance of acting early . . . and let these records be painted . . . to give faithful representations of the first leaders of the Commonwealth’, Fisher established the Historic Memorials Committee in 1911.135 This committee was the first body of the federal government to have funding devoted solely to commissioning art, and its objective was to manage the production of ‘Historic Memorials of Representative Men’, such as former prime ministers and speakers of the House of Representatives.136 The members of the Historic Memorials Committee were the Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition, Speaker of the House of Representatives, President of the Senate, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate and the Vice-President of the Executive Council. However, it was apparent to Fisher and the other members of the Historic Memorials Committee that advice on artistic matters was necessary, and the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board, which was attached to the Historic Memorials Committee, was formed to recommend artists and subjects for commissions as well as to inspect the aesthetic quality of completed works.137 Although Fisher was also aware of the value of photography and film in both promoting and preserving Australia’s war experience – he appointed Frank Hurley as official photographer in mid-1916 – it appears that it was not until he was approached by Dyson that he began to consider the potential for a collection of war art. His patronage of Australian art at both official and personal levels made him open to being persuaded by Dyson’s proposal. Further, Dyson was not unknown to Fisher. A drawing of Fisher by Dyson appeared in the Graphic in 1911, presumably executed while Fisher was in London for the Imperial Conference that year, which coincided with the coronation of King George V.138 Indeed, Fisher was familiar with and partial to Dyson’s work and his war cartoons in particular, having arranged for Anzac Day at the Abbey to be published in the British-Australasian earlier that year. Dyson also endeared himself further to Fisher by offering his services without any request for payment.139 Fisher sought permission and support to proceed with Dyson’s proposal from political and military authorities. Although there is little evidence in the archives as to whether Fisher approached Hughes, it seems likely that the two discussed the matter in person. In late 1916, Hughes certainly eagerly accepted an offer from Dyson of around twenty of his war cartoons, which he suggested might be ‘of some future historical

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interest as contemporary comment on the war in which Australia has figured so honourably’, and there is no evidence that Hughes opposed Fisher’s steps to obtain permission for Dyson to visit the front.140 In requesting authorisation for Dyson to go to France, Fisher wrote to Pearce, who at the time was Acting Prime Minister and had the authority to grant permission for Dyson’s proposal. Pearce, having already floated the idea of an official history of the AIF with Bean, appeared keen for a specifically Australian art record of the conflict, replying immediately: ‘Dyson approved if War Office agree.’141 Fisher also discussed the matter with Birdwood on a visit to the front with Hughes in 1916, which also suggests that Hughes was aware of the idea.142 Birdwood – considered an honorary ‘Anzac’ by Australian authorities – was conscious of the importance of war records, seeing their use in both preserving the achievements of the soldiers under his command and providing a ‘good impetus to recruiting’ in Australia.143 He often sent photographs and battlefield artefacts that he and his troops collected at the front to Pearce or Fisher to be shipped to Australia.144 Fisher found in Birdwood a keen advocate for Dyson’s idea of a series of war sketches of the troops, and he promised ‘to help in any way in the matter, for I am sure it can do nothing but good if [Dyson] is permitted to come’.145 Further, Birdwood proposed that if Dyson was given permission to travel to France, he would ‘be glad to treat Mr Dyson exactly in the same way as we do Bean, i.e. he will be provided with rations, quarters’. Dyson took up this offer on his visit to the Western Front later that year.146 Although Fisher met with no opposition from Australian authorities, he faced difficulties from the British in obtaining permission for Dyson to visit the front. He approached Birdwood for ‘any observations or suggestions . . . on Mr Dyson’s proposals which would enable the object aimed at to be attained, viz., to obtain for Australia valuable pictorial records’.147 Birdwood, although supportive of the proposal, suggested that the best course of action would be for the High Commission to contact the War Office because he did ‘not think that GHQ . . . would look at it [Dyson’s proposal], if the ball were set rolling from this side’.148 However, the British War Office saw no need for an Australian war artist to go across to France since Bone, as the official British war artist, was already making sketches for the British forces. Consequently, in October 1916 Dyson received notification that he could not go to the front as an Australian artist because ‘for the present no permanent artist can be appointed in addition to the official artist now serving with the British Armies in France’.149 Dyson was deeply frustrated at the decision given

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37

that, as he pointed out, the War Office had granted permission for Richard Jack, a British artist painting for the Canadians, ‘to do some Canadian picture or pictures at the front’.150 Indeed, Dyson and Fisher saw the War Office decision as particularly discouraging since the Canadians’ plans to employ an official artist had emerged in September 1916, one month after Dyson’s. However, they were granted permission in November 1916 to attach Jack as the Canadian official artist to the CEF.151 Yet the Canadians had also initially faced opposition from the British to their request to appoint Jack. Beaverbrook was frustrated with the War Office and complained to Sir Sam Hughes that while ‘[a]n English artist has been in France for some time our man is held up’.152 It was not until he, with the help of Harold Harmsworth, Lord Rothermere, the British newspaper tycoon, established the Canadian War Memorials Fund (CWMF) on 17 November 1916 that Jack was allowed to go to the front in an official capacity.153 The CWMF was established under the War Charities Act of September 1916, which required every organisation collecting funds for charitable purposes to register, and was supported by Perley and Borden. Rothermere proposed that artists employed by the CWMF be attached to the CEF with an honorary rank and the Canadian Government pay their salary accordingly.154 In November – just less than two weeks after the CWMF was established – the Overseas Military Forces of Canada, with War Office permission, granted Jack an honorary commission of major for six months in the CEF.155 There is little evidence to suggest why the War Office made an exception for Jack but not Dyson. One possibility is that Jack was a well-known British painter who was an associate of the Royal Academy whereas Dyson was an antipodean caricaturist with strong socialist politics. Further, Beaverbrook’s connections in London, such as his friendship with Lord Rothermere, appear to have played an important part in the decision to send Jack to the front. As it happened, Dyson did finally receive a concession of sorts. Although he was not granted permission to travel to France as Australia’s official war artist, the War Office offered him a place on the weekly parties to the front: ‘should the High Commissioner of the Commonwealth of Australia desire it, Mr Dyson may visit the British Front in one of the weekly parties in which are occasionally included visitors whom the Council desire to send out for some special object’.156 In November the Australian press reported that Dyson had ‘overcome the objections of the War Office’ and was preparing to go to the front to sketch the AIF.157 However, this was not quite accurate as the War Office

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remained opposed to the idea of Dyson becoming an official war artist. In early December the War Office informed Fisher that ‘although it has been found impossible to accept Mr Dyson in a permanent capacity at General Headquarters, France, there is no objection to his visiting our Front in France for a few days, and accompanying the Official Artist [Bone] while visiting suitable portions of the battle areas’.158 A way to overcome the War Office’s objections was finally discovered in mid-December. Dyson, like Jack in the CEF, was given a temporary and honorary commission as lieutenant in the AIF on 10 December, before leaving on one of the War Office’s shorter visits to France on 12 December 1916.159 Three days later, on the recommendation of Fisher, Birdwood appointed Dyson as ‘an official war artist with the AIF’.160

COMPETING

IDEAS

Dyson was not alone in seeing artists’ potential to capture an Australian war experience. Some months before Dyson made his proposal to Fisher, Brigadier General John Gellibrand, commander of the 6th Infantry Brigade, expressed the view that sketches would be ‘valuable either to the official historian or the Commonwealth’. Determined that such a ‘record should be taken if possible’, he, as Bean later commented, ‘very broadmindedly’ allowed Private Frank Crozier, one of the artists who had contributed to The Anzac Book, to explore the front. Instructing Crozier to serve as a runner, Gellibrand ensured that the artist could see as much of the battlefield as possible ‘and get what sketches he could of Pozières, and its surroundings, during those five weeks when our battle was raging there’.161 Bean also saw the value of using art. He had become aware of the artistic talent within the AIF in his role as editor of The Anzac Book, which included numerous illustrations produced by soldiers serving on Gallipoli. His ideas developed further when, during the battle of Pozières, he met Crozier and saw his drawings of the fighting. Bean was deeply impressed by Crozier’s numerous notes and sketches of the battlefield, which he declared ‘were most accurate and well drawn’. He suggested that ‘some arrangement might be made for the painting which results from these Sketches . . . to be acquired for an Australian National Gallery’. Further, he proposed that if Crozier’s work was of a high standard, a series of five paintings might be ordered, which he argued ‘would be invaluable for a Federal National Gallery of art which I suppose will someday spring into existence’.162

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39

Consequently, at the same time that Fisher was garnering support for Dyson’s proposal, Bean began lobbying Pearce for the use of artists serving in the AIF to paint their frontline experience. He suggested that Anzac Book artists who were soldiers in the field, such as David Barker, Cyril Leyshon-White and Frederick Collis, whose pen name was Ted Colles, might be employed as well, and proposed that ‘if they care to turn out one historical picture each of what they actually saw (or know for certain to be accurate) the Government would be prepared to consider the purchase of such pictures for the nation’.163 Pearce, who had already shown keen support for Dyson’s proposal, was sympathetic to Bean’s idea. However, aware of what Fisher was planning with Dyson and perhaps also conscious that so far the most comprehensive collection of war records had been amassed under the High Commission, he contacted Hughes with the suggestion that Fisher be consulted.164 Hughes approved of Bean’s idea and, following Pearce’s suggestion, requested Fisher’s advice: ‘Government prepared give assurance other best known Anzac Book artists will consider purchase one accurate historical picture from each. Glad to know your views this proposal [sic].’165 Fisher was supportive of Bean’s proposal and, after discussing it with him in person, he recommended that Crozier, White and Collis should ‘each paint a picture of the Australian Troops in action as seen by them’.166 Fisher even developed Bean’s idea further. Rather than limiting commissions to the three Anzac Book artists, he suggested that in addition ‘competent men in the AIF might be invited to submit sketches and pictures . . . to form part of the collection for the Commonwealth Government’. To ensure the quality of these images, he advised that they ‘be judged at regular intervals by an Honorary Committee’ and that, if accepted, they should be ‘paid for at market rates’. The War Office, conceivably because the men were already serving in the AIF, had no objection to this proposal but insisted that the names of contributors be submitted to them and that the images produced be kept as Australian records.167 Hughes also put up no opposition to Fisher’s expansion of Bean’s idea and encouraged him to appoint members of the honorary committee.168 To this and Dyson’s proposal was added a third: the employment of acclaimed expatriate artists, which was suggested by prominent figures in Australia’s art community. In early 1917, Baldwin Spencer, renowned anthropologist and art connoisseur, and Bertram Mackennal, celebrated Australian sculptor, contacted Fisher on behalf of Arthur Streeton, an eminent expatriate landscape painter, suggesting that paintings should be

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made of significant battles in which Australian troops took part.169 Conceived separately from Dyson’s and Bean’s proposals, their ideas were nevertheless remarkably similar. They ‘strongly represented that Australia should have paintings made of Battlefields for example Pozières’, and argued that these would be ‘associated with Australian gallantry’, prove invaluable to Australia’s history and ‘find [a] worthy home in [the] new Capital’. Rather than employing talented artists from the ranks of the AIF as Bean had suggested, Spencer and Mackennal recommended the use of distinguished expatriate Australian artists – specifically Arthur Streeton as a landscape painter.170 Initially it seems that Fisher took no direct action regarding this suggestion. A rather disgruntled Streeton later claimed that although he had offered his services to the High Commission, he withdrew his offer having received no word from Fisher after eight months.171 However, in mid-1917 Fisher did give permission for the expansion of the art scheme to include expatriate artists, although whether these steps were influenced by Spencer and Mackennal’s earlier proposal remains unclear. One possible explanation for the delay is that while the War Office had approved employing AIF artists, Fisher had been continuously unsuccessful in gaining authority to provide the facilities required for Dyson, or any other civilian artist, to paint the war at this time.172 There were striking similarities between Gellibrand and Bean’s proposal and Spencer, Mackennal and Streeton’s. Most notable was that both plans emphasised the immediacy of images drawn from first-hand experience of the war and their belief in the importance of these for national posterity. It is likely that these ideas influenced Fisher’s development of a more comprehensive war art program.

A

VISUAL RECORD OF WAR

The artworks that were being commissioned in these various ways formed one strand of Australia’s visual record of the First World War. War has a long history of being visually reported in officially commissioned sketches and paintings.173 During the First World War, Charles Masterman, for instance, was convinced that ‘accurate information about the war [could be conveyed] through the eye of the artist’. When he hired Bone in 1916, he claimed that it was ‘to make appropriate war scenes at the Front and in this country for the purpose both of propaganda at the present time and of historical record in the future’ – publicity and history were not mutually exclusive.174

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41

Yet paintings were also conceived as complementing photography and cinematography, each visual form performing different – and sometimes overlapping – tasks in capturing an experience of the conflict. The immediacy of the camera made it a particularly attractive form and the swiftness with which images could be reproduced at a relatively low cost gave it an air of impartiality. It became ‘a talisman for memory’ at a time of rapid change.175 Beaverbrook particularly was convinced of the value of photographs as ‘an indelible record’ of the conflict for ‘the new generation’. He argued that in a modern war it was necessary to ‘see our men climbing out of the trenches before we can realise the patience, the exhaustion, and the courage which are the assets and trials of the modern fighting man’.176 For the Australians too, official photography and cinematography were, as Fisher asserted, useful as a ‘permanent record’.177 Bean envisaged them acting as ‘sacred records – standing for future generations to see forever the plain, simple truth’.178 In fact, such was the perceived value of photography that there was some debate, especially as the apparent cost of an art scheme became clear, about the need for art. Thomas Trumble, Secretary of the Department of Defence, argued that ‘the fact that photography and cinematography can portray anything visible’ appeared ‘to circumscribe the extent to which paintings are necessary or desirable in a Museum that is mainly intended to perpetuate the memory of the first military effort’.179 However, while painting was often conceived of being used for the same documentary and publicity purposes that photography might fill, it was also seen as adding to the visual record in ways that the mechanical gaze of the camera could not. John Crawford Flitch, a British writer, noted in his introduction to the exhibition catalogue of C.W.R. Nevinson’s war paintings that ‘the report of the official war artist has more value than the report of the official photographer. For the camera observes everything and experiences nothing. It is inhumanely impartial and cannot speak the language of the spirit.’180 This was a popular sentiment during the war years; the American art critic Robert Cortes Holliday commenting in 1918 that the painter could interpret the war in ‘the visible scene in the light of the spirit in which it is lived’.181 Treloar, for his part, later argued, in relation to interwar commissions, that ‘we need the careful interpretation of the character of the men instead of merely a mechanical representation’.182 Of course photography was not always mechanical or documentary. During the war, composite images became an attractive option both for publicity and record-making purposes. Given the public desire for images

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of the war, photographs and film were both staged and manipulated.183 The complexity of the battlefield in modern warfare made it difficult to represent in a single image. Australia’s official war photographer Frank Hurley, for example, was frustrated that he was not able to capture the confusion, chaos and drama of what he witnessed at the front in a single frame: ‘None but those who have endeavoured can realise the insurmountable difficulties of portraying a modern battle by camera. To include the event on a single negative, I have tried and tried but the results are hopeless.’184 Convinced that the intensity of modern warfare could not be recorded ‘without resorting to combination pictures’, he turned to ‘composite printing’, a popular technique at the time that involved adding to, or recreating, scenes by combining several photographs into one image.185 For Bean, who was dedicated to the idea of a collection of ‘genuine’ photographs, Hurley’s methods were unacceptable.186 Bean saw Hurley’s composite images as fabricated, and he would not consent to including them in Australia’s war record collection. He quite vehemently stated that he was convinced Hurley’s composite images were ‘fakes’ – although despite Bean’s views and later efforts, as Robert Dixon has found, there are several composite images in the Memorial’s collection that are not labelled as such.187 Beaverbrook was not as opposed to composite images as Bean. While arguing that the view of photographs as having solely publicity value ‘was a shallow one’, he was acutely aware of the benefits of composite images. Beaverbrook ‘determined that Canada should have the right to compose pictures’ and, according to Bean, stated he was resolved ‘“to fake them . . . that’s what you would call it”’.188 However, Bean remained adamant that the camera should capture the ‘Rigid Truth’ of the war, seeing photography as ‘an inviolable historical artefact’.189 In Australia during the war, those writing about the conflict were more and more relying on original documents, influenced by German historian Leopold von Ranke’s ideas that history would be based ‘on the narratives of eyewitnesses and the most authentic, most immediate documents’.190 The visual record was one part of a much broader record of the war, the purpose of which was not only to tell the story of the AIF in a national museum but also to assist the official historian in writing a narrative of the war. Bean was particularly concerned that some of Australia’s photographic and cinematographic records had been, in his view, compromised. For instance, in addition to Hurley’s composite images, some Australian film had been cut for propaganda purposes, and Bean suggested to the government that a

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copy of the original film should be placed with the record section before being altered.191 Composite images could undermine the perceived impartiality of the mechanical gaze of the camera and damage the integrity of photographs of the war, a problem for both the publicity and the historical value of the images.192 Bean’s anxiety indicated the challenge faced by Allied officials in charge of collecting a visual record of the war as well as photographers and cinematographers in finding, as Martyn Jolly writes, a ‘balance between the qualities of authenticity, actuality and immediacy in their images and their legibility as historical scenes’.193

THE

PERMANENCY AND PRESTIGE OF PAINTING

Despite the speed and reproducibility of photography and film, concerns over their permanence also plagued officials during this period. The camera was still a relatively new form of technology, and long-term preservation techniques of photographs and particularly film were unknown. Although Beaverbrook initially commented that photographs were one of ‘the most permanent recorders’, there remained a fear at the time about the endurance of this form and a belief that large-scale photographs would not last longer than twenty-five years.194 This presented problems for Fisher and Bean, and, as Bean stated, there was a ‘great deal of work’ involved in storing negatives.195 Painting was also seen as a way to capture colour, a particularly attractive feature. When commissioning paintings after the war, Treloar commented: ‘I do not think that photographs will quite cover this, partly because colour is wanted.’196 Colour photography was in its infancy and, while colour could be applied to or overlaid on photographs, this was not an especially widespread practice at the time and might, considering Bean’s concerns over composite images, have been conceived of as ‘faking’. Cinematography, although considered one of the most exciting forms of record, also presented Australian officials with difficult conservation issues as little was known about its longevity. Bean was particularly concerned about its limitations: ‘Cinema film is not yet a satisfactory medium for record, because within a limited number of years, probably ten, it is apt to shrink so that it no longer fits the machine’. However, he remained optimistic that it was ‘possible that before the present films have shrunk, some means will have been invented of making such records permanent, in which case it would have been a great pity not to have preserved them’.197 Beaverbrook shared Bean’s concerns, and was

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particularly anxious about Canada’s war films. He warned the Canadian Government that the ‘40 000 feet of film are eminently perishable’ and would ‘not outlast five years if nothing is done to prolong their life’. He went on to argue that given ‘the immense historical interest which will attach to the battle films in the future, I would urge that measures should be taken to extend their existence’ and called for experiments ‘with all possible preservatives’ as well as suggesting ‘periodical reproduction of the negatives themselves’.198 Painting therefore recommended itself as a more enduring form of visual record. Beyond this it provided a form of commemoration that was both permanent and prestigious.199 There is, as Jay Winter reminds us, substantial evidence of the power and significance of traditional forms of commemoration and remembrance within various communities.200 Painting was one such form. Paul Konody, art critic and adviser to the Canadian War Memorials Fund, referencing John Ruskin, the leading British art critic of the Victorian period, claimed: ‘The book of art is older even than the book of words . . . many of the triumphs of early art that have been saved from the destruction wrought by time or by the hand of man, are commemorative of warlike achievements.’201 For Beaverbrook, painting afforded ‘the most permanent and vital form in which the great deeds and sacrifices of the Canadian Nation in the war could be enshrined for posterity’.202 He went to some lengths to obtain Benjamin West’s war painting, The Death of General Wolfe (1770), an image of the Battle of Quebec in the Seven Years War (1756–63). The canvas had been quite radical at the time of its creation, given that West used the same principles that were employed to represent classical scenes in the genre of history painting to depict a contemporary event.203 It was popular in Britain in the eighteenth century, being one of the most reproduced images of the period, and had also played a significant part in a founding myth for English Canada.204 Beaverbrook’s inclusion of the canvas in the Canadian War Memorials Fund collection indicated his desire to frame the images of the First World War within a tradition of battle painting. For Australia, Fisher claimed that artists’ ‘large composition pictures’ would ‘form a permanent record of all time’.205 Treloar, also quoting Ruskin, stated that ‘[g]reat nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts – the book of their deeds, the book of their words, and the book of their art’, claiming that ‘[i]n this record of a vital chapter in Australian history, the first and third of these “manuscripts” are combined’ in official war paintings.206 Both Fisher and Bean meanwhile had

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no doubt that artists would be called upon in future to produce images of the war. Bean certainly remained convinced that the Australian states would desire paintings of the war.207 Hence, although photography and cinematography presented exciting new media, art remained an essential part of the visual record and an important commemorative practice. As a time-honoured form of commemoration, it offered the opportunity not only to differentiate Australia’s wartime experience from others in the British Empire but also to establish traditions within it. Bean was convinced that the ‘[m]ost important result for Australia from war is the great unifying tradition as basis for future nationality and it is logically right that small corps artists should be formed to consolidate tradition [sic]’.208 The Canadians too, according to Konody, chose to make their ‘collection of memorial paintings truly representative of the artistic outlook during the momentous period of the great war’.209 Beyond this, in Canada the conflict played a role in the evolution of a local school of painting.210 In Australia, the government saw the potential for official commissions to form a testament to the character of Australian art in this period. When debate over the necessity of war art was raised, Trumble suggested that the government ‘might think the present time, because of the variety of subjects it offers, opportune to encourage Australian Art’ and that ‘the paintings themselves would be a record of the stage which Australian Art had reached at the time of the war’.211

ESTABLISHING

THE ART SCHEME,

M A Y 1917

The official establishment of an art scheme was linked to the founding of an Australian War Records Section. This did not take place until 16 May 1917, when the Australian Government, having received permission from the British, finally sanctioned the official collecting of war records under the Australian War Records Section ‘in the interests of the national history of Australia and in order that Australia may have control of her own historical records’.212 Yet the formal establishment of the Australian War Records Section in offices on Horseferry Road in London posed direct competition to Fisher’s National War Records Office at Australia House. Fisher had suggested that any formal war record office be linked to the High Commission, as he considered its nucleus already existed in the National War Records Office.213 He had been supported in this by such military officers as General White, who believed that a war record section ‘should be undertaken by the Government, and that it should not be a

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military one’.214 White stated that the original aim had been to establish a record section as part of the High Commission, which would have effectively put it under the authority of the Prime Minister’s Department.215 However, this proposal was unsuccessful, and instead the Australian War Records Section was formed under the authority of the Department of Defence.216 This meant that there were effectively two record offices collecting the same material in London. As the Department of Defence acknowledged, this was ‘likely to lead to duplication of effort and friction’. Consequently, members of the Australian War Records Section and National War Records Office, including Colonel Thomas Griffiths, Commandant Administrative Headquarters AIF, Colonel Percy Buckley, Military Adviser to High Commissioner, and Henry Smart, Publicity Officer at Australia House, met to distinguish the function of each office and discuss Australia’s collection of war records generally.217 Following Birdwood’s suggestion that a distinction be made along military lines, it was initially decided at the meeting in May 1917 that the Australian War Records Section should collect and classify official military records of the AIF and the National War Records Office should take responsibility for collecting unofficial or non-military war records for a national collection and a future museum.218 Primarily owing to disagreements between Hurley and Bean over the use of photographs for contemporary interest and those of historical value, the distinction between military and nonmilitary was revised in late 1917 at Bean’s urging, and instead the responsibility of each office was divided between the preservation of war records and their publicity – although parts of both were envisaged for a future national collection.219 Under the direction of Treloar, who was appointed officer-in-charge, the Australian War Records Section was responsible for the ‘collection and preservation’ of diaries and other documentary records, photographs and artefacts ‘suitable for public exhibition but worth preserving for purposes of national records and historical research’.220 The National War Records Office section, overseen by Fisher but managed by Smart, became responsible for publicity and collected trophies, photographs and film only ‘suitable for public exhibition’.221 The division of responsibility between the National War Records Office and the Australian War Records Section influenced the shape of the art scheme. The result was an art program of two separate sections, each with a discrete role. Fisher developed Dyson’s proposal further under

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the National War Records Office. In May 1917, at the urging of Smart and Fisher’s private secretary, Alan Box, he lobbied the government for permission to send additional civilian artists to the front on similar terms to Dyson.222 In mid-1917, Fisher was given authority by both the Australian Government and the War Office to employ six artists ‘to make pictorial records of the AIF’. By the end of the war the section was employing ten civilian artists.223 Despite the final division between record and publicity, the section of the art scheme emerging under the National War Records Office was an exception to this distinction. The emphasis remained largely on the art as a record for national posterity to be displayed in some future Australian gallery after the war. Based on Bean and Gellibrand’s ideas for sketches of the battlefield and Fisher’s suggestion that such a scheme should be expanded to include talented combatants, artists serving in the AIF were employed under the second art section managed by the Australian War Records Section. The initial responsibility of the Australian War Records Section to collect official military records made it logical that this office would deal with artists in the AIF, and the later focus on its preservation role resulted in an emphasis on these artists producing ‘record paintings’. The Australian War Records Section was smaller than its National War Records Office counterpart, employing only five artists during the war. The artistic skills of these men, whom Bean suggested should be known as the AIF artists to differentiate them from the civilian artists or official artists of the National War Records Office, were also used for camouflage work during the war as well as sketches and paintings of what they observed in the line of duty.224 *** Wartime collecting was characterised by a desire to differentiate the Australian experience within that of the British Empire. The development of an art scheme was one manifestation of this broader trend as paintings presented politicians, government officials and military officers with the opportunity not only to make a record of the nation’s war effort but also to commemorate a particularly Australian experience of war in a prestigious and traditional form. The art scheme that emerged by May 1917 was the product of debate, discussion and finally cooperation between Empire and Dominion, and between the federal government and states, about the collection of records for Australia. Motivated by

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both political and personal desires and influenced by ideas circulating among Allied officials and military officers during this period, the interaction and collaboration between Fisher, Bean, Dyson, Pearce, Birdwood, Treloar and Smart was key to the emergence of a specifically Australian record of war. These men, often acting on their own initiative, were responsible for planning how to amass a record of Australia’s war experience, where it might be housed and what it might consist of.

CHAPTER

|

2

IMPLEMENTING THE ART S C H E M E, 1 9 1 7 – 1 8

The expansion of the art scheme during the remaining eighteen months of the war was as fluid as its origins. Its development was shaped both by the difficulties of amassing a collection of art during wartime and by the interaction between and intentions of those government officials and military officers responsible for managing the scheme and their critics. During this period, and despite attempts in Australia, London became the centre of official federal commemorative efforts, and Australian civil servants and military officers became key figures in their orchestration. Given the practicalities of commissioning paintings for an Australian collection in wartime London, Smart, Bean and Treloar, to whom much of the management for the scheme fell, had to be flexible, adaptive and resourceful in their administration of the program. Central to the study of any commemorative practice are questions not only about what is remembered but also what is forgotten. Lacking any professional artistic training or knowledge of the art world, Smart, Bean and Treloar made decisions during their implementation of the art scheme that were haphazard and improvised, yet had profound implications for the scope, content and style of the collection and for what it preserved and what it did not. By examining the complexities of the processes developed to commission art during the war – how and by whom the scheme was managed, why and how artists were selected and under what terms and conditions they were employed – this chapter traces the patterns of selection and rejection of the art program and, more importantly, the individuals and circumstances that dictated the

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contours of these patterns and ultimately the shape and character of the commemoration of the war in art.

ONE

SCHEME, TWO SECTIONS

The creation of the Australian War Records Section in May 1917 in addition to Fisher’s already established National War Records Office resulted in an art scheme made up of two sections, each run out of a separate office. This form of management was to last officially until 1923, although from 1919 the newly established Australian War Museum Art Committee largely took over the commissioning of art. From the outset, the management of these two art sections was somewhat haphazard, their pace slowed by the fact that each was just one aspect of a wider project to collect and catalogue documents, artefacts, photographs and film. Unlike the more structured organisation of the Canadian art scheme, which was managed by the Canadian War Memorials Fund Committee and was separate from the larger collection of war records, Australian officials were slow to establish a similar body exclusively to oversee the selection of artists and the commissioning of paintings.1 Consequently, responsibility for the scheme fell to individuals, namely Smart, Treloar and Bean, who were already involved in collecting war records for the government and who often did not have artistic expertise.

SMART

AND THE

NATIONAL WAR RECORDS OFFICE

ART SECTION

Although Fisher continued to oversee the National War Records Office art section during 1917 and 1918, it was Smart who managed its day-today organisation. Smart remains a shadowy presence in the archive, hidden behind the more forthright personality of Bean and the administrative talents of Treloar. However, from his wartime role at the High Commission it is evident that he played an important part in establishing an official war records scheme for Australia alongside Fisher and Bean in 1916.2 He had been involved in work relating to the AIF, and the collection of war records in particular, since Fisher’s arrival at the High Commission in 1916. Smart had also effectively handled some of the most successful early war-related publications of Australia House, helping Bean with preparations for The Anzac Book in early 1916 as well as becoming editor of Fisher’s newly created Anzac Bulletin later that year.3 He was involved in helping Fisher to realise his early plans to collect records of the

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AIF in the war, and was responsible for appointing the English photographer Herbert Baldwin – no doubt known to him through his publicity work and liaison with the British press – to work with Bean on the Western Front in November 1916. A month later, between 8 and 10 December, Smart accompanied both men for part of their tour of the battlefields.4 Further, as Publicity Officer, a role Smart had held since appointed by George Reid in April 1910, he had worked with Britain’s most prominent media tycoons, including Beaverbrook.5 He used his contacts and in particular his relationship with Beaverbrook, with whom he was closely in touch, to help lobby the British War Office for control of Australia’s records.6 According to Bean, Smart was ‘an assistant whose power of organising large schemes . . . [Fisher] especially trusted’, and the High Commissioner officially appointed him Officer in Charge of War Records in 1916, although Smart also retained many of his duties as Publicity Officer.7 In his new role, Smart became responsible for managing the High Commission’s collection of war records under the National War Records Office, which, along with collecting war artefacts, documents, photographs and film, also included art. Although lacking professional artistic expertise, Smart was involved with the National War Records Office art section from its inception and was deeply engaged in discussions about sending Dyson to the front in 1916.8 Further, according to Bean, it was Smart who suggested an expansion of the scheme and encouraged Fisher to press the government to enlarge the section in early February 1917 and commission more artists.9 As well as managing the National War Records Office, Smart helped Treloar set up the newly established Australian War Records Section.10 Given his experience organising the High Commission’s war records, Smart was particularly sought after by General White, who wanted an individual with ‘good and tried organising capacity to get the system going’ and ‘put [it] on a business footing’.11 In recognition of the help Smart had given the Australian War Records Section and his future role in connection with the section, Griffiths suggested to Birdwood in May 1917 that Smart be given an honorary commission in the AIF.12 Birdwood, who appreciated Smart’s assistance, agreed that a military rank would be useful for Smart’s war record work. As ‘a first start’, he granted Smart an honorary commission as a lieutenant in the AIF – although Smart was later promoted to captain.13 Smart, although initially expecting a higher rank than lieutenant given his military service during the Boer War, acknowledged that a commission in the AIF ‘would be very

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helpful in the work’.14 It enabled him to work more easily and with a greater degree of official authority with the AIF records, something that proved useful not only for his efforts with the Australian War Records Section but also for his position as the High Commission’s record officer, particularly after the division of responsibility between the National War Records Office and Australian War Records Section was altered in September 1917 from ‘civilian’ and ‘military’ to ‘preservation’ and ‘publicity’ respectively.15 Smart faced a considerable task in managing the National War Records Office art section almost single-handedly, together with his numerous other duties for the Australian war records. As a point of comparison, the Canadian art committee was overseen by Beaverbrook and managed by members of the Canadian War Memorials Fund Committee with specific duties: Lieutenant J. Harold Watkins, the Canadian War Memorials Fund secretary, to manage artists’ authorisations to visit the front as well as arranging for their studios, materials and transport; Captain I.G. Robertson and Lieutenant W. Douglas to organise transport around the battlefields and accommodation for artists at the front.16 Smart alone undertook almost all these tasks for the National War Records Office art section.17 Fisher recognised the necessity for artistic advice on the appointment of artists and commissioning of paintings, given that Smart lacked any professional artistic expertise. In the Canadian case, Beaverbrook was aware of his own limited knowledge of the art world. In 1916 he hired Paul Konody, a Hungarian-born art critic known in London for his work for the Daily Mail and the Observer and who also worked as Lord Rothermere’s personal art adviser. Konody was employed to select artists and to commission subjects for the Canadian War Memorials Fund’s paintings.18 In early 1917 Fisher suggested to Hughes that a committee be set up in London to judge the war paintings from a ‘technical point of view’ and advise the High Commission ‘as to the purchase of the pictures’.19 He initially proposed that the committee consist of Smart representing the High Commission, Bean, as representative for the AIF, Frank Gibson, a well-known Australian art critic in London who also acted as art adviser to the Commonwealth, and a representative to be nominated by the official artists themselves.20 It is unclear whether Gibson was ever approached or whether the commissioned artists ever nominated a representative, but when the Art Committee was officially formed, the men appointed to provide the artistic advice were Algernon Talmage, a member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters and who himself worked

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as an official artist for the Canadian and British schemes, and Frank Brangwyn, a well-known British artist and member of the Royal Academy who was also involved in the Canadian War Memorials Fund.21 These were somewhat surprising appointments considering Fisher’s dedication to patronising Australian art. Owing to illness, Brangwyn had little involvement in the scheme and was replaced before the committee’s first meeting, at Smart’s suggestion, by Sir Luke Fildes, also a prominent British artist and member of the Royal Academy.22 Despite Fisher making his proposal for an art committee in early 1917, one was not actually formed until the start of the following year. Even then its members did not officially meet until May 1918, the result of the chaotic nature of wartime bureaucracy.23 Consequently, the artistic decisions about the art section in its first year of development fell to Smart, who took charge of selecting artists, making arrangements for where and when they visited the front, and organising their pay and accommodation as well as studios where they could complete their commissions on their return to London.24 What was surprising was Fisher’s failure to consult with the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board about the development and management of the scheme, especially given that, as Prime Minister, he had overseen the establishment of the Historic Memorials Committee in 1911. One explanation is that he wanted to keep this project separate from Hughes and the Prime Minister’s Department. Yet, as the only comparable art program of the nascent nation and the body responsible for commissioning paintings for the government’s Historic Memorials collection, the Art Advisory Board might have provided Smart with much-needed advice not only on the organisation of the scheme but also on artistic matters. In time, Smart’s management of the program and his lack of artistic knowledge would be criticised by the artists he sought to employ. Streeton commented to Spencer: ‘Mr Smart . . . a young man who apparently has control of War Records under Fisher . . . was astonished that [Fred] Leist and [Septimus] Power were not considered superior artists to [John] Longstaff, Lambert, [George] Coates, [James] Quinn & myself’ – indeed, at this time, Leist and Power, who were both relatively young illustrators and painters, were not as established as artists like Streeton.25 Dyson meanwhile was troubled by Smart’s failure to publicise his work. In May 1918 he complained: ‘My book is to be out soon. It sh’d have been out long ago but for unwillingness mixed with laziness mixed with hostility on the part of Smart who runs publicity at Australia House.’ He added bitterly that it was a long ‘story of intrigue and ignorance’ – a rather

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surprising criticism given that Smart’s expertise was publicity.26 Lambert shared similar concerns about Smart’s management of the scheme and his ability to make it a success: ‘I’m afraid he [Smart] hasn’t the power necessary to put this Art Record business on a proper businesslike footing.’27 Given Smart’s limited knowledge of the art world, these criticisms were not entirely unjustified.

BEAN

AS ART ADVISER

While Smart dealt with the administrative details of the art section in London, Bean was the man on the ground for the artists employed under the National War Records Office once they arrived at the front.28 His involvement in the art scheme had been assured when discussions in early 1917 about the composition of Fisher’s proposed art committee were in progress. Fisher was aware that it would be necessary ‘to have the assistance of officers of the AIF who were competent to judge the historical military value of any work that would be submitted for inclusion in the official records’.29 In March 1917, Robert Muirhead Collins, an ex-navy officer and official secretary at Australia House, suggested to Birdwood that Bean might be put in charge of war record-collecting, including documents, photographs and art, in France: ‘Captain Bean, as you are no doubt aware, has already interested himself in this matter, and no doubt he would be, with your concurrence, a very suitable officer to organise the collection of the material which is required and arrange for transmission to London.’30 Birdwood agreed ‘that Bean would be a most suitable officer, as he is most painstaking, and this is a subject in which he has much interest’.31 Similarly, the Department of Defence strongly recommended that Bean be involved in the collection of records and argued that ‘Bean whose work is closely associated with War Records should also have a share in its management’.32 Consequently, when Fisher suggested that a representative of the AIF serve on the Art Committee, Birdwood advocated for Bean, stating that he ‘should be very glad if Bean became the AIF representative on this committee’.33 Bean was an obvious candidate. His knowledge and experience of the AIF, coupled with his enthusiasm and interest in the use of art as part of Australia’s collection of war records, evident in his proposal of 1916, made him a suitable and desirable member for the Art Committee. Further, Bean, unlike Smart, had an amateur appreciation of art and had in fact contributed his own cartoons and watercolours to The Anzac Book in 1916. His cartoons have a professional quality, and his

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watercolours are quite skilful.34 Bean’s watercolour The Silver Lining – Sunset Over Imbros as Seen from Anzac 1915 (1915) is technically accomplished and presents a lyrical image of a sunset dominated by a heavy cloud with a silver lining – a rather obvious and trite message but in keeping both with the patriotism of the time and Bean’s own support for the war. However, it is likely that it was his knowledge, experience and enthusiasm for collecting AIF records rather than his amateur sketches that recommended him to Fisher and Birdwood. By late March 1917, Bean’s position on the prospective art committee, and hence his role in the art scheme, had been confirmed: ‘If such a committee is formed, Mr Bean would be proposed as the representative upon it of the AIF.’35 In the event, Bean’s other duties as war correspondent and his research for the official histories meant that he was unable to take up an exclusively managerial role in the scheme. While Bean acted as a much-valued adviser to both the National War Records Office and Australian War Records Section art programs, he had little direct involvement as he was often unable to be present at discussions and meetings relating to decisions about their development – he was significantly absent from the first meeting of the Art Committee in May 1918.36 Even in his role at the front, his duties as official correspondent often meant that he met with artists sporadically and, as discussed in the following chapter, they were largely left to their own devices.37 Hence, the art scheme was generally managed by the collaborative efforts of Smart and Treloar in London, who were responsible for making decisions about its development.

TRELOAR AND SECTION ART

THE

AUSTRALIAN WAR RECORDS

The component of the art scheme that came under the Australian War Records Section developed at a much slower pace and remained a much smaller program in comparison with its National War Records Office counterpart.38 This was because in its first months of existence the Australian War Records Section was largely concerned not with collecting but with cataloguing and organising the war diaries and documents that had been mounting up since the start of the war.39 Only in September 1917 did it begin to amass artefacts from the battlefield.40 In terms of the art, it was not until April 1918 – just over a year after its formal establishment – that Treloar finally employed official artists.41

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Treloar was a meticulous manager and deeply committed to the work of the Australian War Records Section. Despite his scrupulous collecting of war records, he left surprisingly little personal documentation, and we can only begin to grasp his character and motivations, somewhat appropriately given his devotion to his work and dedication to detail, through the wealth of administrative material remaining in the archive.42 What we glimpse is a man who was inscrutable, a quietly ambitious but principled individual, unwavering but unimaginative.43 Appointed by General White as Officer-in-Charge of the Australian War Records Section in London in May 1917, Treloar’s primary concern was initially to organise and later collect a comprehensive archive of unit diaries, documents and maps, as well as a collection of photographs, artefacts and artists’ sketches and paintings. Taking up his position with enthusiasm, Treloar saw his role at the Australian War Records Section as both preserving material for display in a future war museum and assisting with the writing of Australia’s war history by gathering documents from which Bean and others could later work.44 Treloar had an instinct for collecting, and he saw the value of almost everything for the collection if it related to Australia’s war experience. He believed that the priority in collecting was to describe an item’s context and that, if this was done, its interpretation could be left to others – a somewhat indiscriminate collecting method.45 Consequently, he was meticulous in his cataloguing, believing that detailed accounts could convert debris into important relics.46 Treloar’s pedantic cataloguing skills and organisational expertise did not go unnoticed by his superiors and peers, with Bean commenting of the Australian War Records Section that the ‘Section is simply his creation’.47 Treloar, like Smart, lacked artistic knowledge. However, his thorough and tolerant approach to the collecting of war records assisted him in managing the Australian War Records Section art program, and his openmindedness meant that he did not impose his own judgement or taste on the collection.48 Certainly he drew heavily on and learnt from Smart’s experience with managing the civilian artists, just as he had with setting up the Australian War Records Section. There was, in fact, considerable collaboration between the two art sections during the war, and Smart and Treloar’s relationship was one of mutual respect. Smart thought Treloar ‘an excellent fellow’ and ‘keen, competent and a good sort’.49 Treloar in turn was thankful for Smart’s help in establishing the Australian War Records Section.50 In particular, he gratefully received assistance from

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Smart in selecting artists, as well as his help in providing them with materials, arranging for their studios and storing their work. In return, Treloar helped Smart, at times standing in as the AIF representative on the National War Records Office Art Committee when Bean was unable to attend meetings.51

AIMS

FOR THE ART SCHEME

Although neither Smart nor Treloar – nor even Bean, for that matter – ever clearly defined the aims of the art scheme during this period, their expansion of the program over the final eighteen months of the war built on ideas that had been circulating among politicians, officers and artists in London the previous year about differentiating the Australian experience of war from others within the British Empire. In contrast to Beaverbrook’s ideas for war art to be used for its propaganda and memorial value for the Canadian people – the combined function of which drove the Canadian collection’s variety and choice of artists – the Australian scheme was less publicity focused.52 Although Bean suggested that official art might be used during the war ‘to improve recruiting in Australia, and time in this case is a matter of urgency’, unlike British and Canadian images, which were published in newspapers and exhibited during the war, there is little evidence that the Australian sketches and paintings were used in this manner – possibly because there were very few completed paintings until mid-1918.53 Further, there were already artists in Australia working on propaganda, such as the outspoken illustrator Norman Lindsay, whose work was used to great effect for recruiting during the war.54 Art was seen by Bean and others as similar to other records being amassed for a future war museum, such as artefacts, documents and photographs: ‘sacred things which will some day constitute the greatest public possession Australia will have’.55 Official art, then, was to form part of the historical record and was overlaid with a commemorative function from the beginning.56 In this regard, Dyson’s proposal of 1916, and the success of his visit to the front between December 1916 and May 1917, provided a more tangible plan for Smart, Bean and Treloar to follow in their expansion of the scheme and their goal to commission further artists to produce sketches from their observation of the battlefield as a way of commemorating an Australian experience of the conflict for posterity – ‘sketches’ referred both to the preliminary images made on the spot and to the more polished paintings artists were contracted to produce.

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WITNESSES

TO THE BATTLEFRONT

A central premise informing the Australian art scheme during 1917 and 1918 was the belief that artists would paint most compellingly from their personal observation of the battlefield. The ‘authenticity myth’ was a powerful idea in war art, based on an understanding that the lived experience of the artist at the front would result in reliable images, or visual testimony, of the war.57 Drawing on Dyson’s assertion that he could sketch only from what he saw of the men at the front and Bean’s emphasis on the value of artists who were serving in the AIF and had seen and experienced the fighting, Smart and Bean determined to send eminent artists as soon as possible to the theatres of war where Australians were engaged: ‘it is immensely advantageous that as many as possible of our leading artists should have been actually at the Front’.58 Further, while Bean was aware that selecting painters for the Australian War Records Section art program from within the ranks of the AIF meant they might not be particularly well known, he believed that by their having been ‘actually present’ at specific actions ‘the spirit that they will be able to impart into their work will make the result invaluable’.59 Just as objects achieved a sense of the sacred from their physical proximity to the war, so too would art produced by artists who had borne witness to the fighting. The artist as an eyewitness to conflict was a popular concept at the time. Beaverbrook claimed that the aim of the Canadian War Memorials Fund was not only ‘to secure the services of the most brilliant artists of Canada, Great Britain, and France in order that the episodes and general character of this colossal struggle and the personalities and figures of those who took part in it, may be rescued from oblivion’ but also that these subjects be ‘delineated by artists who have seen them with their own eyes’.60 Beaverbrook was later to comment that he was particularly impressed by the paintings created by artists who had visited the front: ‘Mr Nevinson’s work could never have been produced . . . unless he had spent months in France. It was the actual contact with the fighting which had given him that appreciation and realization of the realities of war.’61 Konody was convinced that exposure to the fighting would prove a source of inspiration to artists, arguing that a significant collection of war paintings could be created only from artists’ ‘actual impressions whilst they were fresh on the mind, whilst emotions and passions and enthusiasm are at their highest’.62 His often-published quip was that ‘[a] “posthumous” war picture is as valueless as a posthumous portrait’.63 However, of the

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artists hired by the Canadian War Memorials Fund during the war, most completed their canvases in Britain, and only twenty-eight (thirteen of whom were Canadian) were sent to the front.64 The emphasis on Australian artists witnessing the war reflected Bean’s wider passion for reportage anchored in direct observation. From the time he was appointed war correspondent, Bean himself was an eyewitness, living near Australian troops both on Gallipoli and on the Western Front. As he claimed in 1915, the most important news for Australians could ‘only be obtained by living in the thick of things’.65 His writing was thereby infused with his personal observations of the war.66 Similarly Bean’s later official histories, with their narrative focus on tactics rather than command and strategy, and their celebration of the common soldier, drew heavily not only on what he witnessed of the Australian troops at the front but also on interviews with soldiers after battle. As he later claimed, ‘accuracy is found only in the narratives of eyewitnesses’.67 Dyson, who worked closely with Bean during his time at the front, commented that although Bean’s approach made him something of ‘a dull writer’, he was ‘accurate to the point of mania’.68 Hence when it came to the war records collection, Bean, along with Treloar and Smart, was determined to amass a collection that represented the Australian soldiers’ exact experience of the conflict.69 Similarly, for the art scheme, Bean strongly supported the proposal that artists be sent to the front to witness the war, effectively using artists as pictorial journalists – what would now be termed embedding the artists in the field – although the idea was not simply that artists ‘saw’ the war but that they also bore witness to it. In May 1917 Smart explained to Bean that in order for artists to be able to ‘get a good deal of material’, the ‘idea is to send each of them over [to France] for about a month’.70 By September Bean reported that a ‘national record of the Australian Imperial Force is . . . in process of being obtained from the Australian artists, of whom two are continually at work on the Australian front’.71 He also outlined future plans for the scheme, explaining that while ‘two of the Australian Divisions have with them artists . . . whose sketches at the front will go to the nation’, after three months ‘two others will take their place, who will be succeeded by a further two’ – although artists’ stays were often extended or shortened on request.72 Treloar and Bean intended the Australian War Records Section artists to ‘spend their time painting pictures for the Australian collections’ whenever they could be spared from military duties.73 Their approach had the support of the Australian press, the Sydney Morning Herald stating in October 1917 that ‘recently a new

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and satisfactory step has been taken . . . It has now been decided to allow Australian painters to establish themselves in Australian areas of war with a view to [obtaining] pictures of the great scenes through which Australian soldiers are living.’74 A few months later the Australian press were still reporting enthusiastically on this issue, declaring that ‘practically all the leading Australian artists in London have been “mobilised” to produce paintings of the Western Front for the Commonwealth war records’.75 Baldwin Spencer publicly warned the government against securing ‘a series of what are called “great war pictures”’ in his address on art in Australia to the Lyceum Club in October 1918, arguing: ‘The sketches actually made at the front showing things as they are will be of far more real value in the future than studio pictures which are largely given . . . to showing imaginary scenes.’76 However, not everyone saw the value of eyewitness work. Penleigh Boyd, a renowned landscape painter who had joined the AIF in 1915 and served as a sergeant in the Electrical and Mechanical Mining Company, criticised the High Commission’s scheme.77 He was reported in the Australian press as condemning the practice of sending artists to the front: the period of official artists’ visits, he claimed, was too short and that as a result their work ‘must necessarily be photographic, and lacking in vitality’.78 Despite having recently published his own book of sketches based on his experience on the Western Front – and perhaps hopeful for success in his future work – he claimed: The great art of the war that will live and will be valuable afterwards will probably not appear until the war is in retrospect, and will then probably be produced by some private in the ranks, who has lived through the horrors and misery, has felt the slime and mud, has smelt the suffocating gas, and all this during not only a week or two of a hurried visit, but over long months and years.79

Boyd urged the Australian authorities and the Historic Memorials Committee to avoid acquiring paintings until such work as he had described had been produced. Henry Boote, a pacifist journalist, dedicated anti-conscriptionist and Labor supporter, also weighed in on the debate over war art, arguing that ‘the war will produce no superb art or literature’, adding that ‘[n]o true artist is anxious to perpetuate in paint the horrors of the war’. Going further than Boyd, he claimed that the conflict would be ‘a purely destructive force abhorrent to creative intelligence’ and declared that the artist who did paint the war was in danger of ‘divorcing

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himself from the living verities around him, and labouring to depict that which springs neither from his experience nor his imagination’.80 However, no notice was taken of Boyd or Boote, and the outcome was a scheme that focused on the events and activities of the fighting front.81

NEGLECTING

THE WAR EXPERIENCE AT HOME

The focus on the eyewitness at the fighting front had the effect of taking attention away from activities behind the lines and the war experience at home. By mid-1918, it was clear that those managing the scheme in London did not intend to include the experience of the war in Australia. This became a matter of concern to some members of the Australian art community. In June 1918 the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board began discussing in earnest the possibility of establishing a linked section or comparable scheme to commission war paintings in Australia: ‘it is suggested that steps be taken to secure impressions of prominent Australian Artists on the activities of Australia in connection with the War’.82 Although members of the board acknowledged that ‘the chief interest of future generations of Australians will be centred in the wonderful achievements of their forefathers in the actual fighting on the battlefields of Gallipoli, France and Palestine’, they warned that it was ‘possible that the splendid work of various organisations behind the lines and at home may be overlooked and gradually forgotten’.83 William Trahair, a civil servant in the Department of Defence, suggested that members of the Board be asked to submit the names of artists in Australia who are eligible for this work, which should include pictures of scenes in Munition works, clothing factories, woollen mills, training camps, and or working centres of various patriotic funds, departures and arrivals of troopships, and sketch portraits of all those responsible for the organisation of the various departments connected with the War.84

Concurrently, others in the art community were developing similar ideas about including the war experience at home in art. In July 1918, Sydney Ure Smith, the renowned Sydney-based art critic, suggested to government authorities that those soldiers who were professional artists, such as Penleigh Boyd among others, and who had ‘lately returned from London . . . could be useful painting war stuff locally’.85 Although referred to the Prime Minister’s Department for consideration, Ure Smith’s proposal did not inspire a war art scheme in Australia.

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The Art Advisory Board again raised the debate about including the experience of the war at home in art in October 1918, drawing up another list of suggestions for artworks that dealt with wartime activities of the AIF in Australia. Notably more focused on military activities than the initial suggestions put forward by Trahair – perhaps in the hope of gaining the support of those in London – the list included: War-Ship Building, or other Naval Subjects, Naval & Military Colleges, Life at Various Camps, Embarkation and Disembarkation of Troops, Military Equipment, Military Hospitals, Red Cross Undertakings, Processions, Sketches from Life of Australian VCs or other distinguished Soldiers who have returned from the War, Events of interest in connection with Naval and Military Activities of Visiting Allied troops.86

However, despite the board’s efforts, the art scheme based in London continued to focus on the fighting front, and a comparable program was never established in Australia. The Australian scheme stood alone in its neglect of the war experience at home. The Canadian War Memorials Fund consciously embraced the wartime experience in both Britain and Canada.87 As early as November 1917, in a meeting held only a few days before the devastating explosion in Halifax harbour, the CWMF Committee decided to send British artists to Canada to paint scenes of the war effort at home: ‘[I]t was suggested that we should send Artists to Canada to paint Canadian subjects. Such subjects as “Declaration of War at Ottawa”, “The Camp at Valcartier”, “Halifax Harbour in Wartime”, “Munitions Works”, were suggested.’88 This was part of a concerted effort by Beaverbrook, Konody and others on the CWMF Committee to create a collection that embraced all aspects of Canada’s wartime experience. In his 1918 report to Borden, Beaverbrook explained that the committee had ‘laboured to secure worthy representations of every phase of war activity from the munitions factories and dockyards, the lumber camps and aviation works, up through the roads and railways, to training camp and hospital, and so to the fighting front itself at sea, in air and on land’.89 However, the portrayal of the war experience in Canada was limited. In paintings of the war at home, there was a focus on Central Canada, and there were no images of the production of wheat by prairie farmers, no images of the training camps in Alberta and British Columbia, no images of the mining of copper and nickel on the Canadian Shield, and very few images of munition work outside Ontario.90

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The British were also concerned with obtaining paintings both of the front line and the war experience at home for their national collection. Arnold Bennett, a writer who worked as Director of Propaganda for France in Beaverbrook’s Ministry of Information and a member of the British War Memorials Committee (BWMC), believed that the war effort at home was ‘almost as picturesque and certainly as humanly interesting’ as the battlefield.91 He drew up a list of subjects with which artists should be commissioned that fell into eight categories: ‘Army, Navy, Air Force, Merchant Marine, Land, Munitions, Clerical & other Work by Women, and Public Manifestations’.92

APPOINTING

THE

AUSTRALIAN

WAR ARTISTS

The choice of artists for the art scheme was a dynamic process – an example of the plurality of agency involved in memory-making. There were few formal mechanisms for selecting artists for the National War Records Office, and Smart’s appointments were largely based on his own limited knowledge of expatriate artists working in London. There is little evidence to suggest that he sought any artistic advice from experts either in Britain or at home in Australia when choosing artists to fill the additional positions the government had granted the National War Records Office art section in July 1917. Although claiming that there was ‘plenty of room for all the good artists we can lay our hands on’ and initially planning to employ ‘the best Australian artists’, Smart’s criteria for their selection appear to be first that they were Australian and second that they were available to go to France.93 It seems that what counted most was passion and patriotism. Bean would later comment that the Australian scheme was made up of ‘enthusiastic men doing their best to help their country’s record’.94 Fortunately Smart could choose from some of the most celebrated Australian painters of the age who were working in London, thanks to the exodus of artists to Europe between the 1890s and the First World War.95 Many lived in Chelsea and, despite there being no formal organisation to represent their interests as expatriates in London, were members of the Chelsea Arts Club, an association established in 1891 as an alternative to the Arts Club in Mayfair. As Bernard Smith rather bitingly remarks, ‘It was in the Chelsea Arts Club that the Heidelberg School established its last and least distinguished camp.’96 It appears Smart’s initial list of artists was made up of those Australian members of the Chelsea Arts Club – not surprising, given that the club was a well-known

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haunt for Australian painters and that he had a limited knowledge of the expatriate art community in Britain and France.97 As was the general practice for both the Canadian and British schemes, Smart approached those artists he thought suitable. As early as April 1917, he applied for permission from the Australian Government for Septimus Power and Percy Spence to travel to the front on similar conditions to Dyson.98 Spence was unable to go, so in July Fred Leist was asked to take his place. In comparison with their contemporaries at the Chelsea Club, these artists were relatively young, suggesting that these early appointments were based not only on Smart’s personal knowledge of and contact with these men but also primarily their availability to go to the front.99 Smart’s choice of Power and Leist to succeed Dyson at the front, however, almost derailed the scheme, because this decision played into the politics of the expatriate community. The London correspondent for the Argus commented that it sparked ‘some little ferment in AngloAustralian art circles’.100 Streeton was deeply critical of Smart’s appointments – particularly since he had offered his services as an artist, via Mackennal and Spencer’s proposal to Fisher in early 1917, and had heard nothing since. Smart’s choices appeared to be an outright rejection of his offer. In a letter to Smart, a version of which was later published in the Argus, Streeton, claiming to speak on behalf of several expatriate artists in London, declared: ‘We are of the opinion that the artists chosen do not fairly represent the best of Australian art.’101 He complained in particular that Dyson was ‘not a recognized authority on Australian Art’ and declared in private that Leist, whom he rather spitefully noted was the ‘son of a German’, was chosen only because he ‘was very thick with Mr Smart’.102 Criticising the fact that all three artists were of ‘military age’, Streeton argued that Smart had selected ‘shirkers’ and consequently ‘missed his chance of getting the best men’.103 He claimed that in comparison with Dyson, Leist and Power, several expatriate artists who were too old for military service, such as Tom Roberts, Henry Fullwood, George Coates and himself, had enlisted in 1915 as orderlies at the 3rd London General Hospital, Wandsworth, performing ‘hard, dirty, and dangerous work’.104 Streeton put forward his own list of artists who in his opinion were better and more committed to the war effort. In addition to himself, Coates, Fullwood and Roberts, Streeton’s list included Lambert and notable portraitist John Longstaff, who, as Streeton pointed out, had sons fighting in the war. He also named painters Dora Meeson and George Bell, who were working in munitions, illustrator and painter Alfred Daplyn, who was employed as a splint maker, landscape painter Myer Blashki,

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who worked in the War Office, Mackennal who had enlisted for police duty, and marine artist Arthur Burgess, who had enlisted in the navy.105 Although Smart, perhaps realising the error that had been made in ignoring Streeton’s earlier proposal and hoping to resolve the situation, contacted Streeton a week later with an offer to work for the scheme, Streeton reiterated his loss of interest – later stating emphatically, ‘no Sir: I’m clean off it’ – and claimed that ‘the interest and enthusiasm of the other Representative Australian Artists has dropped also’.106 There is, in fact, some evidence that Smart originally intended to employ Streeton and several of the artists Streeton claimed had been overlooked. After having received permission in May 1917 to expand the scheme to include five to six ‘leading Australian Artists’, Smart wrote to Bean about the painters he was considering, and mentioned that he intended to contact John Longstaff.107 In December 1917, Smart noted that marine artist Charles Bryant and Lambert had accepted commissions and were in the field and that ‘other artists . . . have all been invited to go, including Streeton, Longstaff, Spence, Fullwood and Bell’.108 He also later approached Coates, although, owing to difficulties with the War Office, Coates was unable to take on any commissions for the Australian art scheme until after the war. Although Streeton’s criticism of the scheme stemmed largely from his injured ego, his censure of Smart’s choices was not ill founded. It highlighted Smart’s failure to consult art experts in his selection of artists or to include the art community in the development of the program – a common theme in his management of the scheme throughout the war years. It is unclear whether Smart’s offers to artists in late 1917 were in response to Streeton’s criticisms but, considering that they were all members of the Chelsea Arts Club, it is most likely that he had always intended to hire them. However, believing Smart to have rejected his services deliberately, Streeton not only formally withdrew his offer – declaring while he had been ‘most keen to go 8 or 9 months ago’ he had ‘no further interest in the plan of sending Australian Artists to work in France’ – but also incited fellow artists to reject commissions with the National War Records Office, promising them places on a rival art scheme he planned to establish.109 His proposed scheme was more ambitious than the government’s and emphasised the control of art experts. Contacting Konody for information on the organisation of the Canadian War Memorials Fund, Streeton ‘agitated for a big plan like Canada’.110 As opposed to the six artists Smart intended employing, Streeton planned a scheme based on the scale

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of the Canadian program, which he understood to be employing around sixty artists, proposing to commission ‘40 or 50 [of the] best artists of the Allies & of Australia’.111 According to Streeton, Konody offered ‘his services and that of his Committee’ to run an Australian scheme, but his proposal was rejected at a meeting Streeton arranged in late 1917 of expatriate artists, although he reported that they were ‘keen’ on his own suggestion for an art scheme and Mackennal, Longstaff and Streeton himself were appointed to ‘set it going’. What Streeton proposed was a program ‘that put the whole control outside Government hands’, placing artists in control of ‘Art matters’. Streeton was adamant that he wanted ‘Govt. support’ – presumably financial – but ‘no direction or control’. He was particularly concerned that Hugh Paterson, chairman of the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board and friend of Fisher, would interfere in the program, warning Spencer to ‘tell him [Paterson] its [sic] quite free from Govt. control’.112 Streeton’s proposed scheme threatened to upset the fledgling National War Records Office art section. Smart was particularly concerned with Streeton’s attempts ‘to induce other artists not to accept our offer from the start’. However, in late December 1917 he claimed he had ‘broken the combination down’.113 Streeton himself acknowledged that ‘my backing has fallen away, & there seems not sufficient Public spirit to carry out a scheme like Canadas [sic]’.114 After some heated meetings at the Chelsea Arts Club, Leist and Dyson, who believed Streeton’s attack the result of his ‘outrageous and outraged vanity’, persuaded Streeton to withdraw his comments.115 A public retraction was printed in the Argus in May 1918 in which Streeton claimed that he had been unaware of Power, Leist and Dyson’s wartime work. Although he clarified that Power had attempted to enlist in the army, that Leist had worked for the War Office and that Dyson had engaged in propaganda work before going to the front as an official artist, in private Streeton remained unrepentant: ‘it doesn’t in the least affect the truth of my 1st letter’.116 For their part, expatriate artists were keen to distance themselves from Streeton’s criticism of the government’s scheme and to show their support for it. The Society for Australian Artists, which Streeton himself established in September 1917 to meet the need for a formal organisation to represent Australian artists’ interests in Britain – although after an ‘unruly’ meeting in late 1917 he resigned, he would rejoin the group the following year – announced the society’s enthusiasm for the scheme in June 1918 in the columns of the Argus, where Streeton had first publicly criticised it:

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Statements that have appeared in your columns are felt to give the impression that foremost Australian artists are hostile to the Commonwealth scheme of war memorials as it applies to the artists. To correct this misapprehension, I am instructed by the council of this society to inform you that at a general meeting of the society the following resolution was unanimously passed: – ‘In view of the important bearing on the interest of Australian art and artists, the society puts on record its cordial sympathy with the Commonwealth scheme of art records of the war’.117

This expression of support must have come as a relief to Smart, although by this time he had already managed to hire several of the society’s members for the National War Records Office art section.118 Although Smart’s recruitment of artists was initially limited to expatriates who belonged to the Chelsea Arts Club, a number of artists outside this group also came to his attention in varying ways. Some, like Dyson in 1916, approached the High Commission with offers of service. In early 1918 Private James Scott, who was serving in the 50th Battalion, applied to Smart to paint for the scheme – he was later employed as an artist under the Australian War Records Section. Others were suggested to Smart, such as Charles Wheeler, who was serving in the British Army, and whom Dyson proposed might be a good choice as an official artist.119 As it happened, Wheeler did not receive permission from the War Office to paint for the Australian scheme during the war despite Smart and Bean’s attempts to recruit him. However, he was commissioned in its aftermath. Politicians in Australia also intervened in Smart’s selection of artists. Arthur Burgess – whom Streeton had recommended but Smart had overlooked, presumably because he was not an official member of the Chelsea Arts Club – was proposed in this way as a suitable artist for the scheme. Burgess, a marine artist who had trained in Australia and England, complained in May 1918 that the government had still not approached him, which he argued was ‘rather surprising if they mean to get any records of the doings of the Australian Navy’. He was presumably ignorant of Smart’s appointment of Bryant, a younger but talented marine painter who was in France painting the embarkation and disembarkation of troops. In another example of artists’ delicate egos, Burgess declared ‘they know what work I do so it’s up to them to come to me’. His comments ended up in the hands of Walter Massy Greene, whip of Hughes’ new Nationalist Party. Despite his being unsure of the exact nature of the government’s art program, Greene suggested to Pearce that

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it would be worthwhile contacting Burgess to see ‘what he can do with regard to the naval side of the work’. He was in no doubt that Burgess was ‘a good and suitable man’ for the scheme.120 Burgess had the backing not only of Greene but also of George Macandie, Naval Secretary, who cabled Fisher requesting that ‘if Artists are being employed in the recording of the doings of the AIF and the Australian Navy in connection with the war, consideration may be given to the claims of Mr Arthur J. W. Burgess whose work as a Marine painter is well known’.121 Consequently, Smart commissioned Burgess in June 1918 to paint naval scenes in England for the National War Records Office art section, although he was never commissioned to paint the fighting fronts in France or the Middle East and was not considered one of the official artists.122 Although he hired Burgess in a minor role, Smart ignored other suggestions. Artists and politicians alike were surprised and upset that the scheme did not consider employing painters working in Australia. Several were vocal about this oversight. In mid-1918 Norman Lindsay and Bertram Stevens, among others, lobbied for the widely acclaimed landscape artist Elioth Gruner to be exempted from military service and commissioned as an official war artist to make paintings of the war experience in Australia. Lindsay argued that he personally placed Gruner next to Streeton in artistic ability and rather dramatically claimed that it would be ‘a reckless misuse of human economy to throw away a fine painter to make a poor soldier’, adding somewhat unkindly that this would be particularly irresponsible given ‘that some of the artists at the Front are very second-rate men and none are up to Gruner’s standards’.123 William Watt, then Acting Prime Minister, became involved in the Gruner matter: ‘I am advised that Private Gruner is one of the most promising artists of Australia, and the Historic Memorials Committee are of the opinion that his offer provides an excellent opportunity for obtaining suitable sketches of AIF activities in Australia.’124 Despite the efforts of Lindsay and others, however, Smart did not offer Gruner an official commission, although at the request of the Historic Memorials Committee the Department of Defence approved a leave of absence for Gruner.125 Smart was not alone in ignoring artists at home. The Canadian scheme was much less nationalist focused than the Australian program since Beaverbrook’s priority was ‘to secure at once the highest available talent’.126 For Beaverbrook and Konody, this largely meant employing British artists. As the British painter William Orpen, himself working for the Canadian War Memorials Fund, commented, ‘the Canadians have robbed every artist of distinction in England’.127 In fact, Konody

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employed the best of all Allied artists, commissioning Belgian, British and Australian painters to work for the scheme.128 Predictably, the CWMF faced criticism over its selection of artists, including from those who felt that if paintings were to be commissioned for Canadians, it should be Canadian artists who painted them. Edmund Walker, director of the National Gallery of Canada and a member of the CWMF Committee, cabled Beaverbrook: ‘Some dissatisfaction regarding inadequate employment Canadian artists . . . have tried to avert criticism and create harmony by obtaining from whole body artists suitable names. They suggest four who could go immediately. Cullen, Beatty, Simpson and Varley . . . Hope you will make appointments as this will clear difficult situation here.’129 Although the Canadian War Memorials Fund hired these artists – by 1921 the CWMF had hired forty-three Canadian painters from a total of more than a hundred official artists – criticisms continued to plague the scheme from artists who resented its focus on painters from Central Canada and its neglect of those from the West.130 The CWMF did not employ any French-Canadian artists, and the majority of those hired for the scheme in Canada were selected from within the anglophone art community of Toronto.131 The selection of artists for the Canadian scheme was just as haphazard as the Australian program. Beaverbrook took early responsibility for choosing artists, gaining permission in August 1917 – after complaining to Perley that the Australians had ‘asked for permission to send forward six artists, and that authority has been given’ – to appoint a further six in addition to Jack.132 Beaverbrook initially took note of Ernest Fosbery, a Canadian portrait painter, who warned that Canadian artists were being ‘entirely overlooked’ by the scheme, and seriously considered Fosbery, A.Y. Jackson and J.L. Graham as potential official artists. However, he found at least Fosbery’s and Graham’s work to be disappointing.133 Jackson was the only one of these three to be commissioned, his appointment no doubt aided by the recent acquisition of his painting The Red Maple (1914) by the National Gallery of Canada. Beaverbrook also hired Cyril Barraud, a printmaker serving as a lieutenant in the 14th Reserve Battalion, and James Kerr-Lawson, a Canadian expatriate painter working in London. However, the remaining positions were filled predominantly by British artists, such as Augustus John, David Cameron, Gyrth Russell and later Percy Wyndham Lewis, Alfred Bastein and, much to the consternation of Smart and Bean, eminent Australian portraitist James Quinn.134

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The Canadian War Memorials Fund’s more universal approach and the fact that they were offering more money to artists threatened the nationalist aims of the Australian scheme. Many Australian artists, such as Quinn, Coates, Streeton and Lambert, were asked to paint for the CWMF. The British scheme too, which by early 1918 Beaverbrook was overseeing in his new position as the British Minister for Information (which sometimes resulted in his roles becoming mixed), posed as a potential rival for Australian artists, and Dyson, Lambert, Coates, Quinn and Streeton were all asked to contribute to the collection.135 Bean was very concerned about these offers to Australian artists, commenting that the ‘difficulties in getting Australian artists to come to France, [are] mainly due to the fact that Canada is offering the same men [i.e. the Australian artists] Majors rank and paying £200 for one picture, against our Lieut. Rank, 25 sketches free’.136 Assuming that his agitation had made him ‘very unpopular at Australia House’, Streeton considered a commission with the Canadian scheme to paint Halifax in December 1917, boasting to Spencer that he had been offered ‘£350 and all expenses paid’.137 Offers from other countries’ schemes to Australian artists were still an issue in late 1918 when Bean wrote frantically to the government requesting permission to commission artists with work: ‘Artists fear if Australia unable use their services they must accept offers made them by British Government to do other work [sic].’138

SELECTING AIF

ARTISTS

In contrast to the National War Records Office, the selection of artists for the Australian War Records Section was more systematic and artists themselves were consulted about appointing their peers to these positions. It had the advantage, perhaps, of starting later and learning from Smart’s mistakes. Although Bean had been lobbying for appointments since 1916 and, at his suggestion, Crozier began working as an artist attached to the Australian War Records Section in late 1917, it was not until early 1918 that Treloar received permission to appoint ‘seven [later increased to eight] members of the AIF as artists’.139 Professional artists serving in the AIF were anxious to be part of the scheme. Some, such as Leyshon-White, who had worked on The Anzac Book, contacted Bean asking for ‘a few words of recommendation’.140 However, Bean was quick to decline these requests, responding that the appointments had ‘to be quite uninfluenced by any recommendations’.141 In a list of matters to discuss with General White, he argued that in order

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to ‘discover the suitability’ of artists in the AIF, they should supply the Australian War Records Section with between three and four sketches to ‘ensure their starting enthusiastically some work for the state’.142 He suggested that these submissions should be approved by Dyson or another expert at the Australian War Records Section. Given the widely advertised commissioning of civilian artists, patrons and critics in Australia were concurrently making similar suggestions about the value of commissioning professional artists who were serving with the AIF. Ure Smith wrote to the government on behalf of Sergeant Cecil Hart, who had sketched for the Bulletin and for some of the London illustrated papers, saying that, ‘unless something is done to at least give artists who have fought or who are fighting the opportunity [of] doing some work on the field or elsewhere in connection with making records of the war . . . there is likely to be trouble later on, as most of the men who are commissioned by the Commonwealth, are civilian artists’. He claimed that this was particularly important as he had been informed that ‘very few of the civilian war artists are willing to go into the front line’. In addition to advocating for Hart, Ure Smith suggested Crozier and Lieutenant George Benson as potential candidates, as well as Barker and Collis.143 Despite there being a number of professional artists already serving in the AIF, these men were not approached directly to work for the Australian War Records Section. Rather, calls were made through advertisements in the AIF Orders inviting applications from members of the AIF to ‘fill appointments as artists under the Australian War Records Section’. The aim was to tap into the undiscovered talent in the AIF that Bean had become aware of when editing The Anzac Book in 1916.144 Applicants were asked to submit examples of their work to Treloar for positions attached to the Medical Section, Administrative Headquarters, Australian Corps Headquarters and at each divisional headquarters in the AIF. Significantly, applicants were also asked to provide a record of their war service. Military service and experience at the front, particularly in battles that had gone unrecorded in art, were almost as important to the scheme as were artists’ skill.145 Given Smart’s experience in managing the National War Records Office art section, Bean suggested that Treloar ask Smart to organise a meeting of the National War Records Office Art Committee to judge the 114 applications received by the Australian War Records Section. However, Smart did ‘not think it worth while calling up Brangwyn and Talmage for this work’ and instead arranged for a panel of the National War Records Office official artists to assess the submissions.146 He did not

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believe that judging the Australian War Records Section artists was a legitimate duty of the committee and thought the high standing of its members meant that he could not arrange a meeting solely for this purpose. Reasoning that National War Records Office official artists could evaluate the applications just as well as the ‘bigger men’ and would ‘probably take more trouble’, Smart instead organised for Dyson, Power, Leist and Longstaff to meet on 10 April 1918.147 The committee members were impressed by the quality of the applications from the AIF. Dyson noted that ‘the applications showed the existence of much more talent than he had ever thought was in the AIF’ and went on to comment that ‘many of the specimens were very much better than had been submitted for either of the books [The Anzac Book and From the Australian Front] . . . published’. The committee chose and ranked ten artists, Treloar having asked the members to select ten in case some of the selected applicants had difficulty taking up their positions.148 These men were Crozier, Benson, Staff Sergeant James Stuart MacDonald, Private Louis McCubbin, Private James Scott, Captain Will Longstaff, Lance Corporal Edward Franz Hubert Frings, Driver Cecil Humphrey Percival, Private Patterson and Driver Daryl Lindsay, who was commissioned to make drawings for medical records.149 It is surprising that despite Bean’s encouragement of Leyshon-White and other Anzac Book artists, none, save Crozier, were given official commissions. However, there is little in the archive to suggest whether or not they officially applied to the Australian War Records Section. Regrettably, no evidence remains of the discussion of the reasons these men were chosen and others rejected. Although the Australian War Memorial’s archive contains two files tantalisingly entitled ‘Unsuccessful Applicants’, they shed little light on the selection process and consist only of the surviving applications without either an explanation for rejection or examples of the sketches submitted. It is possible that the professional training of the men chosen, as well as the fact that all had worked as artists before the war, was an important factor in their selection. Yet many of the unsuccessful applicants could also claim a high level of professional training, such as R. Wenham, who studied under the renowned art teacher Julian Ashton in Sydney, and C. Campbell, who had studied under Lindsay Bernard Hall, director of the National Gallery of Victoria, at the National Gallery School in Melbourne for seven years.150 Most were also professional graphic artists, such as Private B. Bragg, who in civilian life had worked for newspapers and magazines but also had experience in painting.151 There is a possibility that the service record of

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these men played an important role in their success. Of the five artists who received official commissions, Crozier, Benson and Longstaff had served in more than one theatre of war – Crozier and Benson on Gallipoli and in France and Longstaff in the Middle East and in France.152 McDonald, who was unable to take up the commission owing to ill health, had also served on Gallipoli and in France. Only McCubbin and Scott had served solely on the Western Front. Many of the unsuccessful applicants had also served for long periods in different theatres of the war, such as Sergeant A.H. Ballment, who had enlisted in 1914 and seen action on Gallipoli and in France.153 In the absence of any definite documentation of the meeting or a broad range of visual samples submitted by applicants, we can only speculate as to the reasons these men were selected. What seems likely is that the artists who were chosen were simply judged by their peers to be the best. Although in the end accepting only five artists for official positions, Treloar, given his proclivity for collecting almost everything, was not one to let an opportunity pass by. Overwhelmed by the quality of the work, and possibly persuaded by Dyson, he asked soldiers who were not chosen to donate the drawing samples they had supplied to the Australian War Records Section. Further, he decided to enlist the talent in the ranks of the AIF in the same way he had for the war diaries, providing gifted soldiers with the materials necessary to sketch their activities. Treloar wrote detailed instructions for these ‘soldier artists’, mirroring his work with the official diaries: ‘[T]o the cover of each sketch book will be attached printed instructions for the guidance of the artist using it. These will indicate the subjects which should be recorded.’154 He went so far as to point out specific areas that soldiers should consider sketching: ‘a) Trench, camp, and billet life, and scenes in villages behind the line. b) Panoramas and landscapes. c) Sketches of men under service conditions. d) The destructive effect of war (ruins of houses, churches, and villages, and battlefields). e) Battle incidents.’155 These images were to form an important aspect of the collection, as they captured, like the unit diaries, the everyday life of AIF troops at the front.

A

CONSPICUOUS ABSENCE

An obvious oversight in Smart’s selection of artists for the Australian scheme was women. In part, this was attributable to the belief at the time that only artists who had personal contact with the troops and a direct understanding of the battlefield would paint the war compellingly.156 During the war there was a prevailing idea that, as Margaret Higonnet

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puts it, ‘Authentic speech . . . could only come from the trenches in the disabused words of a man who had “seen” combat.’157 Such ideas framed a male art scheme from the very beginning.158 Men were attached to divisions within the AIF, and there were no comparable military structures with which women could associate. The exclusion of women from painting for the art scheme followed a wider trend in Australia’s war effort where, in comparison with other nations, women’s contributions to the war were limited. As Carmel Shute argues, ‘the battlefield . . . was proclaimed the sole preserve of man’, and Australian women were cast as nurturers and their participation in the war effort restricted by such perceptions.159 Unlike British women, Australian women were prevented from participating in paramilitary activities during the war, and a deep division existed between the work of men and women.160 There were no equivalent paramilitary groups to Britain’s Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, the Women’s Royal Naval Service or the Women’s Royal Air Force, which mobilised women into the work force. The only exception in Australia were nurses, although this was largely because such a role fell in line with traditional ideas about women nurturing men.161 However, while the practicalities of sending artists to the front might have played a factor in the gender bias of the scheme, there is no evidence that employing women either inside or outside army structures was ever contemplated by the men managing the art program.162 Consequently, although several female expatriate artists were working in London and France during the war, including Thea Proctor, Hilda Rix Nicholas, Isobel (Iso) Rae, Kathleen O’Connor, Margaret Preston and, significantly, Dyson’s wife Ruby, herself a successful artist who was, according to Haldane MacFall’s History of Painting (1911), ‘one of the most remarkable women-artists with pen-line now living’, Smart did not appoint a single woman.163 Nor is there any evidence that he even contemplated them, ignoring Streeton’s suggestion of Dora Meeson as a potential artist for the art scheme. Further, there were also artists who had joined the nursing services who might have been considered for the scheme, among them Bessie Davidson, Jessie Traill, Nora Gurdon and Louise Riggall.164 Although Florence Rodway was commissioned after the war and the work of other female artists, such as Meeson, was purchased, it was not until 1943, when Nora Heysen was commissioned during the Second World War, that a woman was employed as an Australian official war artist.165 The exclusion of women from the Australian scheme stood in contrast to the Canadian and British programs, both of which employed renowned

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female artists, although the number of women was considerably lower than that of men. British artists Anna Airy and Clare Atwood, for example, were employed to paint pictures for the Canadian scheme from as early as 1917. Later, Laura Knight, Flora Lion, Annie Swynnerton and the Canadian artist Florence Carlyle were given official commissions.166 The Canadian War Memorials Fund also employed female artists at home, including Henrietta Mabel May, Florence Wyle, Francis Loring and Dorothy Stevens. However, the Canadian scheme took a rather gendered view of female artists, largely directing them to paint only women’s war work.167 The British scheme, while employing considerably fewer women than the Canadians, nevertheless commissioned Airy in 1918. The Imperial War Museum Women’s Works Sub-Committee, formed to capture women’s contributions to the war effort, also employed female artists, such as Victoria Monkhouse.168 These women painted both military scenes as well as the experience of the war at home and women’s work during the war. Despite their exclusion from the Australian official art scheme, female artists produced numerous paintings depicting their wartime experiences, and their images show what the scheme might have gained had it employed them. Iso Rae, for instance, painted the Étaples Army Base Camp. Her delicate and evocative images capture the rhythms of camp life, seen in such sketches as Cinema Queue (1916) where Rae presents lines of soldiers waiting in the dusk to view a film, the glowing interior of the buildings contrasting starkly with the darkness in which the men wait. Hilda Rix Nicholas, also living in France, captured her personal grief at her husband’s death and the grief of others in her work. In A Mother of France (1914) she depicts the pain and suffering of those left behind. This picture was subsequently acquired by the Australian War Museum in the 1920s to, as Treloar commented, ‘fill the gap in our collections’.169 Others, such as Grace Cossington Smith, painted the war at home. Her most iconic painting, The Sock Knitter (1915), portrays her sister Madge knitting socks for soldiers at the front, affording a glimpse of women’s wartime experience. The style of the painting was influenced by the work of such European artists as Cézanne and Van Gogh, and is often regarded as the first entirely Post-Impressionist work produced in Australia.170 She also captured other elements of women’s experience. Her painting Reinforcements: Troops Marching (c. 1917), which shows women waving off Australian troops as they march to war, alludes to the place of women in the bitter conscription debates that divided Australia during the war.171 Although much of the art produced by women during the war was not

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acquired until some time after the conflict – Rae’s Cinema Queue was not purchased until the 1970s – several of these images are now an important part of the Australian War Memorial’s art collection.

STYLE

AND GENRE

The improvised selection of painters to work for official art schemes during the war meant that initially both Canadian and Australian officials gave little thought to the style and genre of their work or how this would shape the collection. For the Canadians, Beaverbrook’s early selection of artists resulted in the Canadian War Memorials Fund employing largely traditional painters, such as Jack. However, from 1916, under Konody’s direction the CWMF expanded to include modernist artists. His aim was to make ‘the collection of memorial paintings truly representative of the artistic outlook during the momentous period of the great war’.172 Indeed, in choosing artists the CWMF Committee claimed it ‘was not confined . . . to any one nationality or any single school of art, so as to secure . . . all that it [the war] has meant to the present generation through the medium of many different minds, realist, romanticist, impressionist, or symbolist, approaching it from various angles of vision’.173 Konody was intent on the modernity of the war being captured in the latest artistic trends and consequently employed a diverse range of artists, some of whom included young British artists from the Slade School of Art who worked in a vorticist style, which combined the principles of continental Cubism and Futurism. Although embracing a ‘catholicity of taste’, Konody planned to achieve a coherent collection not through style but through ‘a certain unity of scale’ – a point discussed in more detail later in this book.174 Yet the members of the CWMF were not prepared to accept every new artistic trend, and the modernist style was somewhat tempered under the scheme. The most infamous example of this moderation was David Bomberg’s experience working for the CWMF. In late 1917 Bomberg, a British artist known for working in a cubist style, was asked to paint a picture of Canadian sappers at work. He was warned, as were fellow artists, that ‘cubist work would be inadmissible for the purpose’ of official war paintings.175 Consequently, when Bomberg submitted his canvas Sappers at Work (c. 1918–19), which he had completed in a cubist style, it was refused and he was asked to repaint it.176 He did so and, although his second attempt hinted at the first painting’s cubist composition, it was much more representational in style and was accepted by the CWMF. Indeed, although art historians have made much of Konody’s employment

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of modernist painters, the traditionalists outweighed the modernists and the majority of artists were associates or members of the Royal Academy or prominent society portraitists.177 While Konody imposed control over the style and genre of the work of the CWMF’s artists, those men managing the Australian scheme adopted a more opportunistic approach, taking advantage of the expatriate Australian artists working in London during the war and later hiring artists serving in the AIF. Their emphasis on the artists being Australian and able to travel to the front limited the style of the collection to those painters who, like Streeton, represented the talents and tastes that had developed in Australia since the 1880s, and hence were inherently conservative in style. Indeed, despite being aware of and exposed to the modernist movements sweeping Europe, the Edwardian expatriates consciously eschewed them – they were to return to Australia after the war as ‘howling reactionaries’.178 There is evidence to suggest that several of the artists working for the scheme, such as Lambert and Bell, saw the infamous first Post-Impressionist Exhibition at the Grafton Galleries in 1910 planned by Roger Fry, British artist and art critic – a key event in delivering modernism to Britain and therefore Australia, whose cultural traditions were largely inherited from the mother country. Yet, while this exhibition was to have a profound effect on young British artists, such as Paul Nash and Wyndham Lewis who were both employed by the British and Canadian art schemes, for expatriate Australian painters the exhibition was ‘a joke’. In fact, they mocked it, setting up a comical exhibition at the Chelsea Arts Club that mimicked the Post-Impressionist Exhibition.179 Yet after 1914 modern art was no longer comical but considered by many Allied art critics, as John Williams writes, ‘an alien disease which some local practitioners had caught from the enemy’.180 There was a feeling among artists and their patrons that realism should be revived and that any preoccupation with art for art’s sake did not fit with the terrible nature of the war and was an unsuitable mode of commemoration.181 Instead old art was considered to be more patriotic, and the Edwardian expatriates were expertly suited to this need.182 Indeed, the style of expatriate painting never questioned the central tenet of Impressionism, which was an attempt to approximate ‘the visual reality of objective facts’.183 While Smart, somewhat serendipitously, employed artists who had a high degree of coherence in their style and method of painting, there is little evidence to suggest that his choice was particularly influenced by their specialist genre. The only exception to this was the appointment of

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John Longstaff and Quinn for their reputation as portraitists. Although Leist was also accomplished at portraiture, Smart was particularly anxious to employ Quinn, who had made a name for himself painting London’s elite.184 As he commented to Bean in December 1917, ‘Quinn is the better portrait painter’.185 However, Smart’s general lack of attention to artists’ genre meant that the majority of official artists he hired were landscape specialists, this being the most valued genre in Australian art at the time.186 Bell, Benson, Crozier, Fullwood, Lambert, Leist, Will Longstaff, McCubbin, Scott and Streeton all specialised in landscape painting, which was in some instances to prove problematic with the figurative elements of their later official canvases. There was some variation with Power’s expert genre, since he specialised in animal painting, primarily horses and dogs, and was well suited to painting the men and their teams at the front. Although not unexpected given the emphasis on capturing the soldiers of the AIF on the battlefield, the only marine artist Smart employed was Bryant and later, after the government intervened, Burgess. This neglect of the navy in the collection was to later prove problematic. *** The implementation of the ideas that had inspired the establishment of the art scheme in May 1917 was improvised and sometimes haphazard. During the last months of the war, Smart, Bean and Treloar ushered in an art program that was distinctly nationalist in intention, by exclusively employing Australian artists and focusing solely on the theatres of war where AIF troops were fighting. Yet their attempts to commemorate an Australian war experience neglected crucial aspects of the nation’s participation in the conflict, such as the war at home. Moreover, as a result of the perception of women’s wartime roles in Australia, they excluded any contributions from female artists. Instead, Smart, Bean and Treloar’s selection of artists and the terms and conditions of their employment shaped an art program that privileged expatriate male artists – and thus the traditions of nineteenth-century Australian painting – and stressed the eyewitness value of war art. This was to have profound implications for the content and scope of the collection, as what artists were able to capture in their work at the front represented – and commemorated – only a limited and narrow part of Australia’s wartime experience.

CHAPTER

GAZING

|

3

ON STRANGE

A N D T E R R I B L E L A N D S,

1916–18

‘The official artists were left untrammelled in their choice of subjects’, declared Treloar in 1933, and ‘[t]hey depicted the truth, as they saw it, often under great difficulties’.1 A study of the plurality of agency involved in the process of memory-making under Australia’s official art scheme would be incomplete without a discussion of the role of the official artists themselves. The images these men produced while at the front formed the foundation of the official art collection – and official artistic tradition – that commemorated Australia’s war experience. Given the vague instructions and lack of direction they received from Smart, Bean and Treloar during this period, artists worked in relative freedom while at the front and consequently had considerable influence over the subjects they depicted. Employing a traditional academic style, in contrast to Canadian and British artists, several of whom embraced modernism, they interpreted the war in a visual language that referenced the imagery and tropes of pre-war Australian art familiar to audiences at home. Yet their efforts were hampered by the improvised nature of the art scheme and the realities of sketching and painting at the front during the war. This chapter explores the conditions that shaped Australian official artists’ representation of the conflict and the complexities they faced in acting and interpreting their role as a witness to it. The record of artists’ wartime work is uneven; hence an understanding of how artists chose to portray the war is enhanced by a close study of Dyson, Streeton and Lambert who remain an enduring presence in both the archive and

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gallery, and best represent the various types of Australian war art that emerged during the conflict.

PAINTING

DURING THE WAR

At the outbreak of war in 1914, there was a sense within the art world that art would have little place in the modern conflict.2 Initially, many artists saw the war as a paralysing force that would arrest artistic life. There were some younger, modern artists, such as the Italian Futurists, who believed that the war was a cleansing force, proclaiming: ‘We wish to glorify War – the only health-giver of the world – militarism, patriotism, the destructive arms of the Anarchist, the beautiful Ideas that kill.’ However, the majority of artists in Britain and its empire saw the war as the death knell of their profession.3 For many English artists, the outbreak of war was initially seen as spelling the end of art.4 Roger Fry commented in August 1914: ‘It is over with all our ideas.’5 Augustus John, a Welsh painter who eventually took a commission with the Canadian War Memorials Fund, commented that the war was ‘going to be bad for art’, and in 1915 Percy Wyndham Lewis, a vorticist artist who painted for both the Canadian and British war art schemes, stated succinctly that it had ‘stopped Art dead’.6 There was a similar feeling among Canadian artists and critics, who feared, as journalist and novelist Augustus Bridle wrote in 1916, the ‘diminished demand for pictures’ as a result of the war and the economic impact this would have on their profession.7 William Brymner, president of the Royal Canadian Academy, bemoaned the drop in art sales and the ‘thriving of munitions’.8 Australian artists also expressed this sentiment, Streeton commenting in 1916 that ‘[t]he Arts may have to lie dormant for a time’.9 These comments lamented not only the death of ‘civilised thought’ at the expense of blind patriotism but also the more practical impact of the war, a total conflict that harnessed national resources and diverted funds away from the arts.10 Yet by 1918 this pessimism, at least in the Australian art community, had abated. Charles Lloyd Jones, a patron of Australian art, proclaimed: ‘This war which, in its earliest stages, threatened to kill what little life there was in Art, has stimulated and broadened the work of all who use the brush.’11 Indeed, contrary to the pessimism of painters in the early years of the war, the conflict proved to be somewhat of a boon for the arts as most belligerent governments commissioned artists, visual as well as literary, to record the war in a range of forms. The CWMF was attractive to artists as it offered them the chance to paint full-time during the war as

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well as to contribute to a national project that was intended for posterity.12 Some, such as correspondent Marian Ryan, saw the BWMC as broadening art in Britain: ‘For the first time a great art movement . . . to give all groups, all schools of famous artists an opportunity to work for one purpose.’13 For Australia, the war brought an unparalleled level of state patronage for painters since the war art scheme was the first comprehensive government-funded art project of the nascent nation, comparable only to Fisher’s Historic Memorials Committee.14 Artists accepted commissions with the Australian art scheme for a number of reasons, but for many the status of working in an official capacity for their country during wartime was a primary incentive. As Bean commented, for artists ‘[t]o wear the AIF uniform is a privilege which they value’ and, although paid very little to work for the scheme, ‘[t]he return to them, is, in most cases, the honorary rank’.15 Despite Streeton’s early attempts to entice artists away from the government’s scheme in 1917, most accepted official commissions with enthusiasm. Younger and less established artists, such as Leist and Power, were particularly quick to seize on the chance to work for the scheme, seeing it as a way to establish their name within the Australian art community and an opportunity to increase their standing and secure their future after the war. The idea of being an official artist was particularly appealing. Power, for instance, approached Treloar asking whether he might be known as ‘official artist to the AIF’. He also requested a permanent position, longer than the three months for which official artists were initially contracted, so that he might gain the experience necessary ‘to do good work after the war’.16 Bean was aware that the attraction of an official position for artists was the advancement it could give their careers after the war: ‘The Commonwealth has given the Australian artists the advantage of seeing the battlefields, and these artists will probably be commissioned by State galleries to paint any pictures thay [sic] may be required by the States.’17 There is, in fact, some evidence to suggest that art galleries in Australia were already showing interest in artists’ war work during the conflict. Crozier was asked to paint for the National Gallery of Victoria in mid-1918. Although his contract with the art scheme prevented him from taking outside commissions, Bean commented that after the war Crozier would be in a position to do so and that he expected Crozier ‘will get many orders from all over Australia on account of his official work’.18 Although potentially motivated by professional pragmatism as much as any conscious aspiration to shape the memory of war, Australian

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artists also appear to have been moved by more nationalistic impulses than their Canadian and British contemporaries, at least initially. They received considerably lower pay than they had for their peacetime work. Streeton worked for the scheme for a total of ninety-two days at £2 per day on his first visit and was paid £184 in total for thirty-eight watercolours. This was roughly £5 per image but was still a significantly lower sum than his watercolours had sold for on the open market in 1914: they usually fetched between £10 and £30.19 It is perhaps not surprising, then, that on returning to the front for his second visit he vowed: ‘I’m not doing any 10 guinea sketches this time – & as for patriotism – I’ve done that.’20 While some Canadian and British artists took significantly lower rates of pay than they had received before the war – Orpen even donating all his war work to the British Government – it was not patriotism but desperate financial straits brought on by the onset of war that made some artists accept offers from the CWMF.21 Laura Knight, a British painter who worked for both the Canadian and British art schemes, commented that she accepted a position as an official artist because ‘the money was too good to miss’.22 Bean acknowledged the sacrifice and generosity of those artists working for the Australian scheme. Given that the scheme did not allow artists to accept outside commissions, he recognised that artists had to sacrifice their livelihood to work for the official art program. Further, he was aware that the possibility of painting a large canvas on their return to London was ‘the only remuneration they get – the 25 sketches (many more in Dyson’s case) are free’.23 Most artists contributed more sketches to the collection than their twenty-five. Lambert, for instance, submitted more than a hundred on his return from Palestine in mid-1918. Dyson’s commitment to the scheme was such that he worked for almost two years without proper pay because he was so ‘anxious to do the work’.24 He was not alone in his dedication to the scheme, and other artists also offered their services for free, such as Bell, who was sent to the Western Front only in October 1918 and requested an extension of his time there, offering to ‘remain without pay’.25 Many Australian artists were approached by Beaverbrook and Konody to paint for the CWMF, but they turned down this more lucrative offer to paint for the smaller and poorer Australian scheme. Their dedication to the program is remarkable given that there was a strong economic incentive for them to join the Canadian scheme, which was offering more money during this period of perceived uncertainty for their profession. Both Power and Lambert declined offers made to

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them by the Canadians in favour of painting for Australia, despite Konody’s claim that such an opportunity could not be refused since it was ‘the biggest thing in Art that has ever been done’.26 The CWMF offered Lambert the rank of major with equivalent pay of £40 per month plus allowances and around £50 for expenses. Yet even this level of pay was considered low by the Canadian art community, with Walker stating that artists working for the Canadian scheme were ‘employed at rates not higher than those earned by skilled mechanics’.27 Lambert expressed the difficult decision Australian artists had to make between painting for the well-paid CWMF or serving their country: I thoroughly appreciate the honour which you offer me on behalf of the Canadian War Memorials & I am very keen to accept. There is of course the question of just where my energies will best serve the British Empire at the present time. The Terms which you have sketched seem to me to be quite generous & such as could enable me to do good work. Again there is the question of my being morally bound to Australia and this question troubles me.28

He never accepted a commission with the Canadians. Indeed, despite Beaverbrook and Konody’s efforts to entice Australian artists to work for the CWMF, for the most part they chose to accept official commissions offered by Fisher and Smart. Only James Quinn and, later, George Coates accepted commissions with the CWMF.29

WORKING

FOR THE

AUSTRALIAN

ART SCHEME

Given the improvised character of the art scheme’s development, the terms and conditions under which artists worked were not standardised and were subject to change during the war years. As the first artist recruited, Dyson never received or signed an official agreement. In the absence of anything more formal, he worked under the conditions he himself had suggested in his proposal of 1916.30 These terms were vague. As an honorary lieutenant in the AIF, he had no entitlement to payment or allowances, although quarters, rations and transport to the front were provided.31 However, Dyson did begin to receive payment for his work after May 1917 when contracts were drawn up for Leist, Power, Bryant and Lambert.32 These contracts to some extent began to consolidate the terms under which artists were employed. They specified that artists should be granted

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an honorary rank of lieutenant in the AIF for a period of three months at a rate of one pound per day – later increased to two pounds – to cover expenses.33 Artists were to produce twenty-five sketches of scenes of the AIF at war, which were to be used later as the foundation for larger composition paintings. Separate agreements were to be drawn up for these larger canvases, the subject of which was to be decided by the National War Records Office Art Committee. The last three clauses of the contract detailed the government’s rights to the artists’ work produced under the scheme. Clause 6 stipulated that the work produced by artists at the front, specifically the twenty-five sketches, would ‘remain the sole property of the Commonwealth’.34 Similarly all art works produced by AIF artists were considered to be the property of the government.35 This was a common practice at the time, and artists working for the British scheme had to agree to much tighter conditions. The British Government reserved the copyright not only of art produced by artists at the front but also any work ‘based upon studies made at the front, for the duration of the war’. It was also ‘at liberty to exhibit or reproduce the artist’s pictures, sketches, drawings, or prints for propaganda or other purposes’.36 Given that Clause 8 of Australian artists’ wartime agreements stipulated their duty to ‘paint a (picture or) composition of a battle scene or other operation in which the Australian Imperial Forces are represented’, the contracts allowed artists to inspect their sketches at any time, although this was subject to the discretion of the Australian Government.37 Smart expanded on this in official correspondence to artists, assuring them that they could ‘use the sketches and drawings at the discretion of the Commonwealth for the production of a composition’.38 This clause stressed the scheme’s focus on the eyewitness value of the artists’ images, foregrounding the process by which larger paintings would be produced from the evidence artists collected in their sketches at the front. The conditions under which Australian War Records Section artists worked were different from the civilian official painters. Since they were already employed by the AIF and serving in the army, they did not sign official contracts and were tasked with sketching their surroundings whenever they were free from their military duties. In addition, they were to be employed as camouflage artists.39 Dyson and Bean drew up a proposal in 1918 suggesting that these artists might teach soldiers camouflage techniques.40 However, this proposal was, like much of the scheme, haphazard and not applied comprehensively. Consequently only Will Longstaff worked regularly as a camouflage instructor.

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INSTRUCTIONS

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TO ARTISTS

While the improvised nature of the scheme was frustrating for artists, as a result they enjoyed more freedom over their work than either their Canadian or British contemporaries. Smart, Bean and Treloar’s instructions to artists about what to depict in their work were unfocused, and there is no evidence to suggest that at this stage of the scheme they had a clear plan of specific subjects for the collection, displaying a much less deliberate attitude to fashioning memory than they were to adopt in the post-war years. Artists were rather vaguely directed to produce scenes of the AIF in the war, described as ‘drawings and sketches on behalf of the Commonwealth of events occurring in the present War and the battles now pending on the Western Front between the Allied Armies and the German Forces especially with regard to the Australian Imperial Forces [sic]’.41 In contrast, the Canadian and British schemes drew up detailed lists of subjects for artists to paint. Konody commissioned most artists working at the front as well as those painting in London with specific scenes to sketch and paint. In late 1917, for instance, he commissioned Norman Wilkinson to paint an image of the first Canadian convoy to cross the Atlantic, Nevinson to paint a subject related to the Canadian Flying Corps and John Lavery to paint a Canadian base hospital.42 The British War Memorials Committee similarly told its artists what to paint; indeed artists were selected to serve subject matter.43 Thomas Derrick, an illustrator and cartoonist and an art adviser to the BWMC, was concerned that artists should not be allowed ‘merely to run to their own “stunts”’.44 In addition to the list drawn up by Arnold Bennett of images of the war at home, Bone, official war artist and adviser to the BWMC, and Alfred Yockney, the BWMC’s secretary, planned several categories of subjects for artists’ commissions of the Western Front: ‘The Channel Crossing’, ‘Behind the Lines’ and ‘The Front’.45 By early 1918, both the Canadian and British schemes had comprehensive lists of the subjects they wished to add to their collections – the Canadian’s list included more than 150 images.46 With the exception of Lambert’s commission in 1917 to paint a large canvas of the charge of Beersheba and specific portraits assigned to Quinn and Longstaff, Smart, Bean and Treloar did not draw up a similar list of subjects until after the war, when they adopted a more conscious approach to filling the gaps in the Australian collection.47 In fact, in contrast to later restrictions on their choice of subjects, during their time at the front Australian official artists enjoyed a striking

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degree of autonomy in what they could paint. Although, as AIF Representative, Bean was to visit the National War Records Office artists regularly to discuss their work, he was often unable to do so owing to his own work as correspondent, and consequently his meetings with artists were infrequent. When he did meet them, there is little evidence that he intervened in their work. He appeared pleased with Leist’s images when the two met in December 1917. Bean commented: ‘he has made two or three good sketch portraits lately of well known officers’, although he did suggest to Smart that since these men would be well known in Australian history he ‘might especially impress on him [Leist] that we want the character in each face’.48 Treloar sought suggestions from Australian War Records Section artists of scenes or events worth painting – most likely privileging their opinion since, as soldiers in the AIF, they had direct experience of the fighting.49 He claimed that as officers of the Australian War Records Section, artists should contribute to the collection: I am especially anxious you should bring to notice any suggestions you consider would add to the value of the work you are doing. I want everyone in the Section to feel that they have a very real interest in it, and to do all they can to make the Australian Collections, both of pictures, museum material, and of historical records, the very best possible.50

In July 1918, only a few months after Australian War Records Section artists were appointed, Treloar invited them to provide ‘suggestions regarding sketch subjects, and order of precedence’ as well as ideas ‘regarding special features of your own work or specialities’ – a move that more directly engaged artists in the creation of an art collection and the process of memory-making.51 Some artists gave rather brief suggestions, such as Longstaff, who simply stated ‘Egypt’. Others were more forthcoming and suggested retrospective scenes, such as Benson, who recommended paintings that focused on soldiers’ life on Gallipoli and the Somme: ‘The 7th Battery in action in the first line trenches during the first days on Gallipoli. Ammunition and Water carrying on “Shell Green”. Various phases of life during the campaign at Anzac . . . winter conditions on Somme.’52 Scott suggested more general images of the war: ‘[g]eneral view with pill-boxes particularly characteristic of the battle’ and ‘[h]eterogenous traffic on the roads, particularly Menin Road, broken vehicles, tanks, etc’. He claimed that these subjects would make ‘a wonderful effect’.53 McCubbin was the most specific of all the Australian War

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Records Section artists, recommending four rather impressive scenes: ‘Panoramic landscape views from hill near Vaux-sur-Somme looking towards Hamel and Villers-Bretonneux . . . Panoramic views of Corbie – looking towards the line . . . landscape and figure subject of Infantry and Artillery being hurried to the forward areas on the Somme – showing the roads crowded with traffic of all kinds, refugees etc’, and finally, and most dramatically, an incident to which he himself claimed to have been an eyewitness, ‘Baron Richthofen being brought down’.54 The works resulting from many of these suggestions appear in the art collection of the Australian War Memorial, although the images of soldiers on Gallipoli were painted after the war. However, the artists who proposed these scenes did not necessarily execute them. For instance, it was Fullwood, a National War Records Office artist, who produced a sketch of the death of the Red Baron and not McCubbin.55 Regrettably, there is little evidence to suggest whether this was a deliberate commission of the subject by Smart, Bean and Treloar, but it is likely that Fullwood chose the subject of his own volition – another example of the haphazard nature of the scheme. With the exception that they ‘not divulge or make known to any person or persons any knowledge or information he may obtain relating to the war or the affairs of the Commonwealth’, artists were able to paint what they liked.56 As Treloar declared, the subject of artists’ work would ‘as a rule be left to their discretion’, and it was only in painting the larger canvases in later years that they faced restrictions.57 Despite the freedom to sketch whatever they desired at the front, very few artists produced images of the violence they witnessed, although there are a few exceptions. Will Longstaff and Scott sketched the more confronting aspects of the war. Longstaff’s sketchbook contains two images of the horrors of war.58 One colour sketch portrays a dead soldier lying awkwardly, death darkening his face. The second colour sketch depicts a leg severed at the knee; the shoe and clothing are still attached but a bone protrudes from the mess of flesh and cloth. Longstaff’s composition placed the severed limb in the centre of the image in front of a grassy field of poppies, an arrangement at odds with the human evidence of the impact of war. Scott also sketched this graphic side of the fighting in Enemy Machine-Gun Position (1918), depicting the corpses of Germans at a machine-gun post – a striking image of the cost of war, the soldiers’ bodies being difficult to discern from the general debris of the battlefield.59 Yet these images are rare. Perhaps sensitive to the public at home, artists generally did not paint the violent ways in which men died during

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the war – an omission that is perhaps evidence of a conscious shaping of memory on their part. When they did depict death in their post-war images, official artists painted Australians dying dramatically but without the blood and gore of war, eschewing the more controversial paintings of their Allied contemporaries.60 Australian artists were no doubt aware of the infamous censoring of Nevinson’s Paths of Glory (1917) – an ironic title and play on the phrase ‘the paths of glory lead but to the grave’ from Thomas Gray’s poem ‘Elegy written in a Country Churchyard’ – by the British Government when it was displayed in 1917.61 The painting depicted the corpses of two British soldiers lying in the mud of the battlefield. The image questioned the jingoistic and patriotic view of the British soldier in the war and was unacceptable to British authorities.62 Rather than remove it from the exhibition, Nevinson simply put a paper banner over the painting with ‘censored’ emblazoned on it. Instead of acting as a messenger who would ‘bring back word from the men who are fighting to those who want the war to go on for ever’, as Nash declared he would, Australian artists largely eschewed the more political statements of their fellow painters and instead concentrated on creating images of the everyday experience and efforts of AIF troops in the war.63 Most of their images of death were more poignant than political, seen in the tender portrayals of troops standing near their mate’s grave, or Crozier’s affecting image of a soldier searching for identity discs on a body in the mud.

ARTISTS

AT WAR

Given that the first battles involving Australian troops on Gallipoli and the Western Front had gone unrecorded by artists, Bean, Smart and Treloar were anxious that the remainder of the war should be recorded comprehensively. Yet Bean’s plan to have artists continuously stationed at the front from 1917 onwards proved impossible owing to a combination of factors, including the nature and course of the war itself, slow wartime bureaucracy and artists’ availability.64 Although the art scheme was established in May 1917, Dyson was the only artist under the National War Records Office art section at the front until September 1917 when Leist and Power arrived in France.65 This was of deep concern to Smart and Bean as their emphasis on the eyewitness value of artists’ work was dependent on their access to the battlefield: where and when artists were stationed at the front was crucial for what they were able to observe. Although artists employed under the Australian War Records Section

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were serving at the front during this time, they were able to sketch only when they could be spared from military duties. Some, such as Longstaff, were used for camouflage work during the war and were effectively removed from the front and put to work behind the lines and, like the civilian artists, missed opportunities to witness and then paint significant actions involving the AIF. Given the limited documentary material on their movements around the battlefield, we can only speculate on the specifics of where artists were deployed. Owing to the unsystematic nature of their deployment at the front, artists did not always have the opportunity to record all the major actions in which the AIF was involved. We know from his notes and drawings that Dyson was able to observe Australian troops during the major attacks of the first half of 1917.66 He visited Pozières and Albert, the scene of most of the Australian activity of 1916, and was close behind the Australian advance in March 1917, entering Bapaume not far behind the troops as the German forces withdrew to the Hindenburg Line. He was familiar with most of the Bullecourt front, visiting Lagnicourt and Noreuil, the scene of heavy fighting, and was with the Australians when they advanced on Bullecourt, returning to Bapaume to spend time with the 3rd Australian Field Ambulance. Dyson returned to London from May to July and consequently was not at the front for the Battle of Messines, which began on 7 June. This was a more successful operation in which the 3rd Australian Division under the command of John Monash and the 4th Division under the command of Herbert Cox, a British Indian Army officer, played a significant role in the fighting. However, it went unrecorded by any official artist. The Battle of Messines was followed by the major British offensive of 1917, the Third Battle of Ypres, beginning on 31 July and continuing into November. Fortunately, by late July, Dyson was back on the front in time to witness the British attack at Ypres.67 Leist and Power, too, saw much of the fighting around Ypres in the later months of 1917. They arrived at the front in September, Leist being assigned to the 5th and Power to the 1st Australian Divisions.68 Both these divisions took part in the Third Battle of Ypres, the 5th Division relieving the 1st Division after the Battle of Menin Road, which was fought on 20 September. This limited, set-piece attack was a notably successful action in the larger offensive, as was Polygon Wood, fought by the 4th and 5th Australian Divisions on 26 September, and also the later attack on 4 October at Broodseinde Ridge. Both artists returned to England in December and were replaced by Bryant, who was assigned to

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the 2nd Division and sent to France on 10 December, returning on 15 March 1918.69 Stationed near Messines, he was at the front during the winter of 1917–18, a period of relative inactivity, and returned to London six days before the major German offensive launched on 21 March 1918.70 The deployment of war artists reflected a clear bias towards the Western Front rather than the Middle East, and all artists employed by the National War Records Office, with the exception of Lambert, were sent to France and Belgium. Despite the fact that Australian troops enjoyed successes in the Middle East in 1917, with the reasonably successful first attack on Gaza in March 1917 and the Battle of Beersheba in October, which was part of the third and ultimately successful attack on Gaza, no artists were present to capture these events.71 Lambert was sent to cover the Australian involvement in Palestine and left Britain to join the Anzac Mounted Division on Christmas Day 1917.72 Warfare in the Middle East was more mobile than the Western Front, and Lambert travelled extensively around this area during the war. However, the vast distances he had to travel as the sole artist on this front meant that there were several important operations that he missed witnessing first hand. As Lambert commented: ‘[M]y work was sometimes merely that of a graveyard artist instead of being carried out or about the firing line . . .’73 Initially he was contracted for the standard three months but this was later extended, and he ended up spending more than six months in the Middle East.74 He observed the capture of Jericho in February 1918 as well as the occupation of the Jordan Valley later that year. Lambert’s task was to make sketches of such actions and to paint studies of earlier battlefields, such as the charge of Beersheba in October 1917, which had involved the 4th and 12th Australian Light Horse Regiments.75 In 1918 warfare on the Western Front became increasingly mobile, first with a series of German offensives beginning in late March that gained territory, then with the Allied response in the second half of 1918, which in turn pushed the line back miles in the other direction.76 Sending artists to the front remained an uncoordinated affair. Although Quinn and Longstaff were sent to France in early 1918, as portraitists they were assigned a number of subjects rather than a specific division.77 Consequently, there was a lack of landscape and figurative specialists sketching in the field between Bryant’s return in March 1918 and Fullwood and Streeton’s departure for France in May 1918. Hence artists were not present at significant battles involving Australian troops in 1918,

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such as Dernancourt and Morlancourt. However, from May until August, Fullwood was attached to the 5th Division and Streeton to the 2nd Division.78 These artists experienced the lead-up to the successful Allied offensive at Amiens on 8 August 1918, although not the actual battle.79 Only Dyson was at the front for the important advances made by the Australian troops after Amiens, namely the capture of the significant French towns of Mont St Quentin and Péronne, and the breaking of the Hindenburg Line in September 1918.80 Bell arrived on the front in early October and was attached to the 4th Division, but was too late to witness any fighting.81 However, he was at the front for the Armistice, as was Streeton, who was granted permission to return to the front, although only for a period of six weeks, from 17 October until 26 November 1918.82 The period between August and early October 1918 was a frustrating one for the artists and for Smart and Bean. Bean was anxious that ‘[u]nless artists sent at once most valuable pictorial records will be lost to Australia’ and further warned the government that such ‘priceless opportunities for getting national pictures, which will never recur, were passing beyond recall’.83 He argued that these ‘pictures should be secured without further delay. While the eyewitnesses are still on the spot and the scenes are unchanged. A delay of months may lose us the chance of this and it will never recur.’84 Artists were similarly worried, Streeton writing to Australia House in October 1918 that ‘[t]he present is the only time left in which an artist can make studies and drawings from which can be painted for Australia large pictures’ and cautioning that there would not be another chance to do so while the ‘subject is fresh and alive’.85 In fact, similar delays that restricted artists from sketching certain aspects of the front had occurred throughout the war. Lambert recalled that while he had been granted permission to sketch operations in progress at the front, he had been detained by orders to catalogue and pack his completed works before he went. Consequently, when he arrived at the front, which was almost four days journey, ‘the operations . . . were over’ and he ‘was only able to record the ground’.86 Bryant had experienced a similar situation in December 1917, when he had requested permission to sketch the embarkation and disembarkation of troops at Le Havre and Boulogne. Despite the fact that this permission was requested in December 1917, the special permit he required for this work did not arrive until near the end of his visit on 12 February 1918.87 Fortunately he was able to travel to the ports and, although this delay significantly diminished his time there, he ‘managed to get some good

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sketches which I think will work up well’.88 However, the period between August and October was a serious omission, considering that Australians were involved in many successful operations. This oversight did not go unnoticed, the Australian press reporting in October 1918 that ‘no pictorial records of the present fighting are being made’.89

TRAVELLING

TO THE FRONT

Even when official artists arrived at the front, a number of obstacles restricted their access to the fighting. Their first duty was to find their assigned divisional headquarters, a difficult task in the chaos of the front. Bryant had such an experience: ‘On the way up, stopped at a village, 80 shells had landed that day. Looked for Officers’ club – half of it was blown away – no one knew where my division was – it began to snow – desolation.’90 Streeton had a similar experience: ‘my chief difficulty & it is a considerable one is getting with all my kit bed etc & artist materials to the Div HQ the last time I was 3 nights in the open, & carried most of my baggage 5 times a distance of about ½ mile, its [sic] good for young fellows . . . But its not good for me.’91 Once at the front, transport around the battlefield was a considerable challenge. In Palestine, Lambert experienced difficulties observing the battlefields as a result of the vast distances he had to travel to reach them: ‘I’ve had a most interesting time, but it has not been very easy. In order to paint one battlefield, I had to ride some distance to a railway station, the train journey lasted fifteen hours, and I and a party – for we had to carry rations with us – continued by camel all the next day.’92 Despite the fact that artists’ contracts guaranteed that they would be provided with transport ‘between different points or positions within the Command of the 1st Anzac Corps’, they were often without it.93 Streeton was critical of the lack of help he received from the scheme in getting to and around the front: ‘It’s a curious thing (the red tape system I suppose) that the government who desire these war records doesn’t seem to possess any influence to help take me to the front, I’ve got to find & fight my own way there like a bloody old spy.’94 On Streeton’s second visit to the front in late 1918, he faced the same problem and ‘complained that he anticipated not being able to see the parts of France which he thought most suitable for Pictorial record’.95 With restored movement on the battlefield in late 1918, Streeton became frustrated that he was unable to visit sections of the front that he believed were significant to sketch for Australia’s visual record:

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I find that all the Divisions are out of the line, and so my destination is close to Picquiny, this side of Amiens – that means that I shall be located (2nd Div.) about 50 miles at least from the important subjects I should be recording for you for Australia to look at in the years to come. What’s to be done? I’ve got to be shifted forward to Bray, Péronne, Mount St Quentin, and the Hindenburg Line where our great men went through, its enormous the interest, and now or never is the time to do it for posterity.96

He asked Smart if he could help. ‘Can’t you – representing the Australian Government – put me forward there, with the near possible chance of a vacant car to reach every possible interest for record.’97 It appears that both Smart and Streeton contacted divisional headquarters in October 1918. However, official artists were understandably not a priority of the army, and the reply came more than a month after the war had ended and Streeton had returned to England: ‘All possible assistance will be given Lieutenant Streeton to assist him to move about, but the question of transportation is [a] very serious one when the Units are constantly moving.’98 Transport around the front was not just a problem for Australian artists. The Canadian and British art schemes experienced similar difficulties in providing their artists with access to the front. In an attempt to address this issue, Beaverbrook, as Minister of Information in charge of the British official art program, suggested that the Canadian War Memorials Fund lend or transfer artists to the British scheme, arguing that ‘both Committees would benefit by an exchange of artists, which could easily be arranged from time to time’. This was not only a way of sharing eminent artists between the two programs but also a practical way of making the most of the resources of each committee. Beaverbrook argued that by pooling the three cars of the Canadian War Memorials Fund and the two of the British War Memorials Committee, ‘five would be available for the use of the two Committees’. He suggested that in using the cars in this way the two schemes would be able to cover more ground.99 Yet artists found creative ways of getting around the front, and some were able to observe a wide breadth of the battlefield, often getting close to the fighting. Dyson worked only 500 metres from the front line, and Streeton was stationed, as he claimed, ‘only 6000 yds back from the line’.100 Dyson was able to see the war in so much detail because he was one of the members of Bean’s record-collecting group. The group included official photographer Hubert Wilkins, journalist Fred Cutlack and Henry

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Gullett, a gunner in the AIF who oversaw the subsection of the Australian War Records Section in Egypt and was also an official war correspondent.101 As official correspondent and historian, Bean was given a car and took the others across the battlefields, getting close to the fighting and observing as much of the Australians in the line as possible.102 Dyson wrote to his brother, Edward Dyson, in May 1918: ‘I have seen more of it than any other artist will.’103 Bean similarly commented that ‘[n]o other official artist, British or Australian, in the Great War saw a tenth part as much of the real Western Front as did Will Dyson’.104 However, Dyson’s experience was not typical, and transport remained a major restriction for most artists. Streeton, whose arguments with Smart and the army over the lack of transport persisted throughout both his visits to the front, used his own initiative when he had no luck with the authorities. He recounted that he went out in an ambulance to see Amiens and the surrounding area in July 1918.105 On his second visit, he persuaded a general to take him in his car to see ‘the best positions in the celebrated Mt St Quentin’, commenting that ‘it helps me greatly’.106 Streeton even endeavoured to see the battlefield from the air and attempted to arrange a flight over it to get a bird’s eye view, although there is no evidence that he managed to do so.107 In fulfilling their role as eyewitnesses to war, artists were exposed to the very real danger of conflict. Dyson was hit by shrapnel twice while working at the front, although he modestly commented that he had only ‘two little very loudly advertised wounds’. The first injury occurred when he and Bean visited Messines during the June 1917 attack. Dyson wrote to his brother that it was only ‘a little shrapnel cut in the cheek while running from a shell hole with Bean’.108 However, from Bean’s description it was a much closer escape: ‘The Germans shell the place [Messines] now with a systematic want of system . . . They chased us accidentally . . . we had a very close shave. Dyson felt something slap his cheek and the blood was running down it – very slight scratch.’109 The papers reported that although Dyson’s wounds had been painful and he was suffering from shock, he had refused to go to hospital.110 Observing the war at such close quarters had its consequences, as Dyson discovered: in front of Zonnibecke [sic] . . . I was caught by a big shell which sh’d have finished me for ever and a day if not longer but didn’t. I got a nasty gash in the arm a cut in the hand and a graze on the cheek a little bit of stuff in the leg but was all right in 3 weeks. I was finishing a drawing at the time.111

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This danger was a common experience for many official artists under instructions to observe what they could of the war. Wyndham Lewis described his experience sketching guns in what appeared to be a relatively quiet part of the front: ‘I took my pencil and was just about to make a mark on the paper, when immediately overhead a great angry shrapnel burst occurred, spraying the ground all round . . . It was just as if the Germans had got wind of my activities, and had said, “Ha! We will put a little shellfire into this picture!”’112

PAINTING

ON THE BATTLEFIELD

Artists found working on the battlefield both confronting and exhilarating. As Dyson put it, ‘War has many moods . . . to which I was temperamentally most attuned during those bad seasons on the Somme and at Ypres.’113 He gradually became accustomed to the environment at the front, and when he went with Bean to Nieuport on 11 August, he stood ‘quite nonchalantly’ in full view of a German post on the Yser. Bean reported that Dyson himself stated: ‘It’s quite easy, when you get used to it.’114 Streeton described to Smart that although it had taken him a ‘few days to get into the new conditions’, he had then ‘worked so much . . . that with insomnia I got quite played out & then couldn’t work at all. It was all so novel and exciting and perfect weather conditions.’115 Some, like Lambert, responded well to the military regulations of producing art at the front and enjoyed the rigour of army life. Bean commented that Lambert ‘likes being a bit of a soldier – serving as he is ordered’.116 Lambert’s wife Amy expanded on this later, describing the way Lambert thrived on military life: ‘His technique was as deliberately mechanised as he now delighted to make his life; a reduction to the carrying out of orders, regardless of conditions such as the dust, heat and malaria of the Jordan Valley, and its active snipers concealed in the scrub.’117 The conditions artists faced so close to the fighting influenced how effectively they could work. Scott claimed that images of ‘large battles . . . must necessarily be resemblant on account of obscurity through dense masses of smoke’.118 Streeton described the way he was ‘making what drawings I can under shellfire’.119 Working at the front was, as Bryant commented, ‘no Cook’s tour’. He recounted sketching at the front under shelling: ‘You watch the range of the first and chance the rest.’ He added that, as a result of the constant shelling, it was ‘[n]o unusual thing to see the object you are painting disappear under shellfire’.120 Similarly, artists

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working for the Canadian War Memorials Fund such as Eric Kennington, commented that the features of the battlefield, such as trees and trenches, were ‘disappearing too quickly’.121 Often it was too dangerous for artists to paint in certain areas of the battlefield. Streeton experienced the fighting around Amiens in June and July 1918 and commented that he hoped to sketch the town but that ‘[i]ts been too hot for anyone to paint in so far’, although he had ‘got a few drawings & watercolour there under shellfire’. Artists had to work rapidly at the front, capturing as much as possible under perilous conditions and in a limited time. Streeton declared: I’m well & having a fine time over here . . . I’ve done a lot of work, turned out at a great pace, but it’s all we can do here rapid studies, its all too restless and exciting for the repose necessary for fine art – & I can’t tell you how my efforts will look till I return and see them in a quiet room.122

Lambert complained of what he called ‘that curse of the Official Artist’, describing his ‘sense of hurry caused by having to work to a military schedule’.123 In such an environment artists did not have time to create polished works and instead swiftly drew their impressions in their sketchbooks. Most official Allied artists faced these difficult conditions, and John Beatty, an official artist with the Canadian War Memorials Fund, commented somewhat drily that working with shrapnel ‘bursting just over us . . . is not conducive to steady draughtsmanship’.124 Nevinson, who worked for both the Canadian and British art schemes and was by all accounts fearless, declared the ‘shelling most disconcerting for any actual drawing’.125 As a result, artists produced rough sketches, often drawn under fire in an attempt to capture the essence of a scene to be worked up later behind the lines. For the Australian scheme, this was consistent with Dyson’s proposal where he suggested that ‘[t]he actual work would be done, in its first stages, in my quarters – that is the drawing itself – to be worked up while in England’.126 Streeton commented that ‘everything must be done rapidly or left alone – The Commonwealth Government want the work to be descriptive – I don’t know how my things will look on my return – but I’m making many pencil studies for larger work in Oil – and observing all I can.’127 Most of the surviving sketchbooks used by Australian artists at the front reveal rough drawings of what artists saw: swift but candid studies of war and its participants, although there are few images of direct

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combat. Lambert’s sketchbooks are full of preliminary sketches of soldiers, horses and camels. He often wrote notes alongside studies he thought were particularly successful, commenting next to one of three sketches of a camel’s head, ‘considered very high class head’.128 Official artists later worked these sketches into more polished images in watercolour or oil paint, which they handed to Smart on or shortly after their return to London. In turn, these more polished sketches formed the basis from which they painted their larger canvases.129

WITNESSING

WAR

Australian artists were generally committed to acting as the eyewitness to war, although they interpreted their role in distinctive ways. Given Streeton’s pre-war training and reputation as a landscape painter, his works depicted tranquil scenes of the French landscape, which portray the conflict at a distance. His sketches, The Somme Near Corbie (1918), a rapid impression of the scene, and The Somme From Above Corbie (1918), a more detailed watercolour, depict Corbie nestled at the bottom of the meandering Somme Valley with the war almost unseen, appearing only as puffs of smoke on the horizon – it was this view of Corbie that Streeton later painted for his large canvas, The Somme Valley Near Corbie (1919). He described to Roberts what he saw when creating these images: up a steep hill . . . a fine view of the valley with a flat covered with lovely trees & the Somme winding through & the towers of the old church of C. [Corbie] – & other villages & V-B [Villers-Bretonneux] on the distant sky-line – a grand spread, & in the area of battle, shell bursts, & shrapnel occasionally spotting a fine sky.130

For Streeton, ‘True pictures of Battlefields are very quiet looking things. There’s nothing much to be seen – everybody and everything is hidden & camouflaged.’131 However, he grappled with what might be termed ‘witnessing from a distance’ – evident in his proposals to Smart for the subject of his large canvas. His first idea was to paint a grand view north of Corbie seen from a height, although he noted that this would mean the war would appear ‘small and subservient’. However, he claimed it was the ‘finest landscape subject in Northern France’. Alternatively, he suggested to Smart that should the National War Records Office Art Committee want ‘a nearer view of operations’, an image of Villers-Bretonneux portraying ‘the entrance . . . to the Village & our troops in the dimness of the

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hour – before daylight’ might work better. However, he warned that ‘[e]ven then my troops would have to be comparatively a small item in the General scene’, stating that he was ‘not a figure painter & it’s no good my attempting Groups of figures in the foreground’.132 Dyson meanwhile had initially argued, in his proposal of 1916, that his sketches would be images suggested to him by his personal contact with and observation of the AIF troops at the front.133 He loathed war and declared, as Bean later noted, ‘I’ll never draw a line to show war except as the filthy business it is.’134 Yet he was deeply influenced by his time at the front and his experience of living alongside the Australian soldiers. Despite moving about and observing more of the front than other official artists, he chose to sketch the quiet, intimate moments of the conflict. Bean commented that Dyson ‘shunned the higher headquarters, feeling utterly out of place there. He loved to get forward to the company or battery officers or men, studying their characters even more than their faces, and living with the people and among the places that he drew.’135 Dyson described his awe for the Australian soldier: ‘I never cease to marvel admire and love . . . our louse ridden diggers. We are a lucky people if we can go on breeding them.’136 Yet he was also intensely aware of the soldiers’ plight: ‘God alone knows what terrible things are coming to them . . . these ruffians . . . are the stuff of heroes and are the most important thing on earth at this blessed moment – of that there is no doubt.’137 Dyson’s drawings therefore were affecting images of moments he witnessed while at the front. In Dead Beat (1917) he depicted a young soldier deep in sleep, a poignant moment that Dyson sketched when at Hill 60. The contrast between the shadows in this sketch make the sleeping soldier all the more vulnerable, exposing him in the lighter tones of the early morning light. Dyson described witnessing this unguarded moment: He was there as we came back with Wilkins after watching the reply to the SOS, sleeping on the eternal petrol tin, and was there when we got breakfast – dead to the world . . . He had come down with a relief from somewhere near Glencorse Wood and had lost himself and floundered all night in shell holes and mud through the awful rain and wind . . . He had floundered into the cover of the tunnel and stopped there, disregarded, save for occasional attempts to assist on the part of the men – attempts that could not penetrate through to his consciousness past the dominating instinct to sleep anywhere, anyhow, and at any cost.138

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Dyson was a sympathetic observer with the skill to articulate visually the scenes he saw at the front. Yet there is evidence of a more intentional shaping of memory in this work, as he commented that ‘I have not drawn him as childish as he looked’, instead presenting a more war-wearied and weathered image of a soldier sleeping.139 The majority of Dyson’s sketches from his time at the front were candid studies of the soldiers and the everyday moments they experienced. He privileged mundane moments, which captured both the community and connections among soldiers as well as the fear and loss.140 There are many sketches in which he explores the quotidian aspects of life at the front, sketching the collection of firewood, the cooking of food, and the endless waiting. His work was widely acclaimed both in Britain and in Australia, seen at the time to depict an unbiased and ‘“democratic” character’ of war.141 His drawings were described in The Times as being ‘unique in their record and celebration of the “common” soldier’.142 He not only sketched the Australian and other Allied troops but also made compassionate drawings of the Germans, his most notable being Wine of Victory (c. 1917), which depicts wounded German prisoners who had been captured during the Third Battle of Ypres. Bean was deeply impressed by Dyson’s sketches and, on Dyson’s first visit to the front, commented: Dyson is an able man at his game, I can see. He has got hold of the weary detached way in which men come out of these trenches (perhaps Smart may have told him of it, for he was very struck with it). Anyway he has a pretty acute sympathy – and he will produce a drawing, he tells me, which will give the idea of it – ‘you know – a line of men, all going slowly along – no step more than about three inches – Every man utterly detached as if they were living in a world by themselves’.143

This sketch took the form of Coming Out on the Somme (1916) in which Dyson deftly captures this detachment showing the glazed expressions and vacant stares of soldiers who have just returned from fighting – what Dyson termed ‘gazing on strange and terrible lands’.144 Rendered in charcoal, pencil and brush and wash on paper, this scene depicts the utter exhaustion of the soldiers as they stumble back from the front line. This was something Dyson experienced in part himself, alluding in a letter to his brother of the mental strain of the war: ‘I am alright. But I don’t know what has happened during the last 10 months. It is something of a blank to me. I think I have “gotten” normal again.’145 Coming Out on the Somme was one of numerous images that were a subtle yet powerful

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statement about the heroism of the Australian soldier and the endurance of the human spirit in the face of the devastation of war.

WAYS

OF SEEING WAR

Although artists’ work was to be used later by Bean and Treloar to shape a narrative of Australia’s war experience, the style and genre through which they chose to present the war in images produced at the front was framed by their artistic training and influences. Australian art had undergone a profound change in the last decades of the nineteenth century, and many of the official artists had either led this shift or later embraced it. The professionalisation of art in Australia began roughly in the 1870s with the establishment of art schools, such as the National Gallery School in Melbourne in 1870 and the New South Wales Academy of Art, attached to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, in 1875.146 Most artists who studied at these institutions were trained in an academic tradition of painting – a tradition concerned with well-balanced composition, attention to the placement of tone and colour and the creation of visually realistic images.147 More than half the artists employed by the official scheme were trained at the National Gallery School in Melbourne. Bell, Benson, Coates, Crozier, John Longstaff, McCubbin, Quinn and Streeton all studied at the National Gallery School, and were influenced by the Irish-born and Munich-trained George Folingsby and, after his death, by the British-born and -trained Bernard Hall. Folingsby taught the Munich method, a form of academic painting that consisted of highly structured images that emphasised attention to tone. Painters characteristically worked from a dark-toned background to a middle ground, painting light and highlights at essential points on specific items. Hall continued teaching this method after he took over the National Gallery School in 1892.148 Other war artists had trained at private art schools or with private tutors, and were introduced to the latest techniques in terms of Australian painting, such as the plein-air method, rather than the more traditional academic techniques taught at the official schools. One of the most significant of the private art schools was set up by Julian Ashton, a British painter and illustrator who had trained at the London School of Art and later the Académie Julian in Paris.149 Although his first post was teaching at the Art Society of New South Wales, he lost this position after joining the break-away association, the Society of Artists, in 1895, and consequently he established his own school, the Sydney Art School, in

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1896 – today the Julian Ashton Art School in Sydney.150 Drawing on French principles of painting popular at the time, he was an exponent of the plein-air method emphasising sketching outdoors for landscape painting and advocating drawing as the foundation of visual arts.151 Fullwood worked closely with Ashton, and Lambert and Leist studied under him at the Sydney Art School and were heavily influenced by his focus on plein-air painting. Will Longstaff studied art privately but, given that his tutor, Leslie Wilkie, was a former student of Ashton, was likely also to have been influenced by Ashton’s emphasis on the plein-air method.152 Bryant was privately tutored under William Lister who, like Ashton, advocated plein-air painting.153 Although seen as somewhat radical at the time, the method of working outdoors gained increasing popularity in Australia during the late nineteenth century. Several of the artists later employed by the art scheme were at the forefront of the birth of a national school of painting based on capturing the light and colour of the landscape, which was associated with defining the growing nationalism of pre-Federation Australia.154 There has been some debate among art historians as to the origins of plein-air painting and Australian Impressionism, yet there is a general consensus that some tenets of the French movement were adopted while others were rejected. Australian Impressionism was inspired by the artistic movement in France, but it took on a local flavour, as a result of antipodean requirements and inherited teachings from London’s Royal Academy.155 Tom Roberts, an English-born painter who migrated to Melbourne in 1869, is often heralded as championing plein-air painting in Australia on his return from England in 1885. What he introduced was a style popular in Britain and Europe, and in Australia he promoted the use of a technique that used a square brush, which privileged capturing form over detail. Although at odds with the academic training of the official art schools where plein-air sketching was seen only as an initial method before producing more skilful images, Roberts’ method was popular among many young artists working in Melbourne and Sydney.156 Among his advocates were Streeton and Fullwood, who were deeply impressed by this style and became members of the Heidelberg School, which embraced this method of plein-air painting. For these men, and many of their followers, what was important was to ‘create a visual testimony to the fact that their paintings were actually created in the bush – on site’.157 Hence they were ideally suited to working for the war art program, which demanded that they produce paintings on site at the front from their observation of the battlefield.

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Despite the professionalisation of their craft in Australia in the late nineteenth century, many painters still saw Europe as the only appropriate location for an artist to finish their training.158 Between 1880 and 1900, there was a continuous flow of artists from Australia to Paris and London, where many painters honed their skills at the leading art schools of the era. In 1887 John Longstaff won the National Gallery School Travelling Scholarship and visited England and France, studying at the atelier of Fernand Cormon, a leading French historical painter of the late nineteenth century. Power attended the Académie Julian in 1905 and studied under Jean-Paul Laurens, a painter and advocate of the French academic style, as did Bell, Scott and Quinn before him in 1904, 1898 and 1893 respectively. Quinn also studied at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts in the 1890s.159 After having won the New South Wales Society of Artists first Travelling Scholarship in 1900, Lambert travelled to Paris and studied at the Académie Colarossi, a school established in the 1860s as an alternative to the government-endorsed École des Beaux-Arts. However, he later moved to the Académie Delécluze, also established in the late nineteenth century, which like the Académie Colarossi schooled its students in the French academic style.160 Britain was also a popular destination for Australian artists. In 1908 Bryant moved to London and began study under John Hassall, an English illustrator, but he later trained as a marine painter under Julius Olsson, who ran the Cornish School of Landscape, Figure and Sea Painting in St Ives. Other artists moved to Britain to pursue their careers. Streeton in 1897, Fullwood in 1901 and Leist in 1908 all moved to London, where they actively engaged in the art scene, participating in the exhibition of Australian Art at the Grafton Galleries as well as being involved in the Royal Academy and Royal Society of Portrait Painters.161 Australian art did not have a strong tradition of battle painting. During the era of the Boer War (1899–1902), the government had not yet assumed its role as ‘commemorator-in-chief’, and there were few official commemorative rituals or practices, such as those established during the First World War.162 Although artists captured the conflict in their work, they largely drew on the well-established tropes of the nineteenth-century battle-piece – not surprising, given that during this period Australian culture was largely derivative of British culture. British art had a long tradition of war images dating back to the Bayeux Tapestry.163 By the nineteenth century, British war paintings commonly romanticised war, depicting battles at sea, heroic generals, the glory of the charge and the noble dead. Given that Australian art had no battle-painting tradition of

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its own at this stage, it is likely that these artistic traditions influenced official war artists who were exposed to such images in galleries and exhibitions in Britain and France during their training. Artists might also have been exposed to battle images in the illustrated press, part of the visual culture of Australia at the turn of the last century. One of the few battle images that could be viewed in person in Australia was Lady Butler’s 28th Regiment at Quatre Bras (1875), held by the National Gallery of Victoria. It is likely that Australian artists, especially those who attended the art school there, were aware of this canvas. Butler’s painting was a retrospective image of the Battle of Quatre Bras in June 1815, an example of the place of the battle-piece in the genre of history painting, the project of which was the construction of national memory. The themes of the nineteenth-century war painting reappeared in many artists’ work of the First World War. Although in her early work Lady Butler managed ‘to inject a melancholy realism into some of her battle scenes’, her images of the First World War largely epitomised the traditions of the battle-piece and the heroics and glory of conflict.164 In October 1914, in one of the earliest exhibitions in Britain to be held after the outbreak of war, entitled ‘Some Modern War Pictures’, Albert Chevallier Tayler and Richard Caton Woodville presented traditional military subjects, such as an image of a man-of-war, and a battle scene focusing on generals, an approach that aped modes of representing warfare of a century earlier and rehashed ideas ‘that arms and armaments are romantic, and that military leaders are heroic’.165 Early drawings and paintings of the First World War, including Dyson’s Kultur Cartoons, were not images of the contemporary war but representations based on traditional ideas of war, drawing on the imagery, conventions and responses established in previous conflicts.166 However, such traditional images of war were seen by some artists as inadequate, given the highly mechanised and industrialised nature of warfare during 1914–18, which allowed little scope for the individual hero or heroics in general. Even Lady Butler commented in 1915, during the centenary of the Battle of Waterloo, ‘Who will look at my Waterloos now?’, recognising that ‘the gallant plumage, the glinting gold and silver, have given way to universal grimness’.167 As the Times correspondent stated the same year, ‘the trench is the enemy of military art’.168 In comparison with Butler’s image of the Battle of Quatre Bras, where the battlefield is crowded with men and weapons, artists attempting to paint the First World War found the battlefield seemingly empty, a ‘crowded emptiness’.169 The Western Front was particularly difficult to capture in

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their work. As the Canadian official artist A.Y. Jackson later commented: ‘War had gone underground and there was little to see. The old heroics, the death and glory stuff, were gone forever; there was no more “Thin Red Line” or “Scotland For Ever”.’170 He captured this in his own wartime work, for example A Copse, Evening (1918), in which he painted the vast wasteland of a Western Front battlefield. What to paint and how to paint it became key issues for the war artist. As Jackson stated: ‘I had no interest in painting the horrors of war and . . . [t]he impressionist technique I had adopted in painting was now ineffective, for visual impressions were not enough.’171 Regardless of training or artistic influence, most Allied official war artists faced similar problems to Jackson, and many began to develop ways of painting that enabled them to represent modern warfare. They began to see their role as going beyond simple representation to interpret the experience of the battlefield. British official artist Adrian Hill championed ‘vignetting’, a method that attempted to capture the expanse and sprawl of the war by creating a circular picture where images appear to start from a central point and fade towards the edge.172 Others, such as David Baxter, altered their technique to capture the expanse of the battlefield, by layering thinned paint on large sheets of paper, ‘a pictorial equivalent to the sodden state of the battlefield’.173 Some official artists, such as Paul Nash and Percy Wyndham Lewis, painters for the Canadian War Memorials Fund and British War Memorials Committee, embraced more modernist styles such as Cubism and Vorticism, ‘in which line and movement were used with dramatic effect’, searching for a visual language that would allow them to convey the character of the fighting they witnessed at the front.174 Significantly, Australian war artists did not adopt radically new ways of representing the conflict. Many European artists continued to draw on the cultural tropes of the last century to make sense of the war.175 This is also evident in the Australian context, and official artists reverted to the genre and style they had used so successfully to define the nation in preFederation Australia. The magnitude of the war inspired some Australian artists to return to the serious and sombre style of academic painting in which they had trained.176 For these artists, the conflict required realism, and experimentation and exaggeration were unsuitable.177 Although like many British and Canadian war artists, such as Nash and Jackson, they drew on the devastated landscape of the battlefield as an allegory for the destruction wrought by war, Australian official artists referenced the survival qualities of life in the bush in their images. Catherine Speck explains that conquering the bush took on a new note: survival on the

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battlefields of France and Belgium and in the Middle East.178 In some ways, this lent visual weight to the idea that Australians were fighting for the safety of the nation as well as the empire.179 Further, while the use of familiar tropes was a way of conveying to an audience in Australia a sense of nearness to the war in Europe, it also represented the conflict in a familiar and popular visual language. Artists’ depiction of the ravaged landscape of the battlefield framed the struggle of the AIF soldiers ‘in a land fit for heroes’ – these images were later to be used by Bean and Treloar to consolidate a national narrative of Australia in the war.180 Streeton saw the war through the genre of landscape on which he had established his reputation, and constantly explored the battlefield in his work. He was struck equally by the carnage of the war and the beauty within which the war took place. Like many official artists, Streeton felt a close affinity with the Australian troops and saw in a soldier’s life a deeper and more meaningful example of a particularly Australian manhood.181 Streeton wrote to Smart: ‘It[̓s] extremely novel and exciting over here and it’s the only way in which to form any idea of Australian manhood – it’s marvellous what great fellows they all are . . . the best comes out of everything over here.’182 These ideas of masculinity drew on a nascent nationalism that was to dominate commemorative culture in Australia for the next century. Drawn from legends of the bush and adding to a social Darwinism enshrined in the White Australia policy, these ideas of masculinity were based on the prowess of a race exemplified in its ability to fight. In a letter to Roberts, Streeton wrote that although he thought he had understood Australians from his work at Wandsworth hospital, it’s necessary to see & know them here to properly appreciate the manhood of Australia – absolutely – The fights against fire & thirst in the Bush, all tells in the field here – & brings out the finest in them – the resource as a consequence of Australian life is remarkable – & has to be seen & observed here – which is a great privilege – I’m glad I’ve not missed it.183

Yet despite these ideas of a particularly Australian type, Streeton chose not to sketch soldiers but instead the landscape they fought in, the setting in which their endurance was tested. Having made his name painting the gleaming, sun-bleached landscape of the hills around Melbourne, Streeton saw the echoes of its light and texture in the French countryside: ‘[B]elow me the steep little gully, all green with upright trees, & the last afternoon light all golden like Australia catches the stems in patches & is diffused among the foliage in most beautiful fashion.’184

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As Streeton did in France, Lambert interpreted the Middle East in terms of his experience painting the Australian bush. The light and colours of Australia permeated much of his wartime work, as they did for many official artists, which framed the experience of Australian soldiers and their environment in recognisable imagery and themes that made the fighting in Europe appear more immediate for audiences at home.185 Although ‘plagued with flies and sandstorms’ in Palestine, Lambert created some of his most striking work there. He was transfixed by the culture of this part of the world and its arresting landscape: ‘As a contrast to the fierce hot days, there are the heavy downpours which change the whole aspect of the landscape . . . I found a great charm in the atmosphere of the country and I was treated royally by everybody.’186 The colours and contours of the land particularly struck Lambert: A word to those who would paint this country. Leave your gay pigments at home. Approach Nature with a simple palette but an extravagant love of form. The sand-hills take on shapes and curves, cuts concave and convex, interwoven in an entrancing pattern, here rhythmical, there jagged and eccentrically opposed. With all the knowledge the artist may, nay must, bring to bear, he need only copy and he achieves art; but it takes doing.187

His canvas Magdhaba, painted in March 1918, captures the shadows of the hills in the dusk and their sharp and uneven peaks. He commented that the ‘clear atmosphere of bright sunlight gave the illusion I was back on the plains of New South Wales’.188 His small sketch, Wadi Bed Between El Arish and Magdhaba (1918), depicts a camel nestled in an arid valley with golden hills rising in the background. The palette is muted but has a vibrancy that portrays the extreme heat of the day and echoes the light and colours of Lambert’s images of the Australian landscape, visible in the muted tones that convey a dry and blistering heat.

EXHIBITING

OFFICIAL ART DURING THE WAR

Many of Dyson’s works were displayed at the Leicester Galleries in London in January 1918 to positive reviews, but the first comprehensive official exhibition of Australian war art took place in May 1918 at the Grafton Galleries in London. More than a hundred of the official sketches were included as part of the official exhibition of Australia’s visual record of the war, which also included Hurley, Wilkins and Baldwin’s official war photographs.189 There is little evidence to suggest that there was a

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conscious shaping of memory in Smart and Treloar’s selection of the images for display. Indeed, given that the exhibition opened on 24 May 1918 and closed in July, the artworks exhibited were presumably chosen for no other reason than that they were complete. In fact, it seems that Smart and Treloar left largely to the artists’ discretion the decision as to which pieces to display. Consequently, the exhibition presented the work of those painters employed in 1917: thirty-nine works by Power, thirtyseven by Leist, thirty-four by Bryant, seven by Lambert, four by Crozier, three portraits by Quinn and one naval image by Burgess. Notably, Dyson had no sketches in this show as his were on display at the Leicester Galleries.190 The danger artists faced in acting as the eyewitness to war was used to heighten the authenticity of their work. The Australian press reported that Margaret Fisher, who opened the exhibition, thanked ‘the artists who risked their lives to secure a priceless historical record of our gallant soldiers’.191 Major General Talbot Hobbs, commander of the 5th Australian Division, also spoke at the opening, praising the work of Australia’s official war artists: ‘they had taken their lives in their hands in order faithfully to portray the battle scenes’ and in doing so ‘taken the same risks as those of the men who went over the top’.192 In the absence of diaries and letters from those who viewed the exhibitions of official sketches and paintings, it is difficult to discern their reception. We know, for example, that at least one soldier favourably received Dyson’s sketches at the Leicester Galleries in London in early 1918 – although exhibiting his war work, it was Dyson’s own private exhibition and not organised by the High Commission. William Slater, a stretcher-bearer in the AIF, was impressed by Dyson’s images: ‘They are really the best I’ve ever seen. No one can criticise the expressions of his characters unless they’ve seen the “real thing”. Disillusionment and not despair is very strongly expressed on the many faces of our boys over there in the big scrap.’193 The Australian press also generally reported favourably on the exhibition at the Grafton Galleries. The Herald’s correspondent claimed that the collection was ‘of great value artistically as well as in their character of records’ and that ‘[t]he sketches are vivid and of great fidelity and variety, and it is doubtful if any pictures of actual warfare have more truly given the visible effect of real operations’.194 Further, the war art was widely acclaimed when presented as part of the ‘Peace and War’ exhibition at Burlington House in November 1918. The exhibition was organised by the Royal British Colonial Society of

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Artists in collaboration with the Society of Australian Artists in London, and the war canvases were displayed alongside many official artists’ prewar work as part of a larger exhibition of imperial art from dominion and colonial artists working in Europe.195 Despite showcasing Australian artists’ peacetime images, expatriate artist Alfred Daplyn claimed that ‘for the public the sketches of the official war artists are no doubt the attraction’.196 The British-Australasian reported approvingly on the war paintings in the exhibition, declaring that ‘no purely imaginative battle pictures can move us as do these careful portrayals of the daily life for over four years of the young manhood of Australia’. Further, the reviewer claimed that if Australia possessed no other art ‘but Lambert’s pictures of Egypt and Palestine, Streeton’s of France and Flanders, and Dyson’s . . . of the Western Front, she would still possess a collection unique for its historical and artistic value’.197 *** As a result of the improvised nature of the Australian art scheme during 1917 and 1918, artists received relatively few instructions on the subjects of their twenty-five images from Smart, Bean or Treloar and were generally left to their own devices on the battlefield. Hampered by the difficulties of working in a war zone and the limitations of what they were able to see of the conflict, they produced an array of images of the war, from Dyson’s intimate sketches of Australian soldiers to Streeton’s grand landscapes. Many of these wartime images referenced the visual tropes of pre-Federation Australia, providing, stylistically at least, some degree of unity to the sketches and paintings created during this period. Yet they did not present a comprehensive coverage of the war, and it was only in the years following the conflict that Smart, Bean and Treloar began to shape a more coherent memory of the First World War in the collection of official art.

CHAPTER

A

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4

BEAUTIFUL

G R A V E Y A R D,

1919

After the Armistice of 11 November 1918, Smart, Bean and Treloar paused and assessed the collection of art they had amassed during the war. While their decisions about the production of the paintings had been largely improvised during the conflict and subject to wartime practicalities, the end of the fighting allowed them to take a more considered approach to completing the collection, and with this they adopted a more conscious attitude to memory-making. Consequently, this period was characterised by a progressive ‘gap filling’, as Bean, Smart and Treloar endeavoured to commission canvases depicting events they deemed were missing from the collection. As these men became more intimately involved in the production of the paintings, artists had increasingly less say over their work. In attempts to maintain the accuracy that Smart, Bean and Treloar believed they had attained in their wartime images, artists were provided with a range of material to work from and in some cases were sent back to the battlefields before evidence of the fighting faded, thereby shifting the role of the official war artist from eyewitness to artist historian. This chapter explores Bean, Smart and Treloar’s identification of the lacunae in the art collection. What their selection of additional paintings reveals about the priorities of commemoration during this period is a continuing focus on the events of the battlefield over any representation of a broader wartime experience and, within this limited vision of the nation’s war experience, an emphasis on producing images of the

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Gallipoli campaign that were to become a central aspect of the Australian War Museum’s art collection.

MEMORIALS

OF CANVAS AND PAINT

By late 1918 the Australian collection of art consisted of around three hundred small sketches produced by artists at the front, which, while generally stylistically coherent thanks to Smart’s choice of artists, were limited in genre and subject. Since most artists specialised in landscape painting and all but Lambert had been stationed on the Western Front, the collection was dominated by paintings of the battlefields of France and Belgium and privileged the environment in which the Australian soldiers had fought. Further, Bean, Smart and Treloar’s insistence that artists sketch only what they directly observed of the conflict meant that subjects other than landscapes presented a rather eclectic array of scenes ranging from detailed studies of soldiers and machinery, images of disembarkation and embarkation of troops and medical scenes, to portraits of highranking military figures. Few of these images captured Australian soldiers in battle or a broader experience of the war at home.1 The focus on landscapes of Western Front battlefields was not unique to the Australian scheme. Although the members of the Canadian War Memorials Fund claimed that the official paintings represented a wide range of subjects ‘without undue prominence being given to any particular phase’, paintings of Ypres, Courcelette and Vimy Ridge were still privileged in the collection, and images of wartime activity at home or behind the lines were, as Eric Brown commented, ‘a preface . . . to the sterner epic which was being written within sound of the guns’.2 Yet despite the focus on the fighting front, few Canadian official artists produced images of actual combat.3 The British collection meanwhile was criticised by Robert Ross, art critic, art dealer and art adviser to the British War Memorials Committee, for the ‘monotony of themes’ of which he claimed there were ‘scarcely half a dozen’. He added that the pieces presented ‘a ghastly sameness in treatment, even allowing for different temperament and degrees of merit’.4 Like the Canadian and Australian collections, the British war paintings were dominated by wartime landscapes. Although the BWMC’s aim for artists to capture all theatres of war and all elements of the conflict in their work resulted in a relatively broad representation of the war, especially compared to the Australian scheme, the Western Front remained a central focus of the war art.5

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Regardless of its emphasis on the Western Front, by 1918 the Canadian War Memorials Fund had amassed a larger and more diverse collection of war paintings – both in subject and style – than the Australian program. The North American press reported in November 1918 that the collection’s ‘scope is endless’.6 An article in the New York Times later described the collection as consisting of ‘subjects embracing every sphere of Canadian war preparation and activity, at home and abroad’, which had been produced by ‘artists representing every school and group’.7 When, on 4 January 1919, an exhibition of Canadian war paintings opened at the Royal Academy in Burlington House in London, it drew ‘a multitude of crowds’ – around two thousand people attended the opening.8 The Canadian War Memorials Fund, having employed more than a hundred artists, had accumulated an impressive collection. The first exhibition presented the four hundred pieces of art that the committee had amassed since 1916, and between 1918 and 1920 another four hundred works were added to the collection.9 Somewhat hyperbolically, the Boston Christian Science Monitor claimed that ‘it does not need much imagination to describe it as probably the greatest collection of commissioned art that has ever been seen at one time in history’.10 The following year, the then Canadian Prime Minister Arthur Meighen commented that ‘many experts consider that it [the art collection] is the most complete that any nation possesses’.11 The exhibition was generally seen as a great success, and Konody was surprised and gratified that ‘simple soldiers who had witnessed the horror of the battlefield’ admired the modernist art.12 However, the Canadian art collection had its critics. The modernist style of some of the paintings was a primary point of censure. Bean was especially cutting in his remarks, writing candidly that the Canadian War Memorials Fund had ‘been on the wrong lines’ by employing ‘English artists of the fashionable sort to paint their national pictures’. He claimed that the problem with this decision was that the ‘artists had no real feeling for their work – each wants to make a hit for himself’ and added that the result was the Royal Academy was filled with an ‘exhibit of curious styles of contemporary art’.13 Bean was not alone in his opinion. Canada’s Prime Minister, Robert Borden, privately claimed that some of the canvases were ‘so modern and advanced that one could neither understand nor appreciate them’.14 Even official artists were underwhelmed by the exhibition. Muirhead Bone, who was generally open to the more modernist trends in art, commented that in his opinion the Burlington House exhibition was ‘not very impressive’.15

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Bean declared that the Canadian War Memorials Fund had spent ‘twenty times as much as we’. He claimed the Canadian collection had cost around £50 000 compared to the approximately £2500 the Australian scheme had spent, and argued that the smaller and stylistically conventional Australian collection was a more suitable way of commemorating the war.16 He was particularly critical of Beaverbrook employing modernist painters who, as he later claimed, produced ‘freak art’. His attitude to modern art reflected that of many Australian critics, who saw it as an ‘alien disease’.17 As Treloar would argue during later debates about the choice of official artists for the Second World War, ‘Artists of the Contemporary School cannot provide as accurate or enduring [a] record of war as others who adhere to academic methods.’18 Traditional modes of representing the conflict, as Winter reminds us, ‘while at times less challenging intellectually or philosophically, provided a way of remembering which enabled the bereaved to live with their losses’.19 Bean, Smart and Treloar overlaid Australia’s war paintings with a commemorative purpose, assuming that veterans and relatives of those who had died would visit the future War Museum searching for solace.20 For these men, the formless images of modernist painters had no place in a memorial that sought to provide comfort and meaning through presenting objects and images from the war.21 Indeed, Bean was later to declare that modern styles of painting were not a fitting mode of expression and would be ‘insulting’ to veterans and their relatives.22 For him, if a memorial containing relics was to display art, it should be an accurate representation of the war by those who were there. Bean claimed that because the National War Records Office and Australian War Records Section had employed ‘Australian artists only’ who did their best to capture the scenes they witnessed at the front, their work, which drew on a traditional style of painting, surpassed that of the Canadian War Memorials Fund’s collection: ‘[T]he Australian pictures are a far more interesting set and a suitable memorial – about 1000 sketches and small pictures of what the artists actually saw at the front . . .’23 For Bean, Smart and Treloar, however, the Australian collection was far from complete. Although Bean declared that the collection consisted of around a thousand sketches, he appears to have anticipated the number of images to be completed rather than counting those actually in the scheme’s possession since not all artists had handed over their wartime work. While by 1922 the collection was to consist of almost two thousand images, in October 1918 Bean commented that only ‘about 200 sketches have been turned over by them [artists] to Australia House’. By mid-1919

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he stated it consisted of only ‘600 to 700 small pictures’.24 These were the work of a very small number of the official artists, more than half of whom had still to complete their work. As Smart reported in late November, of the ten National War Records Office artists, only Leist, Bryant and Lambert had produced the twenty-five images stipulated in their contracts. Although not under the same contract as the other artists, Dyson had also completed a considerable number of sketches.25 Bean praised the smaller sketches and paintings as being a more appropriate form of commemoration than the Canadian canvases, yet he was aware, as were Smart and Treloar, that there were significant gaps in the collection. Their earlier emphasis on artists acting as eyewitnesses to war meant that there were no images that captured battles involving Australian troops since artists were often not present or were unable to witness specific operations. Smart, Bean and Treloar intended to remedy this absence by commissioning artists with what Bean termed ‘Composition Memorial Pictures’.26 While the small sketches individually presented narrow fragments of the war experience, the large paintings were to synthesise the sketches made on the battlefields into a broader depiction of Australia’s role in the fighting. As Treloar later explained, the intention was to supplement the ‘fleeting glimpses of the innumerable facets of the war’ presented in the smaller sketches with ‘a series of large canvases representing the more important events, on land and sea, in which the Australians took part, and by a number of portraits of prominent members of the forces’.27 These images were not solely to fill narrative gaps in the visual story of Australians in the war but also to satisfy a thematic gap, synthesising an overall impression of operations, and of combat, which artists had been unable to capture while acting as eyewitnesses at the front. These large canvases were overlaid with a distinctly commemorative character, a similar trend to the Canadian War Memorials Fund and British War Memorials Committee, which also acquired large paintings that were intended to epitomise the conflict.28 Yet, while the BWMC’s large-scale paintings had a commemorative theme, they were commissioned to satisfy aesthetic standards and not factual requirements. This category of the BWMC paintings, unlike the smaller illustrative paintings and drawings, were envisaged as personal images or testimony of the terrible nature of war and were later seen as being the humanistic alternative to the Imperial War Museum’s fighting-focused exhibits.29 The CWMF and the BWMC emphasised the commemorative function of the paintings by standardising the size

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of their collection of large canvases based on traditional battle-pieces as a way of producing a uniform series.30 The CWMF based the size of its paintings on Diego Velázquez’s image of the Thirty Years War, The Surrender of Breda (1634–35), which measured 300 by 350 centimetres.31 Similarly, the BWMC, at Ross’s suggestion, based the dimensions of the paintings on ‘[p]erhaps the only successful battle-piece that has ever been painted or . . . come down to us’, Paulo Ucello’s Battle of San Romano (c. 1435–60), which is one of a set of three paintings depicting the battle between the Florentines and the Sienese in 1432 and measures 200 by 300 centimetres.32 Although Bean, Smart and Treloar intended the composite canvases to be on a grander scale than the wartime sketches, there was little standardisation of their size – most measured about 250 by 150 centimetres, size being dependent on the subject of the painting – and they continued to emphasise the factual accuracy of these canvases.33 By the end of the war, the National War Records Office and Australian War Records Section had chosen the subjects of eleven large canvases.34 These had been commissioned during 1918, and the Art Committee’s choices tell us much about the ‘hierarchy of “sites of memory”’ at the time.35 For instance, four of the eleven commissioned canvases privileged the Western Front. Of these, the first two canvases to be commissioned highlighted Australian troops’ involvement in operations during the Third Battle of Ypres of August to November 1917. Leist was commissioned to produce a painting of the Battle of Polygon Wood, where the 5th Division successfully captured the Butte on 26–27 September 1917 – Polygon Wood would officially become the site of the 5th Division’s memorial in 1919 – and Power was asked to paint a scene of the 1st Division’s artillery going into battle at Ypres on 31 July 1917.36 Streeton was commissioned with an image of the beginning of the Australian offensive before Amiens on 8 August 1918. The fourth subject, assigned to Fullwood, was Mont St Quentin, specifically the 5th Infantry Brigade on 31 August 1918 when Australian troops launched an impressive attack and captured the hill overlooking Péronne. Although not strategically significant, this was perhaps an unsurprising choice of subject considering the AIF was widely praised for their achievement at Mont St Quentin at the time.37 Like the subject of Leist’s picture, Mont St Quentin was to become the site selected by the 2nd Division for their divisional memorial.38 Lambert was selected to paint the Anzac Mounted Division’s attack during the Battle of Beersheba, the only image of the fighting in Palestine commissioned during the war.39

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Of the remaining subjects chosen by the Art Committee before the end of the war, two focused on the navy and the rest were portraits of noted generals. Bryant was assigned to paint a canvas entitled Sinking of the Southland – an incident in which the Australian transport ship Southland was torpedoed by a German submarine in the Aegean Sea on 2 September 1915 – and Burgess was commissioned to produce a canvas of the famous fight between HMAS Sydney and the German cruiser Emden during the Battle of Cocos on 9 November 1914.40 The final four subjects commissioned by the committee in 1918 were portraits of General Birdwood, General Monash, General White and a posthumous portrait of General Bridges – Quinn was commissioned with portraits of Birdwood and Monash, and Longstaff with portraits of White and Bridges.41 What was most extraordinary, especially as its significance loomed large in the Australian imagination during this period, was the absence of subjects representing the Gallipoli campaign. Only Crozier had been commissioned, somewhat vaguely, in November 1917 with a ‘picture of Anzac’. He painted a very specific image of the activity on the beach at Anzac Cove rather than one that epitomised the wider Australian experience of the fighting on the peninsula. Crozier was also the only artist commissioned with images of the fighting on the Western Front before 1917, being assigned images of Pozières, including the bombardment of Pozières, a scene ‘during the fight’ and an image of Sausage Valley.42

CONTESTED

COMMEMORATION

The limited scope of the Australian art collection, particularly in comparison with Canada’s, met with criticism from the Australian press as well as artists and art patrons. One of the attacks was in response to the scheme’s failure to send an official artist to capture the surrender of the German Navy on 20 November 1918, an omission the press termed ‘a great blunder’.43 The Brisbane Courier claimed that while the British and Canadians had employed artists to paint the event, the Australians had neglected to send ‘artists out to secure a lasting record of that great historic event . . . in which Australian ships took part’.44 Bypassing those managing the art scheme, Australian military personnel had, it turned out, commissioned Fullwood to paint the surrender – the scheme’s marine artists, Burgess and Bryant, were apparently unavailable. However, Fullwood did not witness the event ‘owing to failure of his motor arrangements’.45 Smart found out about this plan five days after the surrender and was annoyed that he had not been contacted directly about the

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commission. He was particularly frustrated since, had he known, he would have arranged for the scheme’s marine artists to paint the scene, given that he doubted whether Fullwood ‘could . . . have done the picture to be painted justice’.46 However, the Courier argued that, whatever the reason, the failure to paint the surrender of the German fleet was indicative of a wider neglect of the navy in the Australian war art collection. The newspaper criticised the ‘Peace and War’ exhibition at Burlington House in 1918 for not presenting a single incident related to the Australian Navy. While ‘England and Canada, and the other Dominions have employed their foremost artists to paint naval pictures for their National buildings’, the Courier claimed that the Australian Government ‘has done absolutely nothing’. It warned that the ‘doings of Australia’s army have been well recorded on canvas’ but ‘Future generations will say the achievements of our Navy were not sufficiently recorded’.47 As it happened, in July 1919 Bean suggested to the Australian War Museum Committee – the members of which at this time were Patrick McMahon Glynn, Minister for Home and Territories, Admiral Sir William Creswell, first naval member, Sir Douglas Mawson, the famous geologist and explorer, and General White – that Burgess be commissioned to paint a canvas entitled ‘HMAS “AUSTRALIA” leading in the British fleet escorting the surrendered German navy’.48 However, this was, as the Courier argued, too late: ‘A picture of it can be painted now by an Australian artist . . . but the firsthand observation would have been invaluable’ – an affirmation of Bean’s idea that images captured by an eyewitness were more valuable than retrospective paintings.49 Those in the art community were also quick to draw attention to the shortcomings of the collection. While Lloyd Jones praised it as ‘a beginning along the right road’, he did not consider it anywhere near complete. In December 1918 he argued that, given the government’s efforts ‘had been confined to sending Australian artists to the front . . . and getting the right to the sketches produced’, it was time that ‘a definite and broader plan should be prepared, considered and acted on’, further adding that ‘[w]e have a long way to go before we can equal Canada’s effort’.50 He drew attention to two of the most yawning gaps in the collection, namely the Gallipoli campaign and the final days of the fighting on the Western Front, and argued that the art collection should be made of images ‘typifying the great deeds of the Australian soldiers from the birth of Australian nationhood at Gallipoli, up to their last two heroic efforts at [Mont] St Quentin – a series of canvases typifying these exploits for the

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benefit of generations to come, created by the great artists’. He even went as far as to suggest that Canadian and British official war artists be employed to complete the collection and estimated that it would cost around £20 000, arguing that ‘[w]ithout spending money the Commonwealth cannot hope to accomplish what should be done’.51 Further to this criticism, Lloyd Jones argued that the art should stand as a memorial to the war. Influenced by Canadian and British plans for an ‘art memorial’ – and possibly unaware of the Australian scheme’s plans for composite memorial canvases to be housed in a national war museum – he urged that arrangements ‘to provide an adequate artistic memorial of the war in which Australians have played so gallant a part’ be drawn up ‘without delay’.52 Notably, his idea echoed a proposal by Streeton, who had suggested in July 1917 that a collection of art depicting Australia’s part in the war should become an ‘Anzac Memorial’.53 Although Lloyd Jones declared that a memorial in art did not need to be a large one, he believed it should be national. He argued that ‘the artist alone of all men, can tell this story as it should be told’ and that their work would ‘tell the story to coming generations more effectively than can be done by any other means’.54 Lloyd Jones’ suggestion came during a period that Ken Inglis has described as ‘the war memorial movement’.55 Memorials honouring those serving as well as commemorating the dead had been constructed throughout the conflict, but in the months and years immediately following the end of the war there was an increase in memorial-building both at federal and local levels. Lloyd Jones’ idea that a collection of paintings might act as a memorial to the war was debated in the Australian press, raising issues about the role of the art collection and the appropriate form a memorial to the war should take. While Ure Smith and Stevens supported Lloyd Jones’ proposal, commenting that ‘the most adequate war memorial of a material kind that could be obtained would be a representation of the war itself in the highest form of art obtainable’, others contested this idea.56 Hugh M’Kinney, a member of the New South Wales Public Works Department, argued that Australia should ‘depend on the architects rather than on the artists’ for its memorial. Although agreeing with Ure Smith and Stevens ‘that the exploits of our Australian soldiers should be commemorated on a series of canvases’ and that it was ‘highly desirable that young Australians should have the opportunity of seeing realistic paintings of typical battle scenes in which our soldiers distinguished themselves’, M’Kinney proposed ‘something more than that as a public memorial – something both permanent and prominent’. He

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suggested instead that a national monument at Fort Denison in Sydney Harbour be built out of a lasting material such as ‘marble, granite, and trachyte’.57 An article in the New South Wales Construction and Local Government Journal supported M’Kinney’s view and urged that ‘war memorials should be . . . something that shall be permanent’. Declaring that ‘[w]e had already seen some of the paintings made by artists who had been “at the front” and little can be said about the artistic merit of their alleged pictures’, the journal argued that ‘the work turned out is hardly worth any considering as being of a memorial character’.58

COMPOSITION

MEMORIAL CANVASES

There is little evidence to suggest that Bean, Smart and Treloar were conscious of the debates in the Australian press about the scope and function of the war art – and although such discussions did not exactly present a competing vision, they did contest the particulars of Smart, Bean and Treloar’s emerging one. However, these men were acutely aware that the composition memorial canvases commissioned during the war represented, as Bean argued, ‘only a small proportion of those which will be needed if the tradition of the AIF is to be worthily supported by the pictures of its great battles and battlefields’.59 Smart, Bean and Treloar had always intended to commission further canvases, and in December 1918 they made two lists of additional canvases for the National War Records Office and Australian War Records Section to commission.60 This was a somewhat optimistic move as funding for the composition canvases was dependent on the government, and although Smart and Bean had sought funding in July 1918, it was only in early December that the government agreed to pay for the first eleven paintings. More concerning to Smart, Bean and Treloar was the fact that the delay made apparent the uncertain future of the art scheme. Debates between Pearce and William Watt, acting Prime Minister, over which department was responsible for funding the art program and discussions as to the need for further images jeopardised the completion of the collection. Pearce especially, although an early advocate of the art scheme, remained unconvinced of the need for larger canvases, arguing that ‘paintings are not absolutely necessary for the purposes of the Museum’ and questioning the scheme’s proposal to spend £1850 – later increased to £2950 – on larger canvases in addition to the sketches already produced by artists at the front.61 Watt referred the issue to the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board, suggesting that the board might act

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‘in an advisory capacity’ to the art scheme.62 Watt’s proposal posed an even greater potential threat to the art scheme, since at the same time the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board was considering Bean and Smart’s request for funding it was proposing an expansion of the scheme in London to include artists and wartime subjects at home. However, remarkably, given that the board had warned of the risks of ignoring the war experience in Australia in the art collection, its members did not seek to influence Bean, Smart and Treloar’s choice of subjects for the canvases, despite the fact that they all focused on aspects of the fighting overseas. Instead the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board recommended that the paintings be funded, and Watt agreed to pay the £2950 Bean had requested, sourcing the money from war funds.63 The delay had been frustrating for Bean, Smart and Treloar but, in addition to slowing the progress of the scheme, it had also piqued official artists, a considerable problem for Smart and Treloar given that the scheme relied heavily upon artists’ patriotism and generosity. Bean claimed that ‘[a]rtists who have fulfilled their part of the contract cannot obtain [a] decision’ about further work.64 Even the Australian press reported that ‘artists complain that the indirection of the Government is hampering their work’.65 The delay of more than six months was particularly problematic given that artists’ contracts initially stipulated that they were not allowed to take up work outside the scheme. Lambert became particularly discouraged when, three months after his return to London from Palestine in mid-1918, he still had no studio and no definite commissions for larger war paintings, declaring that ‘there was nothing for it but that I must look to private work to enable me to exist’. He was especially annoyed that it had taken so long for Smart to inform him that, owing to an alteration in artists’ contracts in late 1918, he was, in fact, able to accept outside commissions. He commented rather tersely that he had been living on ‘assurances that any day I might be started on my work’ for the art scheme. Lambert’s main criticism was that if he had been told that such a situation might arise, he ‘could have made arrangements accordingly’ and placed himself ‘in a position to undertake commissions for portraits and other work that was offered me on my return’.66 He was disappointed in Smart’s handling of the situation, especially as he felt he had been more than generous with his work for the scheme, which he stated now looked to be ‘an excess of patriotism’, adding that he had ‘given to Australia the whole of my time and work’.67 By December 1918, Smart, Bean and Treloar did not have time to waste, particularly if they wanted to keep the official artists interested in

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completing the collection. With the war over, they rushed to finalise not only the art collection but also the wider record-collecting scheme and arrange for its shipment to Australia. Bean recalled this period as a time of frenzied activity: There was a vast amount to do just at the End; all my diaries to list – about 200 of them including one book of about 150 000 words; artists to see & arrange with for pictures of Anzac & France; British photographs to get hold of; artists visits to France to arrange for – authority to be obtained for motor cars for them, pictures to inspect, photographs to list – mostly Enterprises connected with the completion of our records.68

Smart, Bean and Treloar were anxious to complete the art collection given that its management – as well as the broader war records collection – was soon to be handed over to the Australian War Museum Committee in Australia. They hoped to secure the subjects they had outlined on the lists for both National War Records Office and Australian War Records Section artists under the existing scheme, an additional fifty-three canvases in total.69 However, in November 1918 AIF headquarters requested that National War Records Office artists’ honorary commissions be terminated.70 Bean, Smart and Treloar had planned to send artists back to the front to make sketches for their composition images ‘while the scenes and the artists’ memory are fresh’. The termination of artists’ commissions undermined the terms and conditions under which they had worked during the war and those by which Smart, Bean and Treloar hoped to continue to employ them.71 While Bean and Smart were able to extend the honorary commissions of those official artists they wished to paint additional images, it remained unclear whether the Australian War Museum Committee would approve their suggestions for the completion of the collection or even continue with the art scheme at all.

SPEAKING

FOR THE

AIF

While Smart and Treloar were largely responsible for managing the selection of official artists and where and when they were sent to the front during the war, in 1919 Bean began to play a more active role in the art scheme. Despite suggesting in February 1918 that subjects for artists’ pictures should be left to Smart who ‘would be in a position to suggest to the DAG [Deputy Adjutant General, Colonel Thomas Dodds], AIF

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what work they are desired (or desire) to do’, in May Bean contested the subjects chosen by Smart and agreed to by other members of the National War Records Office Art Committee for the scheme’s first two large canvases.72 He was absent from the meeting at which Smart, Talmage, Fildes and Treloar, who took Bean’s place, decided that both Power and Leist should be commissioned to paint images of the Third Battle of Ypres.73 However, Bean believed, having received a rather confused letter from Treloar, that both artists had been commissioned to paint subjects of the Australian artillery during the battle.74 He strongly opposed this, declaring that ‘[t]he whole weight of my influence as representative of the AIF would be against this’. While apologising for appearing ‘opposive’, he argued that ‘the trials of the infantry and its deeds are infinitely the most necessary of record and of handing down to posterity’ – an opinion reflecting his focus on the infantry in his wartime despatches and later his approach to writing the official histories. Further, he took issue with the committee’s commissioning of Leist for an artillery subject, arguing that ‘there are not too many of our artists who can do it [paint the infantry]’ and that ‘[i]f it is possible I urgently press upon the committee on behalf of the AIF this point’.75 As indicated by this incident, Bean, taking his role as the AIF’s representative extremely seriously, went to great lengths to secure images he believed important to the history of the AIF. As he argued, The heavy guns however much they may appeal to an artist have very little part in our force. The battle of Polygon Wood is what the AIF would wish Leist to paint, and it seems to me that in this matter of subject the AIF opinion should be paramount, unless there are fery [sic] important reasons to urge upon the other side.

He added that ‘every authority here from highest to lowest would think the same as I’ and promised that he ‘would fight for the obvious wishes of the force with all the strength that I possess’. Declaring that this was an important matter to the AIF, he commented that his opposition to the committee’s decision was one of the reasons he even had a place on it: ‘I suppose that is why an AIF representative is on the committee.’76 Rather than this incident developing into a contest over memory, Smart and other government officials acknowledged and accepted Bean’s point of view. Smart stated that regarding the choice of subjects for artists, ‘I hardly think this is a matter for the Committee’. He assured Bean that the only ‘value of Talmidge and Fildes is to state what in their opinion is a fair price for the pictures to be painted’, and declared that decisions about

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the subject of the paintings were ‘a matter to be settled between yourself representing the AIF and this office’. Smart added that ‘in these circumstances we can always be in agreement’.77 Indeed, there is no evidence that he ever challenged Bean’s suggestions for subjects. Leist’s painting was completed in 1919 and, in accordance with Bean’s wishes, depicted the Australian infantry attack in Polygon Wood.78 While during the war artists had the freedom to choose the subjects of their images, after the war they had increasingly less say over their work. Bean himself suggested in early 1918 that artists might be asked to produce two ‘big pictures’ on their return from the battlefield and proposed that the first one might be an image ‘containing the artist’s own most striking impression of the Front’.79 However, in mid-1919 Bean revised this statement. He recommended instead that ‘each of the official artists be commissioned to paint a picture of whatever subject he most desires to record as his contribution to the memorial of the AIF’. He specified that this was ‘with the suggestion that this should be his most vivid impression of the AIF in France or Palestine’.80 Yet, when Bell suggested in May 1919 that he might paint an image of a race meeting at which Australian soldiers had been present, Smart informed him that this subject ‘would not be acceptable to the Committee’ and asked him to consider another one.81 This was in direct opposition to Talmage’s opinion that Bell’s suggestion ‘seemed to me an excellent subject’ and ‘would make a fresh note amongst all the war pictures’. He commented that the ‘Canadians . . . had a big picture of boxing in the camps’, and argued that a painting of a race meeting ‘was all part of the life in the army’ and would therefore make a valuable addition to the collection.82 However, Bean and Smart overrode Talmage’s comments and accepted Bell’s proposal instead to paint an incident during the Battle of Hamel.83

IDENTIFYING

THE GAPS

So what did Smart, Bean and Treloar identify as missing from the art collection? In early 1918, they suggested that after the war artists should be commissioned with large canvases depicting historic incidents.84 There is evidence to suggest that they were concerned with the educative as well as commemorative value of these war paintings. Bean argued, for instance, that a panorama of the Somme Valley at Péronne was important for contextualising the landscape in which Australians fought what he believed to be key battles: ‘the landscape at this famous corner . . . show[s]

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how Mont St Quentin overlooks Péronne, with the Somme Valley winding around the bend where the Australians fought the battle which was probably the most successful in their history on the western front’.85 Yet the gaps Smart, Bean and Treloar identified in the collection primarily related to specific battles or operations involving the Australians that they judged to be of historical value, although the subjects they chose were not focused solely on successful operations and also included those that failed. Not surprisingly, they were intent on acquiring paintings of the period before Dyson had been officially commissioned in December 1916. The Gallipoli campaign was by far the most considerable gap in the art collection, and Smart, Bean and Treloar’s choice of subjects overwhelmingly focused on retrospectively capturing the experience of the AIF on the peninsula. For instance, ten of the larger canvases commissioned in 1918 centred on aspects of this campaign, a greater number than any other on the lists. Notably, despite the navy being an important part of the campaign, the subjects they chose focused on the infantry fighting on the peninsula, reflecting the scheme’s emphasis on and privileging of the army. The fighting at Pozières in 1916 was also a worrying gap for Smart, Bean and Treloar, and they suggested that it should be depicted in six paintings, again considerably more than any other operation involving the AIF.86 The other major gap Smart, Bean and Treloar were concerned to fill in the collection was the action between August and October 1918, a period that Bean had claimed was the ‘[m]ost interesting phase [of] fighting on [the] Western Front and Palestine’, yet one when only Dyson had been stationed in France.87 Many of the canvases on their lists related to the advances on the Western Front in the final months of the war where Australian troops were involved – although notably they did not suggest commissioning specific paintings of the fighting from this period in the Middle East. Smart and Bean suggested that the National War Records Office commission Fullwood to paint a canvas of the attack on Péronne by the 53rd Battalion on 1 September 1918, Leist to paint the capture of Mont St Quentin on 31 August 1918 and Streeton to paint a panorama of the battle of the Hindenburg Line on 29 August 1918. For Australian War Records Section artists, Treloar and Bean proposed that Will Longstaff be commissioned to paint the attack at Amiens on 8 August 1918 and an image of Bullecourt on 18 September 1918. They also suggested that Scott, like Fullwood, should be commissioned to paint the attack at Péronne on 1 September 1918, and McCubbin should be commissioned with both an image of troops

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travelling to battle at Sailly-le-Sec on 31 August 1918 and an image of the fighting at Mont St Quentin of the same date.88 The National War Records Office and Australian War Records Section lists for additional canvases reveal a much more conscious attitude to memory-making than Smart, Bean and Treloar had taken during the war and involved, as Aleida Assmann reminds us, deliberate ‘acts of selection and exclusion, neatly separating useful from not useful, relevant from irrelevant memories’.89 Their selection of subjects supported a narrative of the AIF in the war, which largely mirrored Bean’s own writings of the 1920s. The lists they drew up in December 1918 were ordered chronologically, the first painting on the list to depict the first convoy leaving from Albany on 31 October 1914 and the last to portray the fighting on the Hindenburg Line in late September 1918.90 Absent were any images of the war experience at home. Further, even military subjects were limited to the infantry on the battlefield while the navy and Australian Flying Corps were notably underrepresented. Their choice of subjects for the art overwhelmingly emphasised the experience of the infantry and focused on the ordinary soldier in battle. Only three canvases were to represent specific deaths or individual heroic actions. Of the fifty-three images, approximately forty-five focused on the army. While the Australian Flying Corps was represented by two images, one depicting the death of the German pilot Baron von Richthofen and the other a rather generic scene of Australian planes in late 1917 or mid-1918 at Lille or Cambrai, the navy was the subject of only one canvas, the first convoy sailing from Albany. The remaining five images were to depict thematic rather than specific scenes. Smart and Bean, for instance, proposed that Dyson sketch ‘Australian Types’, Lindsay paint a hospital scene – notably the only medical scene behind the lines on the list – and Scott paint a runner on the Western Front as well as an image of either an Australian airman, the Drover (Simpson and his donkey) or a stretcher-bearer.91

THE

MODEL SCHEME

At the same time as Smart, Bean and Treloar were drawing up their lists of subjects for the art scheme in December 1918, Bean and General White began organising the ‘Model Scheme’, a further extension of the visual record of the war.92 Operating as a subsection within the Australian War Records Section, this scheme was to produce plan models of the battlefields as well as more traditional symbolic sculptures, although its primary focus at the end of the war was to construct ‘picture models’ or dioramas

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for the War Museum. Bean had been planning such a program since 1916 when Dyson suggested to him that artists and sculptors might be employed to produce dioramas and elevate these to, as Bean put it, ‘true art’.93 In 1918, further steps towards the scheme were taken when Treloar asked the recently appointed Australian War Records Section artists for their suggestions for a model section. McCubbin was the only artist to respond in any detail with ideas for the picture models, suggesting an integrated approach that would see paintings and models combined. Consequently, he was appointed to work on the dioramas in 1918 alongside William Wallace Anderson, the Australian War Records Section museums officer who had also served with the 23rd Battalion on the Western Front, and renowned Australian sculptor Charles Web Gilbert.94 The dioramas held a privileged place in Bean’s vision for the War Museum. Bean was particularly taken with picture models of Waterloo on display at the Royal United Services Institution in London and was convinced that such models would be essential for the War Museum as a means of conveying the atmosphere of the war to those at home.95 He was confident that the dioramas would form an important commemorative element of the displays, fusing both accurate depictions of the war with ‘high art’, and argued in mid-1919 that ‘the models should be the feature of the collection’.96 Combining sculpture and painting, the dioramas ‘relied on the theatrical trick of perspective to create a three-dimensional illusion so that the viewer was not so much a spectator but became a part of the action’, producing, as Bean claimed, ‘real picture[s] with atmosphere, gradations, shades and colour, feeling’.97 The dioramas were important to Bean for their experiential quality.98 More than any other form of visual record, the dioramas had the potential, Bean believed, to convey to the museum visitor ‘the impression of the utter fatigue, or the danger, the feverish unreality which comes over everyday landscapes during battle times’. He was adamant that they would add to the museum’s role as a centre of commemoration: ‘If our museum contains such things [dioramas] . . . it will become a centre of pilgrimage not only for Australians but for the world.’99 Given Bean’s emphasis on the commemorative capacity of the diorama, it is perhaps not surprising that more than half the scenes he and General White chose were replicated in Smart, Bean and Treloar’s lists for composition memorial canvases.100 Bean and White’s intention in selecting subjects for the dioramas was to capture an element of the major battles in which Australian soldiers had been involved.101 In doing so, they aimed to include major operations as well as general

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war scenes: ‘They [the dioramas] will be in two series (i) the chief battles and (ii) the typical war scenes.’102 What their choices reveal is a re-emphasising of the hierarchy of sites of memory that Smart, Bean and Treloar had identified in their lists of paintings.103 These were images that privileged the AIF in action on the battlefield. Yet similarly to the lists for potential canvases, the dioramas did not represent only moments of pure victory but also moments of killing, dying and death.104 There were scenes presented in the dioramas that the lists for the composition memorial canvases did not cover, such as the charge of the Light Horse at Magdhaba, the Light Horse attack on the village of Semakh, the Australian troops after the German attack at Dernancourt on 5 April 1918, as well as typical scenes of the Light Horse patrolling the desert, transportation lines in Palestine and the wounded at Messines. Yet Bean and White also chose more than seven scenes already represented in the art collection, often multiple times, for the dioramas. These included the celebrated Australian attack at Lone Pine in August 1915, Romani and Pozières in 1916, Ypres and Bullecourt in 1917, and Mont St Quentin in 1918, all of which Bean had also commissioned official artists to paint – the Third Battle of Ypres, for instance, was to be represented by approximately seven composition paintings.

ALTERATIONS Given that there was no template for the official art scheme, decisions and proposals about its content were subject to adjustment and revision – an example of the fluid nature of memory-making and the diversity of agency involved in this process. Bean altered the National War Records Office and Australian War Records Section lists of paintings compiled in December 1918 on his journey back to Australia in April 1919. He was aware that he would need to work hard to persuade the Australian War Museum Committee to approve additional canvases since funding for the Australian War Museum was at this stage limited. He therefore categorised the images into five separate lists, each ranked in order of importance to the completion of the collection – this was in case the £15 000 needed for the paintings was only partially granted or not granted at all.105 Bean’s reworked lists reveal a continued focus on the fighting on Gallipoli and the infantry in France in the final months of the war. He added several images such as a portrait of General Bridges as well as suggesting that Ellis Silas paint the roll call after the fighting on Baby 700 in May 1915 and that Bryant paint two images of Gallipoli,

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including the evacuation of the peninsula and a panorama of the landing. Further, he suggested that Power paint the training of the 1st Division in the Mena Desert and Lambert paint group portraits of General Bridges’ staff in Egypt and on the first night at Anzac ‘when [the] decision was arrived at to stay’. He also kept the scheme’s focus on the final months of the war on the Western Front, adding images such as the capture of Mont St Quentin in August 1918 and a panorama of the Somme at Péronne.106 From the ranking of his lists, it appears that Bean considered commissioning specific incidents involving the AIF on the battlefield more important than thematic or representative paintings. His second list, for instance, consisted of approximately twenty-eight images that almost exclusively related to particular battles.107 By comparison, it was only on the fifth list – made up of seven images – that he suggested themed subjects, such as the rather vague ‘The Supreme Sacrifice’ as well as ‘The Runner’, ‘The Stretcher Bearer’ and ‘The Digger’.108 However, there is some evidence to suggest that he began to consider expanding the scope of the collection. His second list included another naval image, notably the previously neglected surrender of the German Fleet in November 1918. He also planned to broaden the collection by purchasing images from British war artists, requesting £200 – the Australian War Museum Committee later halved this amount – be set aside for ‘etchings of British Official Artists (France and Egypt)’, although he later stipulated that these would ‘especially deal with the Light Horse’. Yet there were also images that Bean abandoned. Subjects such as the fighting on the first day at Pope’s Hill, the attack on Pozières and the Somme winter, the German Offensive and ‘Australian Types’ were all discarded. Instead he suggested commissioning Dyson with a series of ten black-and-white images ‘showing the humour of Australian troops’.109 However, Bean’s lists were subject to modification from both the National War Records Office Art Committee in London and the Australian War Museum Committee in Australia during 1919. The Art Committee did not approve of several of his suggestions, and Bean’s proposal for a panorama of the Somme Valley, further portraits by Quinn and Longstaff and paintings of Quinn’s Post, the attack on Baby 700 of 2 May 1915 and the roll call afterwards as well as paintings of the sinking of the Southland and the fighting at Villers-Bretonneux were initially rejected. After some discussion, however, these were, with the exception of Baby 700, eventually produced.110 Further, while by July 1919 Bean managed to persuade the Australian War Museum Committee to ‘go on with the

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Scheme of Pictures’, this was at the expense of some of the images on his lists; as he admitted to Smart, ‘[a] few alterations’ were made to his proposed subjects.111 Members of the Australian War Museum Committee revised Bean’s lists, adding to as well as rejecting several of his suggestions. The reasoning behind their alterations shows a concern with limiting the size of the collection and selecting only what members considered most appealing for the museum: ‘the most important principle being that a small and interesting collection is more valuable than a large and tedious one’.112 While the Australian War Museum Committee accepted Bean’s first and second lists of paintings without modification – notably these were based on the lists compiled by Smart, Bean and Treloar during and immediately after the war – they rejected almost every subject on Bean’s third, fourth and fifth lists. In fact, they agreed only to a portrait of General Bridges, and representative images of a runner, a digger and stretcherbearers – a total of four out of twenty-three images suggested by Bean.113 The Australian War Museum Committee members also made additions to the list, commissioning portraits of General Holmes and Victoria Cross (VC) winners Lieutenant Colonel Henry Murray and Captain Albert Jacka, although they did not state which artist should paint them. Perhaps attempting to lower the cost of completing the collection, the committee commissioned Australian War Records Section artists – who were generally paid less than their National War Records Office colleagues – to paint the thematic images; Benson was assigned ‘The Runner’, Crozier an image entitled ‘The Stretcher Bearers’ and Scott ‘The Digger’, although these canvases were later assigned to other artists. The committee also finalised some of Bean’s rather vague suggestions. Bean had proposed, for example, that Lambert might paint an image of Palestine, but the Australian War Museum Committee decided such an image should focus on the fighting in Magdhaba, Romani or Damascus.114

COMMISSIONING

THE COMPOSITION CANVASES

Smart, Bean and Treloar continued largely to employ painters who had worked for the scheme during the war. In their selection they appeared surprisingly less concerned with whether artists had wartime knowledge or experience of a particular theatre of conflict than with their specialist genre. Given that Power’s expertise was in animal painting, for instance, they suggested that he should be commissioned with artillery scenes.115 Bryant and Burgess were commissioned with marine subjects, Streeton

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with sweeping landscapes of the battlefields, and Longstaff and Quinn continued to be assigned portraits of Australian military leaders.116 These choices reveal a privileging of particular artists. Despite the fact that most official artists were landscape painters, Smart and Bean’s suggestions show a favouring of Lambert, Power and Leist, with commissions for twenty-four of the fifty-two canvases being assigned to these artists – the majority of which were landscapes. Although there is little evidence to suggest why they favoured these artists, it is likely that it was not only the quality but also the quantity of their wartime output and dedication to the art scheme’s aims that influenced their decision: Lambert had handed over almost a hundred sketches more than the twenty-five he was contracted to produce. They assigned eleven of the fifty-two images to Lambert (with a combined value of £4350 and average value of £395 per painting), eight to Leist (with a combined value of £2200 and average value of £275 per painting) and five paintings to Power (with a combined valued of £1600 and average value of £320 per painting). Further, Lambert and Leist appeared on all five lists and, given the number of paintings and value of each piece, were by far the scheme’s most preferred artists.117 In comparison, Streeton, who was arguably a more celebrated painter than either Leist or Power, although perhaps not Lambert, was commissioned with only four paintings (with a combined value of £1000 and average value of £250 per painting), and Smart and Bean suggested that Fullwood – the merits of whose work were questioned – paint only two canvases (with a combined value of £750).118 The end of the war also gave Smart, Bean and Treloar the opportunity to commission additional artists, especially those who had been unable to work for the scheme during the conflict. In keeping with the scheme’s wartime emphasis, their selection of painters was largely confined to those men who had witnessed the war and worked in an academic style. The only exception to this was the posthumous portrait of General Bridges, which Bean, supported by the Australian War Museum Committee, suggested might be painted by an artist working in Australia. The Australian War Museum Committee also proposed commissioning the same artist with portraits of VC winners Murray and Jacka.119 Bean especially was convinced that commissioning soldiers with paintings of scenes they had personally witnessed was an important way of filling the gaps in the collection while maintaining the accuracy of the art. He was keen, for instance, that the Art Committee purchase Silas’s sketches of Gallipoli as well as place further commissions with him since these sketches would be, he argued, ‘recollections of an eyewitness’.120 Silas had been a signaller on

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Gallipoli in the first months of the campaign but had suffered a breakdown and been evacuated from the peninsula in May. It is likely that Bean became aware of Silas’s work through Crusading at Anzac, a book of Silas’s sketches and descriptions of the Gallipoli campaign published in 1916, and was impressed by the combination of written and visual testimony that it provided. Yet, although Crusading at Anzac had sold reasonably well, Silas was not a particularly well-known artist either in London or Australia.121 Smart, Fildes and Talmage objected to commissioning Silas on artistic grounds.122 Bean was disappointed by their decision and privately complained to Gullett that ‘Smart has no appreciation of the fact that Silas, though Talmage and Luke Fildes think nothing of his work, is a man who was at the Landing, in the fight of May 2nd 1915 on Baby 700, and who was standing by watching the roll call afterwards’. For Bean, the authenticity provided by Silas having been ‘the only artist . . . who was there’ overcame issues of aesthetic quality and the fact that Silas was an ‘amateur artist’.123 Declaring that he knew ‘enough about painting to know that they [Silas’ sketches] are pictures which would be passable’, Bean went on to argue that commissioning Silas was a ‘chance of getting the only record of those events which will ever be possible’. He added that, if the Art Committee let this opportunity pass, ‘we shall have left undone something that we ought to do for posterity’ and that he ‘personally would feel most uncomfortable about it’ if images of events of such ‘intense interest’ were not included in the collection.124 It is unclear why Bean wanted the National War Records Office and not the Australian War Records Section to employ Silas, especially since it was the Australian War Records Section which employed lesser known artists with direct combat experience. Nevertheless, Bean eventually won over the Art Committee, and Silas was commissioned with several images of the Gallipoli campaign. Silas went on to portray the tragedy of the roll call in his now well-known painting of the event, commissioned by the Art Committee in 1919 and completed in 1920. It is axiomatic that any single eyewitness account is partial. Artists who had served as soldiers in the war were aware that their experience on the battlefield did not necessarily make them reliable witnesses. When approached by Bean and Treloar in 1918 with a commission for the art collection, Charles Wheeler, who had worked as a professional artist in Australia before the war and was serving with the 22nd Battalion, Royal Fusiliers in the British Expeditionary Force, declared that as he had not made accurate sketches while at the front, any painting he produced

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would be drawn from memory. He therefore ‘declined . . . on the grounds that it would necessarily be a fake’: he had ‘never faked a picture . . . and never will’.125 He was, in fact, denied permission by the War Office to paint for the Australian art scheme during the war, but at the end of the conflict Bean and Treloar were still keen to employ him. Given that Bean saw Wheeler as ‘one of the best artists’ and more importantly a soldier who had been ‘in the thick of it’, he suggested that Wheeler should be granted ‘reasonable latitude in [his] choice of subject’. However, in keeping with the emphasis of the scheme on Australian troops in the war, Bean stressed that the image should depict ‘the conditions in which Australians fought’ and not the British.126 Despite his initial misgivings, Wheeler eventually accepted several commissions for the Australian collection. However, he constantly requested eyewitness accounts as well as other material about the specific details of the scenes he was to paint.127 Indeed, despite having fought in the war, with regard to one commission he claimed that ‘he did not feel justified in attempting to paint the picture without . . . [this material] as it would necessitate a certain amount of faking’, and only after having received a range of sources from Treloar was he satisfied that he could complete his canvas.128 While maintaining the accuracy of the paintings was an important criterion for selecting additional artists after the war, the National War Records Office Art Committee did not entirely neglect aesthetic considerations. Smart and Bean had tried hard to obtain permission from the War Office to appoint eminent painter George Coates as an official artist. Coates worked as an orderly at Wandsworth Hospital during the war, but the War Office would not grant permission for his transfer or his becoming an honorary lieutenant in the AIF.129 Coates approached Smart in early 1919 ‘in the hope that you may still have some work left that might give me a chance of doing something for Australia the land of my birth’.130 Smart appeared eager to commission him, declaring that ‘Coates is one of our best portrait painters and I think he should be given the opportunity of painting at least one portrait’.131 However, it was not until June 1919 that the Department of Defence finally approved Coates’ employment ‘provided he paint [General] Griffiths’.132 Coates completed this portrait later that year as well as a portrait of Major General Edwin Tivey.133 While these men were arguably rather minor subjects compared to the portraits Longstaff and Quinn were asked to paint, the National War Records Office Art Committee and later the Australian War Museum Committee were pleased with the completed canvases, and Coates was commissioned with further work throughout the 1920s.134

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At times the choice of artists was subject to alteration if their work was not considered satisfactory by Smart, Treloar and Bean. There was some debate, for example, in late 1919 among the members of the National War Records Office Art Committee regarding the aesthetic value of Fullwood’s first composition memorial canvas, Attack on Péronne (1919). Despite having little artistic knowledge, Smart took issue with Fullwood’s painting of the figures in the image and declared that ‘I am of the opinion that it would be inadvisable to commission Lieut. Fullwood to paint any further composition picture in which figures are a prominent part’.135 When Fildes inspected the canvas, he agreed with Smart’s criticism and suggested that ‘Fullwood be asked to put a little further work into certain figures appearing in the picture’.136 While Talmage agreed that the figures were poorly painted, he argued that he did not think alterations would ‘make any difference’ to the painting. He went on to argue that the Art Committee ‘can’t expect him to repaint all the figures which was what Sir Luke [Fildes] seemed to think was necessary’, adding: ‘I think you had better leave it as it is myself. He [Fullwood] has done it as he sees it and I do not consider that trying to get an artist to alter things in his picture . . . is going to improve that picture on the contrary my opinion is that it will have the contrary Effect.’137 Ignoring Talmage, Smart approached Fullwood with suggestions of altering the figures in the foreground. However, Fullwood claimed that ‘he could not see the picture in any other way but in the way in which he had painted it, and felt that he could not improve it’.138 Although it appears that Smart was able to persuade Fullwood to do a little work on the figures, the members of the committee ultimately agreed that ‘no useful purpose could be served by asking Lieut. Fullwood to put any more work into it’.139 Despite the fact that Fullwood had already submitted a cartoon to the committee for the Villers-Bretonneux canvas that Bean stated was ‘very accurate’, the committee members ‘unanimously agreed that Lt. Fullwood should not be commissioned to paint a second battle picture’, especially since ‘[i]t was felt that he had had his chance in the first picture and that the Committee could not risk a second unsatisfactory picture’.140 Consequently, the canvas of the attack on Villers-Bretonneux that Smart and Bean had initially suggested be assigned to Fullwood in December 1918 and which was to be the subject of his second composition canvas was instead given to Will Longstaff, whose final product was considered by the committee to be ‘a beautiful piece of work’.141

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RETROSPECTIVELY

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Commissioning larger paintings of significant events at which artists had often not been present made it difficult for Smart, Bean and Treloar to uphold the precision of detail they believed artists had attained in their work at the front during the war. Consequently, they devised a range of ways to monitor and maintain the accuracy of the composition canvases throughout their post-war production. Artists’ own wartime sketches were made available to them if they related to the subject of their composition canvas.142 This practice was similarly employed by the British art scheme, Ross commenting that ‘the pictures can only be painted at home from sketches and studies done at the front’. As he explained, this was in order to ‘avoid popular misconceptions of events such as are seen in the illustrated papers’ and reiterated that ‘the panels must be reconstructed from sketches whatever scenes are chosen’.143 For artists working for the Australian scheme, their wartime sketches were also complemented with models and equipment. Bell, for instance, requested ‘a full infantryman’s kit for use in the studio’, and Smart also arranged for an infantryman to model for Bell. Smart was especially anxious to provide the necessary materials since ‘Bell arrived in France too late to see any of the actual fighting’.144 Photographs also provided an important source for artists to work from. As early as October 1918, Bean had suggested that Lambert should be given ‘photos of the low scrub on the Nek’ from which to paint his scene of the ‘3rd LH Bde. On the Nek in the dawn of Aug. 7. 1915’ – this proved unnecessary as Lambert was able to paint the flora from his own observation as a member of the Historical Mission on Gallipoli.145 Notably, photographs often surpassed the need for a return visit to the battlefield – emphasising Bean’s idea that the camera provided objective images of the battlefields. As Smart commented in mid-1919 in relation to Fullwood’s work, ‘it will now not be necessary for him to proceed to France’ since Fullwood had ‘arranged with Captain Wilkins to secure photographs of the positions he requires’.146 However, the focus remained on artists seeing the battlefields for themselves while the evidence of the fighting was still visible. As Bean had suggested in early 1918, in producing their memorial canvases artists should be commissioned with subjects of which ‘the scene can still be visited more or less in its original condition’ and ‘the eyewitnesses can be still obtained’.147 Smart declared that since Leist and Power had been

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commissioned to paint ‘pictures of positions which they did not visit while in France’, this ‘will necessitate their visiting France in order to get sketches of the ground’.148 Yet, in order to understand the details of the events artists were to paint, Smart, Bean and Treloar increasingly relied upon eyewitness testimony from soldiers with direct combat experience. Artists were given veterans’ accounts of the events to work from and increasingly instructed to meet returned soldiers and discuss their canvases with them.149 Further, Bean, drawing on his role as eyewitness, began to collate his notes for his official history and provided these as well as his personal accounts of the battles to artists from which to work – an example of the way in which he influenced the composition memorial canvases.150 This period therefore saw the role of official artists shift from eyewitnesses to, as Lambert put it, ‘Artist Historian[s]’, piecing together images of historical significance from a variety of sources.151 At the same time, there was a narrowing in what were deemed to be legitimate experiences of war and a limiting of those who could claim the authority of lived experience.152 Veterans’ memories of the war became more valued than artists’ ones. Returned soldiers who had experienced the events represented in the paintings were asked to inspect artists’ work. Longstaff for example had not been present at the attack at Villers-Bretonneux and produced his painting of the incident from photographs of the area and written accounts of the attack. Consequently, two officers who were involved in this operation were asked to verify the accuracy of the image, which they declared was ‘an exact reproduction of the conditions on the night of the attack’.153 In addition, artists were required to provide a ‘cartoon’ or preliminary sketch for members of the National War Records Office Art Committee to scrutinise for any historical inaccuracies before they were given permission to begin their larger canvases. However, the committee often intervened in artistic matters as well. When Fullwood presented two cartoons for his canvas of the attack at Péronne to the committee, he was asked to combine them since, as Bean stated, ‘[t]he oil cartoon would be more historically correct of the two but I like the grouping in the foreground of the watercolour’.154

RETURN TO GALLIPOLI: THE AUSTRALIAN H I S T O R I C A L M I S S I O N , 19 19 For Smart, Treloar and especially Bean, the most important gap to fill was that of the Gallipoli campaign. Although soldiers had informally collected

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artefacts from the peninsula, very little had been formally acquired under the record scheme for the War Museum. For Bean – who would devote two volumes of his official histories to the eight-month Gallipoli campaign – this was a serious gap and had been of constant concern to him throughout the war, especially considering his belief that it was ‘the episode most famous for the Anzacs’.155 In November 1918, Bean began planning an Australian Historical Mission – with all its quasi-religious overtones – which would return to Gallipoli in January 1919.156 During the war Bean had discussed with White and Birdwood the possibility of his returning to the peninsula after the conflict ‘while the ground was almost unchanged’, and as soon as the armistice was signed he obtained Birdwood’s permission to begin organising the mission in earnest.157 He intended to solve the ‘riddles’ of the 1915 campaign, and he employed men with the expertise he believed were needed to do this.158 Staff Sergeant Arthur Bazley, Bean’s personal assistant, and Lieutenant John Balfour were appointed to oversee the travel arrangements and, Balfour in particular, to manage the collection of artefacts on the ground.159 Sergeant G. Hunter Rogers and Lieutenant H.S. Buchanan, a construction engineer who had been in charge of the Australian Corps mapping section in France, were included to help make and correct maps of the peninsula. Ever enamoured with the value of eyewitness testimony, Bean employed Lieutenant Hedley Howe, who had served with the 11th Battalion and come ashore in the early morning of 25 April on Gallipoli, to provide a personal account of the landing. In addition, Wilkins was included in the mission to add to the visual record by photographing what evidence remained of the fighting on the peninsula.160 Bean’s aim for the mission was to gather evidence for his official histories and collect artefacts for the museum ‘while they could still be obtained’ as well as visit Australian graves – ‘a cause of deeper regret’, as Bean commented, ‘to the troops and their people at home than any other implication in the abandonment of the Peninsula’.161 Obtaining a visual record of Gallipoli was an important aspect of the return and was strongly supported by the AIF.162 In addition to Wilkins, Bean and Smart were keen to include an artist as a member of the mission since both men were ‘anxious to have certain sketches made at Gallipoli’.163 When asking for permission to employ an artist for the mission from the Department of Defence, Smart emphasised that ‘[a]t the present time there is no record available’. He also suggested that if an artist was to travel to the peninsula, Bean could ‘point out . . . main incidents on spot [sic]’ from which the

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artist could ‘make sketches which would be available all time for painting main incidents [sic]’.164 The quality and quantity of Lambert’s work appealed to Smart and Bean. As Smart commented to Treloar, Lambert had ‘brought back a large number of valuable sketches and has entered into the task of collecting Australia’s records more enthusiastically than any of the other official artists’.165 Bean was also deeply impressed by Lambert’s commitment to the scheme, commenting that Lambert had handed over ‘five times as many [sketches] as he undertook to paint’. Consequently, in November 1918 they approached him with the offer to ‘return with . . . [Bean] about Christmas-time to Gallipoli’.166 Although Leist was commissioned with a canvas of Lone Pine, Bean and Smart selected Lambert, who had been commissioned with paintings of the landing and the charge of the Light Horse at the Nek, to join the mission. In part, this was because Leist had been commissioned with several images of France and was to visit the battlefields of the Western Front while Lambert had also been commissioned with a canvas of the Australian Light Horse in Palestine and was to return to Romani as well as other sites in Palestine after spending time on the peninsula. However, Bean and Smart intended Lambert’s canvas of the landing to become one of the central pieces of the museum’s Gallipoli display.167 Initially Lambert declined the offer of travelling to Gallipoli. Although he claimed he was ‘very keen to paint a lasting memorial of the Charge of the 10th LH’, he was concerned that to complete it accurately he ‘would need to be on the ground at the corresponding time of year’ – indeed his concern foreshadowed criticisms from veterans in the 1920s.168 Further, Lambert was suffering from what he termed a ‘double bout’ of malaria, which he had contracted during his time as an official artist in Palestine. He wrote that while he was ‘more than willing’ to go to the peninsula to ‘get records for pictures of actions which took place during either spring, summer or autumn’, he was not interested in travelling in winter owing to his poor health, although he added that if ‘stern duty’ called, he would attempt it.169 Bean was set on taking him, declaring that he was ‘particularly anxious for Lambert to be the one to paint these special pictures’.170 Smart began considering other artists to fill Lambert’s place, including Power and Leist, stating that he was ‘of the opinion that as Lambert and Power are unable to go to Gallipoli, Leist would be the next best man available’. However, Bean pressed him to persuade Lambert to reconsider going to Gallipoli, claiming that he would personally ‘take every care that he

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[Lambert] does not have a rough time’.171 The terms and conditions under which Smart was eventually able to persuade Lambert to accept the position on the mission show how keen Bean was to have Lambert paint the peninsula. While Lambert’s contract was generally similar to artists’ standard wartime contracts in regard to pay – he was paid two pounds per day – he demanded and was given ownership of his work rather than handing all his sketches to the government as he had during the war: ‘small pencil notes and studies by the way may be retained by me, but of these I would give a selection to the Government’.172 Notably, Bean and Smart also agreed that, regardless of the Art Committee’s recommendation, Lambert would be paid £500 for a 10 by 6 ft canvas of the landing, more than any other artist had been paid for a single painting at this time.173

THE

MAKING OF AN ICON:

LAMBERT

ON THE PENINSULA

On 18 January 1919, as the peace negotiations began in Paris, the members of the Australian Historical Mission embarked on their journey to Gallipoli. They arrived on the peninsula on 6 February and stayed there until 10 March, although Lambert was to spend a further two months, from late May until early August, in the Middle East producing paintings of the Light Horse.174 As the official artist on the mission, Lambert’s task while on Gallipoli was to immerse himself in the events of the landing and the Nek.175 He was to observe and sketch the surviving evidence of the fighting at these sites, Bean’s aim being that this would help Lambert later to construct accurate canvases of each episode. Lambert sketched his impressions of the landscape, making visual notes, which captured the details and atmosphere of the peninsula.176 There is little evidence to suggest that Bean ever directly intervened in Lambert’s work on the peninsula, but he was instrumental in ensuring Lambert saw and understood the events he was to paint and consequently Lambert was influenced by Bean’s interpretation of the campaign.177 Bean personally recalled having long conversations during the mission about Lambert’s composition memorial canvases.178 He also commented that he answered Lambert’s questions about the details of the Australian soldier’s equipment and uniform and, as he later recollected, discussed ‘how I thought a man would fall if hit on one side and spun around’.179 Bean was especially keen for Lambert to ‘obtain, for his picture . . . a personal description of the event’, so, unlike artists working on the Western Front, he ensured that Lambert observed the sites he

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was to paint accompanied by a veteran of the Gallipoli campaign.180 He arranged for Lambert to retrace the first hours and days of the fighting on Gallipoli ‘with at least one officer [Howe] who was there at the landing’, stressing that such an opportunity of hearing the specifics of the operation ‘on the spot from one who knows so much about it’ would ‘never occur again’.181 Lambert found it ‘incredible’ that ‘our fellows could land, climb & establish themselves so quickly’ in such an environment.182 He was impressed by Howe’s recollection of the landing and used it as the narrative through which he framed his canvas.183 Bean was determined that the members of the mission would carefully examine the terrain and explore both sides of the battlefield. They ‘camped on ground occupied by the Turk during the operations’. Consequently, Lambert was able to observe and explore both the Australian and Turkish trenches. At the landing site he stated that he ‘rode with Bean & Wilkins over the Turkish trenches across no mans & along the front of ours’, and that in doing so ‘one gets the situation at a glance’. He was struck by the proximity of each side’s trenches to the other, commenting that ‘[a]t one place only about 30 yards between the opposing jacko & us, a perfect rabbit warren and too ghastly to people with the image of fighting’. This exposure to the entire battlefield was a revelation to Lambert, allowing him a more complete understanding of the fighting on the peninsula: ‘I walked over to Anzac Beach with young Lieut. Balfour . . . & on the way we came across the remains of what must have been just about the quickest attack on Lone Pine that ever was.’184 Lambert was aware of the accuracy expected by Bean, Smart and Treloar. He used his assistant, Lance Corporal William Spruce, who had fought with the 7th Light Horse, as a model for a dead soldier near a Turkish trench: ‘The weather improved on this morning and with my light horseman I footed it to a very interesting Turkish trench on a hill called “Johnson’s Jollie” and there did quite a good correct study of Spruce . . . as a stiff.’ The sketch depicts Spruce in full uniform lying face down on a slope just before the Turkish trench system, his right arm flung out awkwardly, his rifle beside him. His body, in its khaki uniform, blends with the green shrubs and golden brown of the earth, which rises steeply before the dark shadows of the Turkish trench. Lambert remarked how this experience was ‘quite exciting in that I had the right kind of man in right clothes and right ground. In addition to correct surroundings & light I may mention the equipment – webbing equipment. In fact everything right. A four hours stretch and worth it.’185 He was also intent on capturing the mood of the country, and he became absorbed in the

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contours and colours of the peninsula. Lambert studied the distinct character of the landscape, describing its tone and texture. He ‘propose[d] getting a record of the various plants & flowers’, adding: ‘The chief local colour is made up of low scrub about 2 ft high average on sandy clay with stones & gravel. The scrub is greenish with nice dead stuff showing grey purple here & there.’186 As Bean hoped, Lambert became immersed in the landscape of the peninsula, working ‘like an assiduous student’.187 He was distressed on his first visit to the landing site to find that ‘[t]he gruesome is in fact scattered all over the battlefield’. Yet he was also struck by the beauty of the beach and the cliffs: ‘all that I had been told about the beauty of the formations & colour was realised’.188 Similarly, although he was acutely aware of the grim evidence of the fighting around the Nek, he commented that ‘[f]rom the point of view of the Artist Historian the Neck [sic] is a wonderful setting for the tragedy’. Lambert was so keen to paint the site that he declared: ‘I could not wait for the proper time which was just before sunrise but abandoned the “Mission” & did a sketch . . . about 3 o’clock to 5 o’clock.’189 The resulting image reflects his intense sensitivity for both the beauty and the horror of the battlefield. A man, probably Lambert’s assistant, sits on the left-hand side of the drawing, his uniformed shape blending with the green of the grass and shrubs. However, the focal point of the image is the luminous white bones, a skull and arm or leg bone scattered in the open, grassy space. The contrast between the splendour of the landscape and the evidence of the fighting was a constant tension in Lambert’s work from his time on the peninsula. His sketch of Achi Baba depicts a bleached white skull half obscured by low-lying shrubs, reflecting both the beauty of the ‘dull mauvey grey . . . [and] sage green’ of the site and the way that, as he commented to his wife, ‘The dead or rather their bones spoil it of course and the melancholy is ready for him who lets his thoughts wander.’190 Roaming all over the peninsula and sketching the battlefields from numerous positions, Lambert managed to produce ‘topographical pencil drawings of a likely background for a landing picture’ and a painting of the Nek as well as detailed studies of the local flora. He claimed that ‘[m]y small collection of paintings amounting to 20 pieces are fair souvenirs and most useful reference notes’. Yet, in spite of his light-hearted letters from these months, there are glimpses in the archive of how profoundly affected he was by the tangible signs of war that remained on the peninsula: ‘Descriptions are all too true; evidence grins coldly at us non-combatants.’ By the time the mission departed on

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10 March 1919, Lambert felt he had come to know both the magnificence of the landscape and the horror of the campaign intimately: ‘A bright morning smiling at our departure was ironical but I can safely say I know Anzac its “gullies” bushes flowers trenches & bones.’ As captivating and moving as the peninsula was, Lambert was thankful to leave: ‘I cannot tell you how pleased I am at getting clear of this graveyard beautiful as it is.’191 Smart, Treloar and Bean were impressed by Lambert’s efforts on the mission and by his dedication to the art scheme. For Bean, Lambert was one of the finest official artists, second only to Dyson, and he later argued that Lambert was among those ‘most seized with the almost sacred nature of the work’.192 Despite becoming ill at the end of the mission and spending six weeks in hospital in Cairo, he remained for several months in the Middle East. Once he had recovered, he made sketches of the theatres of war where the Australian Light Horse saw action, strictly limiting himself to military subjects despite noting that there were other ‘pictures by the mile’ that he wished to paint.193 The images Lambert created on the peninsula and in the Middle East after the war were the only officially commissioned images of these campaigns, and they filled an important gap in the art collection. The canvases he later produced from these sketches were to become the most iconic of the official war art collection – and remain so today. *** The care with which Bean showed Lambert the peninsula in 1919 and indeed the number of images he proposed be painted of the Gallipoli campaign revealed the pre-eminence that he, Smart and Treloar accorded it in the art collection. It also signalled a shift in the production of war paintings under the official art scheme from a fluid and improvised approach to a more deliberate construction of memory. Speaking on behalf of the AIF, Bean emerged as one of the key agents of memory in this period. Yet he was not the sole individual shaping the art collection at this time. Decisions about its scope and function were also influenced by the interaction and collaboration of artists and military officers, and Bean’s suggestions were revised and modified by members of the National War Records Office Art Committee and later the Australian War Museum Committee. The subjects selected for the paintings at the end of the war present the hierarchies of memory as these men saw them. Indeed, despite the

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opportunity to expand the scope of the collection, Smart, Bean and Treloar continued to support a narrow conception of ‘war experience’, with their criterion for selecting or approving a subject being based on its representation of Australia’s battlefield history. This came at the expense of a broader experience of war, one that might have included the experience of the war at home as both the Canadian and British collections did.

CHAPTER

A

|

5

S U I T A B L E M E M O R I A L,

1920–22

Throughout the early 1920s, Treloar and Bean’s aim was to mount an exhibition of the collection commissioned so assiduously under the art scheme during the war. Yet plans for a permanent home for Australia’s official art as well as the wider war records collection developed slowly in the post-war years. It was only in 1922 that a temporary exhibition of the War Museum – still without a permanent home – was opened in Melbourne and the official war paintings displayed to the Australian public for the first time. This chapter considers the planning before the exhibition and the ways in which commissions and acquisitions of further paintings were influenced by their intended display within the War Museum. A more inclusive approach to commissioning paintings in the early 1920s was adopted by Henry Gullett, the first Director of the War Museum, then by Treloar when he took over this position. Their approach began to broaden the scope and content of the collection. During this period, Treloar as well as Bean increasingly intervened in the production of the canvases, holding artists’ work to an even greater degree of scrutiny than they had during the war years. However, despite a more inclusive collecting policy, when arranging for the display of the paintings in the War Museum, Gullett, Treloar and Bean’s focus remained largely on depicting the Australian soldier in the war, and the images exhibited within the museum in 1922 overwhelmingly commemorated the AIF on the battlefield.

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KEEPING ‘GREEN

T H E M E M O R Y ’: FOR A WAR MUSEUM

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PLANS

Australia had never seen an enterprise like the museum Bean imagined.1 He had been planning such an institution since 1916. By 1918, his ideas had crystallised into a proposal for the war museum and the collection it would house: ‘[T]he great Federal War Collection if established at the Commonwealth Capital in a building worthy to be a memorial of the Australian Imperial Force, would be the finest monument ever raised to any army.’2 Claiming that such an institution would form the ‘most interesting museum or gallery in Australia’ and would rival ‘the famous galleries of Rome, Florence, Dresden, Paris and London’, Bean declared in 1919 that the museum ‘will be Australia’s National Memorial to Australians who fell in the war’.3 As Inglis explains, for Bean there was no more fitting national memorial than the war museum, which he saw as being a hallowed space, housing the relics of the Australian soldiers who had fought in the war, much like the relics of saints in a shrine.4 Throughout this period, he referred to the museum by various terms, including memorial, monument, shrine and temple.5 Sir Alfred Mond, First Commissioner of Works, had proposed a similar idea in Britain in August 1917, arguing that the government should adopt the Imperial War Museum as the nation’s memorial, although his proposal had been rejected and the Cenotaph in Whitehall became Britain’s national memorial.6 Bean’s suggestion was an extraordinary one, especially in Australia, which at this time looked to Britain and Europe for cultural stimulus.7 His vision for the museum was unlike any other institution in Australia at the time, being a space with multiple functions: a memorial, museum, library and gallery.8 Further, at this time there was nothing comparable overseas, so Bean and the members of the Australian War Museum Committee had difficulty persuading the government of the value of such an institution. The Australian War Museum Committee’s claim, presented to the Prime Minister by Senator Alexander Poynton, Minister for Home and Territories (1920–21) and Glynn’s successor on the Australian War Museum Committee, was that the War Museum’s collection would ‘be of intense interest to the present and future generations of Australia’ and would ‘for ever keep green the memory of our soldiers and sailors’. However, by April 1921 there was still no definite statement of support from Prime Minister Hughes for Bean’s idea that the museum should stand as the national war memorial.9

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Moreover, local memorial endeavours during this period posed a potential threat to the national status the Australian War Museum Committee hoped the government would grant the War Museum – an example of the diverse and competing agencies of memory operating in Australia during this period. Consequently, the Australian War Museum Committee was anxious to begin discussions about possible avenues for financing the museum, such as a grant from the Australian parliament or funding through public subscription, and was convinced that approval for the War Museum to act as the nation’s principal memorial would assist its request. Further, committee members believed that their work in completing and housing the collection of war records would be helped by an announcement from the government stating that the museum was to be the national memorial. In light of growing local commemorative activity they were particularly anxious for an official endorsement: ‘[S]uch an announcement [is] necessary and urgent in view of proposals which are afoot to launch various local appeals for what are inappropriately termed “National War Memorials”.’10 Bean and Treloar saw growing local forms of commemoration as being in direct competition with the War Museum. Emphasising the museum’s collection of war records, they argued that ‘no piles of sculpture or other artificial monument can ever rival this assemblage of war material and war memories’.11 Even attempts by Bean and Treloar themselves to raise money for the museum were threatened by local memorial committees. Treloar’s announcement that proceeds from the photographic exhibition in 1921 would go to ‘War Memorials’ created tensions with individuals constructing local memorials, who assumed that they could use these funds.12 As he commented to Bean, ‘local memorial committees are casting covetous eyes upon the funds we are building up’.13 Criticisms about the plans for a war museum published in the Australian press posed an additional threat. It is difficult to generalise about the attitude of the press, yet it appears that mainstream newspapers were initially supportive of the war record-collecting scheme established in London and ideas for a museum, reporting eagerly in early 1919 on Bean’s proposal for the scope and function of the museum.14 However, by mid-1919 broadsheets such as the Age had changed their view and attacked the federal government’s plans to build a war museum and its ‘collection mania’. Stating that while Australians certainly wanted a collection of war trophies of historic and ‘sentimental’ value, the Age remarked that if the nation was to ‘house a collection of all the junk that has any connection with the war, the population, sparse as it is, will be

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crowded off the continent’. The newspaper also commented that the government appeared to have ‘lost all sense of discrimination’ and that ‘[i]t apparently argues that if the public is interested in seeing one machine gun it will be 3000 times more interested in seeing 3000 machine guns’. Further, it challenged the seemingly ‘unlimited power’ of the Australian War Museum Committee to ‘spend public money’ on a war museum in Canberra that would be yet ‘another palace added on to the row of palaces that are to adorn that lonely piece of Bushland’.15 Hence, discussions about whether the War Museum should stand as the national memorial developed slowly during the early 1920s. It was only in 1923 under Hughes’ successor, Prime Minister Stanley Bruce, that the government informally gave permission for the museum to be Australia’s war memorial.16 This was formalised, in 1925, under the Australian War Memorial Act 1925, which granted the War Museum official status as the national war memorial.17 Opposition to national commemoration of the war was not unique to Australia, although the tenor of the debates was different elsewhere. In Britain, Professor J.L. Myers suggested that a Peace Museum rather than a War Museum would be a more appropriate form of commemoration.18 Further, the Bill for the establishment of the Imperial War Museum was contested when read for a second time in 1920. Liberal MP Lieutenant Commander Joseph Kenworthy, who claimed to speak on behalf of those who ‘had not failed in their duty’, refused ‘to vote a penny of public money to commemorate such suicidal madness of civilisation as that which was shown in the late War’. He was deeply concerned that establishing a war museum would encourage people, especially children, to think about war instead of peace: ‘We should forbid our children to have anything to do with the pomp and glamour and the bestiality of the late War, which has led to the death of millions of men.’19 He was not alone in this opinion, being supported by Labour MP Thomas Myers, who argued that ‘it is quite undesirable in these days to perpetuate the remembrance of war’. Myers was also worried that it would influence children and commented that in his opinion ‘the general public desire [was] to forget as much as possible the facts of the War’. He went further than Kenworthy, speaking out against the commemoration of the conflict in a war museum, arguing that there was no justification and ‘no public demand for a museum of this character’.20 Like the sentiment expressed in the Age, Myers was not upset by the commemoration of the war as such but with the form it took: ‘It is quite sufficient for the general public to remember that over 800,000 British soldiers have fallen in the conflict.’21

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Discussions in Canada regarding federal commemoration of the war in the form of a museum differed from both Australia and Britain. The question of a permanent memorial to the war was raised in the Canadian Senate in May 1918, where members debated how the war records might be housed. Although several members appeared ignorant of Beaverbrook and Doughty’s work, others were deeply critical of it. The FrenchCanadian Senator Choquette, in particular, stated that he hoped the history and commemoration of the war would ‘be fair to all . . . and not [produced] by men of the type of Lord Beaverbrook’, whom he accused of having ‘not done justice to the soldiers from certain provinces’.22 There appears little evidence that a museum that also served as a national memorial, such as Mond and later Bean conceived of, was considered in Canada. Doughty envisaged a more traditional museum that would permanently house the material collected under the Canadian War Records Office and proposed that the collection might be permanently housed in a wing of a new Public Archive building. However, he emphasised the value of such an institution’s archival resources rather than its commemorative value. While the building was completed in 1925, it did not have room for the war records, which were instead housed in a separate facility.23 It was not, in fact, until the early 1940s that the Canadian War Museum Board raised the idea of a more extensive museum to act as the nation’s memorial – likely in response to the Australian War Museum (then Memorial), which opened in its permanent home in 1941.24 Beaverbrook, Rothermere and Konody had begun discussing ideas in 1918 for an art gallery to house the Canadian War Memorials Fund’s paintings that would also act as a national memorial, although the Canadian Government appears to have been unaware of their plan. As Konody stated: ‘The importance of the proper housing of the collection cannot be overestimated. Such a series of pictures can never be housed adequately or exhibited appropriately in the manner of a general exhibition.’25 There was some support in parliament for the idea that paintings might act as a memorial. Senator C.P. Beaubien endorsed the plan to instal war paintings in the new Senate Chamber and suggested that this might be extended to a war museum, which could display ‘paintings illustrating the different episodes of the war which have shed glory on the nation’.26 Yet such ideas came during a surge of pacifism in Canada, and there was little enthusiasm for the war paintings.27 When in the 1920s the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire circulated reproductions of Canadian War Memorials Fund paintings in schools, the images met with heavy criticism. Lucy Woodsworth, wife of founder of the

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Canadian Socialist Party, J.S. Woodsworth, strongly objected to the images, declaring that they ‘make for hostility instead of understanding among the various groups in Canada, they perpetuate distrust and hatred toward the people of other nations, and they associate patriotism and militarism and slaughter’.28 In Vancouver, the Parent-Teachers’ Association rejected the images, arguing that ‘no pictures tending to glorify war . . . shall be hung in the schools’.29 Interest in the paintings and a permanent gallery to house them waned and, as Beaverbrook regretfully recalled more than three decades later in 1959, ‘there seemed little enthusiasm for the project’.30

FINDING

ACCOMMODATION FOR THE ART COLLECTION

Similarly, in Australia, despite the hyperbolic language that authorities continued to use to describe the nation’s role in the war, such as Prime Minister Hughes proclaiming in January 1919 that Australia’s ‘fighting record surpasses that of any of the nations’, there was a growing disillusion as soldiers returned home.31 Bean was aware of this mood and was anxious to act before the public lost interest in commemorating the war or became indifferent to the national collection being amassed to honour those who had fought. He particularly feared that a loss of public interest would affect the government’s assurances about a permanent home for the war records and that these plans might fall through.32 He hoped to inspire political and public support for permanent accommodation and for the completion of the museum’s collections through temporary exhibitions in Melbourne and Sydney. An important part of his plan was to exhibit the war paintings in these temporary displays, claiming in January 1919 that his first task once arriving in Australia was to arrange housing for the official artists’ work: ‘Australia will naturally be very anxious to see its pictures, and it will be a great help to us in obtaining more of them if we could get them exhibited . . . at the earliest date.’33 Yet finding an exhibition space for the paintings was not easy in post-war Australia. The National War Records Office and Australian War Records Section had always planned that parts of the art collection would be donated to the state galleries. Bean especially believed that these institutions would want to display images of the war: ‘Nothing is more sure than that Australian States, towns and Military Units will require pictures painted of famous scenes in Flanders.’34 Indeed, at the first meeting of the Australian War Museum Committee in July 1919, it was decided

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that the art collection should be divided and sections of it sent to the states. However, this decision was revoked at a meeting in January 1921 because it had come to the members’ attention that ‘some state institutions do not propose publicly to show the pictures, but to file them as records’ – one of the drawbacks of privileging record value over aesthetics. The Australian War Museum Committee decided therefore that, if the pictures were not to be used ‘for public inspection’ in state galleries, it would be better for the museum to retain them as ‘historical records’.35 In contrast to the Australians, Beaverbrook and Konody had always intended Canada’s official war art to be displayed as a single collection. However, the Canadian War Memorials Fund faced similar difficulties in finding housing for its war art. Since the end of the war, the scheme had been in financial difficulty, and by April 1920 the CWMF’s deficit had reached £9500.36 Although by 1920 the Canadian war paintings had been exhibited in several major cities in North America, including New York, Toronto and Montreal, which had helped to cover some of the expenses of the collection, the CWMF struggled to find permanent accommodation for the almost 800-piece collection.37 Also, owing to the numerous war art exhibitions, the paintings, when they reached Ottawa in late 1920, were badly damaged and in desperate need of repair before being displayed again.38 Although Beaverbrook was ‘anxious to have them suitably housed’ and keen to organise a permanent ‘Memorial Gallery’ for the canvases, after discussions with Prime Minister Arthur Meighen and Lord Rothermere, he decided instead that the CWMF would hand over custody of the collection to the Canadian Government.39 However, the National Gallery of Canada, which took temporary responsibility for the collection in 1921, had neither the funds nor the inclination to repair and exhibit the official paintings. Although the gallery’s Board of Trustees discussed the housing of the canvases throughout the 1920s, no concrete decision was ever reached, and they were not displayed as a collection. It proved difficult, in fact, for the Australian War Museum Committee to find not only accommodation for the war paintings but also an exhibition space for temporary displays of the War Museum’s broader collection. Although the premiers of both New South Wales and Victoria had agreed to host exhibitions of the museum’s collection in 1918, by 1920 the New South Wales Premier, John Storey, was against the idea. Some people at the time saw his reaction as a remnant of the Australian Labor Party’s resentment towards the war and the damage done to the party by the conscription debates.40 The Victorian National Government

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was likewise against the idea of hosting and funding an exhibition of war material, but in early 1920, after pressure from the federal government, it agreed to support the ‘rental and renovations’ of the Exhibition Building in Melbourne for a display of the museum’s collection.41 As the Australian press later reported, ‘Despite the deadlock with the New South Wales State Ministry, the committee entrusted with the task of arranging the National War Museum is pressing steadily forward in Melbourne.’42 Henry Gullett, then Director of the War Museum, claimed that the exhibition would open within four months of the Victorian Government’s agreement, setting the date for approximately August 1920. However, by May 1920, when he resigned as director, he commented that ‘the work is not so far advanced as we might have hoped’.43 Treloar revised the date of the opening to March 1921 when he took over from Gullett as the museum’s director, but it was not until 25 April 1922 – six years after its inception in 1916 – that the Australian War Museum opened to the public.44

PLANS

TO EXHIBIT THE WAR PAINTINGS

Although temporary accommodation for the War Museum was eventually found, throughout the 1920s the Australian War Museum Committee was concerned with building a lasting home for Australia’s collection. Bean had outlined his ideas for the War Museum, and the displays within it, as early as March 1918. His aim had always been for the museum to act as a memorial, and his initial plan was that such an institution would have three parts: a museum, a gallery and a library, which would preserve and illustrate the history of the AIF.45 Later, in 1920, Bean sketched a plan for a permanent museum, or what he termed the ‘Temple of Honour’, which outlined in detail his ideas for its internal arrangement. Notably, in this early outline of the War Museum, the art was separated from the other artefacts. Bean appears to have believed that each type of record should have its own room, suggesting that artefacts, photographs, documents, dioramas and weapons should be displayed separately from each other. Bean envisaged the art being divided into discrete categories. Within his plan the large commemorative canvases were to be housed in their own gallery in the right wing of the museum while artists’ battlefield sketches were to be separated from the larger paintings and displayed in a smaller room.46 He also proposed that the portraits be displayed separately and hung in the connecting halls. Further, he gave Dyson’s

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drawings a prominent place in the museum, proposing that they be displayed in their own room, a space with similar dimensions to that in which Bean suggested all the other wartime sketches be exhibited.47 However, as Director of the War Museum, Treloar later noted that ‘[w]ith the fuller knowledge now available’, he had decided ‘that the Committee should not commit itself . . . to the internal arrangement suggested on the sketch without a more detailed study of requirements than it has yet been practicable to give’. Bean’s plan was never realised.48 Bean’s early plans for displaying the art separately from other war records reflected Canadian and British trends in the post-war years, although it is not clear whether his thinking was directly influenced by such wider developments. In 1918 the Canadian War Memorials Fund began discussing the possibility of constructing a memorial gallery on a prominent site in Ottawa, eventually settling on Neapean Point overlooking the Ottawa River.49 Arguing that such a building ‘would be a most magnificent home for our paintings, and a splendid culmination of our work’, the Canadian War Memorials Fund commissioned British architect Edwin Alfred Rickards to design the gallery.50 Beaverbrook and Konody, like Bean, proposed to exhibit the sketches separately from the larger canvases within the gallery. However, the Canadians more explicitly articulated their reasons for such a division, seeing it as one way to strike a balance between ‘the historical and the aesthetic aspects’ of the collection. Consequently, the ‘decorative scheme’ of the larger paintings, which were to be displayed in oval-shaped galleries on the second floor – one gallery dedicated to works by British artists, another for paintings by Canadian artists, a third for portraits of statesmen and generals and a fourth for portraits of servicemen awarded the VC – were ‘supplemented by a comprehensive pictorial record’ on the first floor, where the smaller sketches were to be exhibited alongside etchings and photographs.51 Similarly, in early 1918, Ross suggested that the British official art might be housed in a separate wing in the Tate Gallery.52 In April 1918, he revised his proposal, noting instead that the paintings might be displayed in a gallery built for their particular exhibition. By the following month, the British War Memorial Committee began discussing a Hall of Remembrance to be designed by Charles Holden, an architect working on the Imperial War Graves in 1918.53 Subject rather than aesthetic value divided the display of the art in the British War Memorial Committee’s plan, and the Hall was to be made up of a main gallery that would exhibit the large canvases generally relating to the Army, with smaller rooms

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leading from this central space to house images portraying civilians’ experience, the Navy and the Air Force.54 Such a building would, as Bone proposed, contain ‘a beautiful homogenous set of Galleries’ displaying ‘the finest pictures we can obtain of the remarkable scenes of this strange time’. Further, he argued that such a gallery would form a lasting memorial and perpetuate the memory of the war: ‘[I]f we enshrined in this building of ours, our feelings expressed by our artists in terms of beauty, we speak to succeeding generations in a voice which never grows unintelligible or stale.’55 Given that the British War Memorial Committee and Canadian War Memorials Fund intended their official art collections to act as war memorials – unlike Bean’s plan for the war museum, where art was one part of a larger collection that commemorated the war – ideas about the display of the official canvases inspired early designs for permanent exhibition spaces. In planning the Hall of Remembrance, Ross suggested that the art should be considered an element of the building itself and ‘treated by the architect as part of the essential scheme of his design, not as mere pictures on a wall, but as parts of the walls into which they should be inserted with stone or wooden panelling’.56 Similarly, Beaverbrook and Konody’s goal was to construct ‘a great War Memorial in itself, planned in relation to the Works of Art to be housed in it’.57 Rickards’ plan for the Canadian memorial was ambitious. Symmetrical, with a triumphal arch and large dome, which was the dominant feature of the structure, the design of the building followed the monumental style, and combined ‘many daringly novel features with a profound respect for all that is best in tradition’.58 Konody proclaimed that such a building would ‘avoid the wearisome monotony of the ordinary picture gallery with its long unbroken rows of architecturally unrelated exhibits’.59 Indeed, avoiding the ‘generally uninteresting and crowded effect of most picture galleries’ was a key aim of the Canadian War Memorials Fund, and Rickards’ plan for the Memorial Gallery reflected this concern.60 CWMF members therefore suggested that larger works might hang on the walls of the ‘interior or series of halls’ of the building while the smaller sketches would be grouped in ‘various galleries’, thereby creating a more spacious effect.61 Further, the Memorial Gallery was to be surrounded by terraces and fountains, which would be visible from points within the building and would give ‘relief to the eyes . . . of those inspecting the collection’.62 Even the type and style of the lighting was described, with CWMF members stipulating that all the paintings should be lit equally and that in some galleries ‘artificial lighting’ would be

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provided but would be concealed so that it would not be different from the paintings lit by daylight.63 Finally, the varied nature of the subject and style of the collection was also accommodated in the building by the way in which the paintings were to be exhibited: ‘The placing of all these large paintings has been governed by the subject and manner of execution and varied methods, of lighting and dramatic presentation will be provided, ensuring each work its due effect.’ Additionally, the building was structured in such a way that the paintings would be ‘separated by the architectural framing of the walls’. Konody guaranteed that this would ensure that each image retained ‘its own atmosphere’ and stated that ‘the diversity of technique and subject will not in any way be distracting to the spectator or react among the works themselves’.64 Despite the detail of the plans and the enthusiasm of their members, the British War Memorial Committee’s Hall of Remembrance and the Canadian War Memorials Fund’s memorial gallery were never built. The British war art was eventually integrated into the collections of the Imperial War Museum after the war, but the Canadian official art did not find a home as a complete collection, as Beaverbrook and Konody had intended.65 By the mid-1920s, the Canadian Government had still not found permanent accommodation for the paintings, and they were stored in the basement of the Senate. Treloar commented in 1926 that it appeared ‘we have been luckier with our collections than Lord Beaverbrook has been with those of Canada’.66 Both the Canadian and British press lamented the fact that the paintings were not on display and were instead, according to the art critic at the Daily Express, ‘stored with their faces to the wall’. Given that Beaverbrook owned the Daily Express, it is possible that this was an attempt to garner support for a Canadian Memorial Gallery.67 A cartoon published in the Montreal Star in 1929 emphasised the continued neglect of the art collection, depicting visitors being shown the boxes in which the paintings were stored as part of the sights of Ottawa.68 Although in 1928 the Canadian Prime Minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, wrote to Beaverbrook claiming that, had he been aware of the idea to house the paintings in a gallery in Ottawa, he ‘would have thrown the weight of my influence toward securing as a National War Memorial a National Gallery in the Capital to house the collection’, the gallery was never realised. As he noted, ‘It could have made a marvellous memorial to Canada’s service and sacrifice in the Great War’, and he ‘believe[d] Parliament would have responded handsomely to a suggestion of the kind’, adding that instead ‘we are going to have a very beautiful

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memorial on which the March Brothers of Kent are at present at work, but as a memorial it will be entirely different in kind’ – an indication of how, in the Canadian context, monuments began edging out art in the commemoration of the war in the interwar period. The National War Memorial was unveiled in Confederation Square, Ottawa, in 1939.69 The Australian War Museum Committee was aware of the Canadian War Memorials Fund’s plan for the use of the official art, Treloar commenting in 1922 that ‘[t]he Canadian War Memorial consists almost entirely of pictures’.70 However, there is no evidence to suggest that Australian War Museum Committee members ever considered that official sketches and paintings alone could act as a war memorial, despite earlier debates in the Australian press. Instead the art was to be displayed in the War Museum as one element of a wider collection of war records, and the commemorative nature of the War Museum itself was to stand as a war memorial. As Donald Preziosi explains, museums secure ‘the preservation of the spirit of the departed or absent person’.71 For those individuals developing the Australian War Museum, the link with the dead was particularly acute, not just given the Museum’s commemorative purpose but also because the collection was predominantly made up of artefacts, letters and diaries donated by soldiers in the belief ‘that their gifts might form a permanent and public record . . . [and] that such a record should exist of fallen comrades, in whose name many trophies were presented’.72 As Bean would later assert, in 1948, the War Museum housed the spirit of the AIF: ‘Here is their spirit, in the heart of the land they loved; and here we guard the record which they themselves made.’73 For Treloar, it was the entire collection that would give the War Museum a unique memorial character: ‘[The] building which houses these collections will become the war memorial in Australia. One understands how inevitable this is when one realises how the trophies, the relics, the pictures, photographs and documentary records revivify the war experiences and achievements of the fighting men.’74 The art was thus one aspect of a collection dedicated to the AIF, and when the War Museum opened in 1922, the display of the sketches and paintings within the Exhibition Building highlighted their function as part of a wider collection that commemorated the war.

TWO

COMMITTEES, ONE COLLECTION

Before the art could be displayed in Australia, it had to be shipped to Melbourne from London. The relocation of the art collection began in

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1919 with the Australian War Records Section paintings being transferred to Australia along with the other war records amassed under this office. However, the paintings and sketches collected under the National War Records Office presented a more complex problem. In 1919 the authority for the Australian War Records Section collection was moved from the Department of Defence to the Department for Home and Territories, but the records collected by the National War Records Office remained under the authority of the High Commission in London.75 When the Australian War Museum Committee set up its own art committee in Australia, the Australian War Museum Art Committee, separate from the National War Records Office Art Committee, in January 1921, the management of the production of the war paintings during the early 1920s became split between London and Australia.76 The National War Records Office Art Committee, which was reduced to Smart, Fildes and Talmage after the departure of Bean and Treloar to Australia, retained responsibility for commissioning paintings from official artists in Britain and for accepting their completed works.77 The War Museum Art Committee was charged with ‘the inspection and passing of pictures painted by artists in Australia’.78 It was also to manage the commissioning and production of further paintings by artists working in Australia. This committee was made up of five men. Treloar and Bean were its central members, acting in their roles as director and official historian respectively. Gullett was on the committee in his role as the official historian of the Palestine campaign, the book of which was published in 1923 as the seventh volume in Bean’s Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918.79 Tasman Heyes, who had served in the AIF on the Western Front in 1917 before being appointed to a position in the Australian War Records Section in London and then the War Museum in Australia, was the committee’s secretary.80 Significantly, the only art expert on the committee was Bernard Hall, who was director of the National Gallery of Victoria and who had trained several of the official artists working for the scheme.81 Although the aim was for the High Commission eventually to hand over control of the art collection to the War Museum, in 1921 it was still unclear when this would take place.82 It was only in 1923 that the members of the War Museum Art Committee, uncertain whether the National War Records Office even still existed, specifically requested that the High Commission forward completed paintings to Australia so they could determine ‘the question of acceptance’.83

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Not surprisingly, this led to complications, and a lack of centralised control plagued the art scheme during this period. In January 1920, when the Australian war records collection was in the process of being transferred from London to Melbourne, the War Museum Art Committee encountered problems with the shipping of paintings from the High Commission. There was some concern about the amount of time it was taking for the paintings to reach Australia, and the Prime Minister’s Department had to cable the High Commission ‘with definite instructions that pictures are to be shipped without delay’. However, Gullett pointed out that this would not ‘prevent the High Commissioner keeping some of the sketches if he so desires as, with the exception of the list of subjects supplied to you [Bean] by Smart, we have no record of the sketches handed over’.84 Further slowing the transferral of the images was Smart, Bean and Treloar’s insistence that those official artists remaining in Britain use their wartime sketches in painting their composition memorial canvases. Smart was concerned that shipping the collection to Australia would affect this practice and suggested ‘that artists indicate what sketches they require for reference and balance to be forward[ed] [to] Australia’.85 Moreover, there was uncertainty over which artists had been commissioned with specific subjects. In February 1920, Treloar complained that he could get no information on whether the image of the sinking of the Southland had been commissioned: ‘We have several times asked for information regarding the “Southland” picture but so far have not been informed whether or not the commission has been placed.’86 There was so much confusion over the management of artists and their commissions – Streeton refused to fill any further commissions and essentially broke with Smart and the National War Records Office Art Committee, Bell had yet to start his large canvas and Smart had not yet confirmed specific subjects with Bryant and Fullwood – that in early 1920 Bean worried that ‘our program of pictures looks like falling through’.87 Yet, despite the ambiguity over the responsibilities of the two art committees, from 1921 onwards it was the members of the War Museum Art Committee who took control of the scheme.

CHANGING

COLLECTING POLICIES

Preoccupied with lobbying for the museum to become the nation’s memorial and with the writing of his first official history, Bean had less direct involvement in the production of the official paintings in the 1920s

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than he had during the war, although he remained an important adviser to the scheme. Treloar commented that in completing the collection the War Museum was still ‘guided very largely by the opinion of Mr Bean and relies considerably upon his advice’.88 Indeed, Bean continued to suggest subjects for the canvases and artists to paint them. He also provided information from his official histories for artists to work from as well as consulting with them on points of historical detail as he had when on the National War Records Office Art Committee. Yet Bean attended only one of the six meetings of the War Museum Art Committee held between January 1921 and April 1922.89 To accommodate his absence, Treloar often sent him photographs of the paintings to comment on and detailed letters requesting advice on particular matters to be discussed at the meetings. Treloar even delayed the preparation of the minutes of the War Museum Art Committee meeting of 16 March 1921 as there were certain matters on which he wanted Bean’s point of view.90 However, considering that this was one of the busiest periods for the War Museum Art Committee, decisions were often made without Bean’s approval. In one instance, despite Bean’s opinion that the artworks under discussion should not be purchased, the Art Committee advised the Australian War Museum Committee that two pictures by Crozier – The Tank’s First Stunt, Flers 1916 (1922) and an image that was a play on the ‘Kamerad’ joke (‘Kamerad’ was used by German soldiers as a cry of surrender) – should be bought for the collection.91 In fact, the Art Committee assumed that Bean would have changed his mind had he been present to hear Gullett’s argument that the pieces were ‘better than many of our larger canvases’ and Hall’s statement that ‘they were quite satisfactory examples of Crozier’s work’.92 During his short time as director of the War Museum, Gullett instigated a broader and more inclusive approach to the production of the paintings. In early 1920 he informed Bean that he and Treloar had arranged a few additions to the collection, in particular four portraits representing the different services. Gullet and Treloar proposed that a portrait of Captain Ross Smith, who had been awarded a Military Cross twice and a Distinguished Flying Cross three times, be commissioned to typify the Flying Corps. They also suggested commissioning portraits of Major General Sir Granville Ryrie to represent the Palestine campaigns, Matron Evelyn Conyers to exemplify the nursing service and Commodore John Glossop the navy. Not only did they suggest that a woman be included in the portraits, but also Gullett proposed that artists beyond the fifteen official ones be commissioned with these works. He argued that

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the War Museum ‘might perhaps engage one or two Australian artists over the fighting age preferably, who did not go to the war’.93 Throughout his time on the War Museum Art Committee, Gullett continued to advocate for an inclusion of talented Australian artists who had not fought in the war, even giving them priority over the official artists. In acquiring further portraits for the collection, Gullett believed that the War Museum Art Committee should assign ‘commissions for portraits with the best possible artists irrespective of whether they served in the AIF or not, providing of course that no artist who gave evidence of disloyalty or of active opposition to the AIF is employed’.94 He was particularly set on employing William McInnes, a talented landscape and portrait artist, who had trained under Hall at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School. Consequently, several portraits of notable servicemen, such as Captain Ross Smith, were placed with McInnes.95 Gullet had ‘a very high opinion’ of his work, judging him to be a better portraitist than John Longstaff, and as a result McInnes was commissioned by the War Museum throughout the 1920s and 1930s.96 It was during this period that the Australian War Museum Committee commissioned the first female artist, Florence Rodway, with a portrait of General William Bridges. Treloar and Bean were impressed by her work and employed her to produce further portraits throughout the 1920s.97 Notably under Gullett’s direction, it was only in regard to portraiture that the scope of the art collection began to expand. Indeed, in general he and the other members of the War Museum Art Committee continued to assign subjects of wartime events on the battlefield to the official artists or painters who had some claim to eyewitness experience. Although Gullett initiated more inclusive measures regarding the production of the art and Bean continued to advise the War Museum Art Committee, it was Treloar who was largely responsible for shaping the art collection during this period. In 1920 Bean acknowledged Treloar’s central role, stating that he was personally ‘no longer in charge of the work connected with the war pictures’ and that it was now ‘solely under the control of Maj. Treloar’.98 Treloar oversaw the completion of the paintings on Bean’s first two lists of images and managed to obtain permission to fund the third list.99 He claimed that commissioning additional paintings would be financially worthwhile as they would retain their significance and their value would increase: ‘It is the general opinion that the pictures and other art records will retain their interest longer than any of the other records. In most cases their value will greatly appreciate with the passage of time.’100 As he would later contend, ‘by “cornering” the work

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of the war artists we will enhance the prestige of the War Memorial collection as the chief record in the Commonwealth of Australia’s war effort’.101 Treloar was responsible for modifying and adding specific scenes to the collection he believed were necessary but which, in his opinion, Bean had overlooked.102 Identifying his own gaps, Treloar revised Bean’s third list.103 Of the twenty-two battle scenes Treloar put forward in 1921, only a third had been on Bean’s list in 1919.104 Treloar judged that ‘the representation of the Light Horse in pictures so far painted is not comparatively sufficient’ and that ‘additional portraits are required’ for the collection.105 Treloar claimed, for example, that there were no paintings – at least no composite memorial canvases – of either the battle of Messines or of Fromelles. In fact, it had been suggested in December 1918 that Benson paint an image of the mines at Messines, although there is no evidence to suggest Benson ever produced such a canvas. Treloar remarked in 1921 that the subject was probably ‘too difficult for the artist’, presumably believing that a more talented painter would be able to undertake this scene.106 Insisting that these were important actions to depict, he suggested that a canvas of the battle of Messines might ‘show the infantry lying down behind the parados of the trenches in the early morning light with the mines exploding in the distance’. For the painting of Fromelles, Treloar recommended ‘the incident in which Major Murdoch and Pte Miles of the 29th Battalion . . . tried to arrange an informal cessation of hostilities’. Consequently, under his management Wheeler completed paintings of both battles in 1923 and 1925. While the Messines image fairly closely followed Treloar’s suggestion, Wheeler’s painting of Fromelles attempted to capture the entire scope of the battlefield and not one specific incident.107 Treloar was also concerned that the art collection should contain images of German New Guinea, where ‘the first blow of the war was struck by Australia’, a subject completely absent from Bean’s lists. Treloar suggested sending Bryant, Wheeler or Streeton, provided it was ‘desirable to renew relations with Streeton’, to make ‘sketches of places in the Islands prominent in the story of their capture’. He also proposed that one of these artists be commissioned with larger paintings of specific events there. Bryant was eventually selected to paint these images, although it was not until the mid-1920s that he was given the commissions.108 Although taking much of Bean’s advice, Treloar held his own when it came to subjects he believed were important for the collection.109 He was particularly keen on what he called ‘character studies’ or representational

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portraits of the various services, arguing for these artworks even at the expense of the portraits of individual non-commissioned officers and men that Bean favoured. Despite the fact that Bean disapproved of his choice, Treloar claimed that the studies would form a significant part of the collection: ‘It seems to me that in fifty or a hundred years’ time there will be such great changes in the uniform and equipment of the Australian army that accurate pictures such as have been suggested will prove to be exceedingly interesting.’110

FACTUAL

ACCURACY AND ARTISTIC QUALITY

Treloar feared that the museum, dedicated as it was to those who had fought and died, would find its harshest critics in returned veterans. He conceived the art collection as preserving for posterity ‘truthful portrayals of the subjects depicted’ and believed it was the responsibility of the War Museum, as the newly emerging national memorial, to ‘guarantee’ that the canvases were both a ‘truthful record as well as a work of art’.111 For Treloar, this entailed a continued emphasis on an academic or representational style of painting. This view was not specific to the Australian context and was echoed in attitudes towards British official war art. Bone was also aware that veterans would want to view paintings with a high level of realism and suggested to the British War Memorial Committee that a number of British paintings should be realistic and avoid symbolism. He argued that it was ‘important that they possess a definitely historical record character’ because ‘[a] returned soldier should be able to respect the truthfulness of our pictures’.112 For the Australian collection, Treloar acknowledged later that accuracy in the official canvases was important because, although ‘[m]ost of the former diggers who inspect our collection may not know much about art . . . they are very quick to detect mistakes in colour patches [and] equipment’.113 Hence, in completing the collection of paintings, accuracy, not artistic quality, was Treloar’s priority. Other members of the War Museum Art Committee also held this view. Gullett was deeply disparaging about the art world, commenting to Bean that if he could fake the signature of a famous artist he had ‘no doubt’ that he would be able get into the Royal Academy with his own paintings ‘done with raddle and bluebag’. Gullett’s comment epitomised the general aversion to modern art in Australia, which was seen as requiring little or no skill to produce.114 He favoured art that had a factual value rather than being an individual interpretation,

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arguing that the work of the Australian War Records Section artists had ‘a quality and value which places them in a very vital respect far above anything painted by the official [High Commission] artists’. Gullett believed that the work of the Australian War Records Section artists had ‘an intimate personal touch, an inside knowledge quite their own which makes them priceless’. Although he acknowledged that in the High Commission artists’ paintings ‘you may get superior treatment and more imagination’, he argued that ‘you will never get the same truth and feeling’.115 Consequently, although Hall was the resident art expert on the committee, his opinion was often ignored if the other members considered that a painting had historical value. Treloar wrote to Bean in 1921 that Hall ‘feels embarrassed because he finds that we are very keen on pictures of which he does not form a favourable opinion . . . and finds that we have no time for a picture which he considers very good’, although ‘he of course realises that art is not necessarily the predominant note we aim at in our collections’.116 However, while factual accuracy was privileged, aesthetic considerations were not entirely overlooked by the War Museum Art Committee. Treloar remained sensitive to the aesthetic value of the paintings as artists could provide ‘the careful interpretation of the character of the men instead of merely a mechanical representation’, as did photography.117 Indeed, despite receiving submissions of artwork from soldiers who could claim the authority of the eyewitness, the War Museum Art Committee rejected them if they were considered of too poor an artistic standard. In 1920, for instance, Sergeant Harry Royall, who had served with the 4th Battalion, offered more than eighty artworks to the War Museum all depicting events at which he had been present, including one representing the end of the battle of Lone Pine, a scene that was not included in the art collection. Despite the War Museum Art Committee acknowledging his claim to direct combat experience, commenting that ‘the fact that Sgt Royall took part in the attack might give his work a value which it would not otherwise have’, most members ‘did not consider the picture of sufficient artistic merit to justify its purchase’. Treloar went on to argue that, on the basis of the examples Royall had presented, ‘we would not be able to hang any of the ones I have seen’.118 Bean commented that Royall was ‘a much cruder artist than Silas’ and claimed that the War Museum Art Committee could safely turn down his offer. Consequently none of his images were acquired.119 It is possible that the War Museum’s emphasis on accuracy in the official art and devotion to representational images was reaffirmed by

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the Canadian example. There is certainly evidence that Treloar and Bean kept track of the housing and reception of Canada’s official war paintings during the 1920s.120 As with the 1919 exhibition at Burlington House, the second instalment of the Canadian War Memorials Fund’s canvases displayed in Canada in 1920 met with mixed responses from artists, art critics and returned soldiers. An article in the Mail and Empire reported that ‘murmurings have taken more definite shape this year, and many unflattering opinions may be heard daily concerning the second series of war paintings’. In particular, modernism was questioned as an appropriate style for commemorative paintings: ‘Why should artists whose theories have not yet been tested and found to be sound and enduring be given an opportunity to experiment in a collection that is intended definitely to be permanent?’121 A review of the exhibition in Toronto’s Star Weekly questioned veterans on their impression of the art. The article claimed that one returned soldier stated that the ‘modern paintings mean nothing to me’ and that he had ‘never seen anything in the war that they remind me of. If I bring my wife here and show her those pictures, it will give her no idea of what I want her to know. But these others [traditional style paintings] . . . will give my wife a real idea of what the war was like.’ The veteran added that he believed representation and not interpretation made a valuable war painting: ‘Pictures will not preserve the emotions of war. The best they can do is preserve the scenes of war.’ Another returned soldier was quoted in the article as stating ‘I have had my leg pulled’.122 Indeed, it was primarily the Canadian War Memorials Fund’s traditional images, such as Jack’s Second Battle of Ypres (1917) and The Taking of Vimy Ridge (1919), which were the most favoured by the public and reported on most enthusiastically in the Canadian press. In comparison with Nash’s Void, such images gave the conflict a sense of order and logic.123

FADING

MEMORIES

Treloar and Bean hoped that soldiers and their families would discover consolation and inspiration in the War Museum, and they continued to emphasise the factual value of the canvases. By January 1921 it was clear to the War Museum Committee that the collection was ‘not by any means complete’ and that some important events and moments still remained to be painted.124 Although members of the War Museum Art Committee were conscious of the ‘dissatisfaction on the part of the public at the

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absence from the collection of certain pictures’, they were more concerned that the delay would detract from the accuracy of the paintings. Fading memories, both of the artists and the eyewitnesses to the events, was the committee’s primary concern: ‘The members believe that the longer the painting of the pictures is deferred, the less satisfactory will they be. The memories of the eye-witnesses who will furnish descriptions and help the artists, are growing less reliable; and it is only reasonable to suppose that the artists’ impressions of the atmosphere and colour of the battlefield are growing duller.’125 The War Museum Art Committee members’ continued reliance on eyewitness testimony during the interwar years meant veterans were being asked to recall events that had occurred almost a decade earlier. Caution was required when using this testimony, given that such a lapse of time could cloud accuracy.126 Alistair Thomson’s work on Australian soldiers and their memories of the First World War has shown that veterans often edited recollections of their war experience to accord with a public narrative, remaking or repressing memories in an attempt to match the past with their present and future lives.127 To compensate for the fading and fragile memories of eyewitnesses, Treloar drew the attention of artists to various forms of evidence in the collection, which he ensured were available to them. Similarly to the material made available to artists in 1919, these included uniforms, equipment, photographs, film and written descriptions from Bean. In suggesting that a painting of ‘a gun team in action’ be commissioned, Treloar proposed that the ‘picture be based largely upon a cinema film taken by Captain Wilkins of an Australian Trench Mortar battery in action in the ruins of Villers-Bretonneux’.128

EDITING

THE ART COLLECTION

During the 1920s, the War Museum Art Committee became progressively more involved in the process of artistic production. Contracts for further commissions contained a clause stipulating that artists must submit a preliminary sketch, or cartoon, of their proposed painting to the Director. If it did not meet with his approval, Treloar had the power to request a revised sketch or to cancel the agreement with the artist entirely if the new sketch was not to his satisfaction.129 Once the committee had approved the preliminary sketch, artists were expected to adhere closely to it in painting their final image. If they failed to do so, they faced having to alter their canvas. Treloar did not

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hesitate in asking artists to resubmit their sketches, and he often became deeply involved in altering their submissions. On inspection of Coates’ preliminary sketch, for instance, for the group portrait General William Bridges and His Staff Watching the Manoeuvres of the 2nd Australian Division in the Desert in Egypt, March 1915 (1922–26), Treloar suggested several alterations. Although the Art Committee had requested that the portrait contain nine figures, Coates had sketched only eight. Treloar noted that if Coates added a ninth figure ‘to the right of the group . . . in a sitting position’, this would ‘remove the suggestion of distance which that corner of the picture gives, and will detract from its merits’. He was also unhappy with Coates’ proposal that General Bridges should be shown sitting down on the left of the group as it placed General Bridges too far away from General White. Treloar argued that ‘[t]o adopt Coates’ suggestions would, I think, suggest an aloofness on the part of General Bridges which . . . was certainly not the attitude he adopted toward his chief staff officers’.130 Bean also intervened, taking issue with the informal attitude of the figures: ‘No officer on Bridges’ Staff ever wore his cap even a little on one side.’131 In addition to these criticisms, Treloar remained unconvinced about the positioning of the pyramids behind the men: ‘From their relation to the group I should say the group is on the high ground overlooking Mena House, looking away toward the irrigation belt at the North End of Mena Camp. Actually, however, at these manoeuvres they were nearer the third Pyramid, looking to the south or south-east.’132 Bean suggested that moving the pyramids to the left would correct the position of the group within the landscape.133 Although commissioned in 1921, Coates’ canvas was not submitted for final inspection until 1924. Even the finished painting met with heavy criticism from members of the War Museum Art Committee. They were of the opinion that ‘whilst the portraiture is in most instances good, the composition, it is felt, leaves a good deal to be desired’. If Coates had ‘adhered to the more pictorial sketch which was prepared and approved . . . it is considered a better result would have been achieved’. Consequently, ‘in the circumstances the Committee feels that it cannot accept the picture and has reluctantly to ask you to repaint’.134 It was not until 1926 that Coates, with the help of his wife and fellow artist Dora Meeson, submitted a version of the painting that was accepted by the War Museum Art Committee.135 The War Museum Art Committee’s focus on factual accuracy was often at odds with artists’ interpretation of particular scenes. After

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inspecting several of Septimus Power’s completed commissions in May 1921, Treloar commented that the committee members had ‘not been favourably impressed with them chiefly because they were not accurate in details’, although he also acknowledged that all were ‘Royal Academy pictures and are, I should think, very good value’. Treloar’s main concern was that ‘the team and the men in the big picture [Bringing Up the Guns] seemed too spick and span’, and Power was asked if he could make changes to the piece. Power was ‘not at all keen on it’. However, Treloar also queried whether it would even be a good idea for Power to carry out such an alteration: ‘For one thing, once he starts altering a picture there is no knowing but what he may spoil it completely. Then again I think he is reluctant to introduce much mud because it would make the picture drab and rob it of its colour.’ In this instance, the painting was accepted on Treloar’s suggestion that the ‘title indicate the interest of the picture’ and suggest the drama of this incident, rather than asking Power to add more mud and risk ruining the image altogether.136 Veterans were quick to criticise any details they believed to be inaccurate in the official art. This was the case with Lambert’s canvas Anzac, the Landing 1915. When the painting was displayed in the 1922 exhibition, Bean declared that it was ‘[u]nlike many traditional battle pictures’ because it was ‘an almost exact representation of the actual scene on that fateful April morning’.137 In the guidebook to the War Museum, Lambert was described as going ‘minutely over the ground four years later’, and his claim to authenticity was strengthened by mentioning that this was done ‘with some of those who were present when the heights were stormed’.138 Lambert had based his image on the many studies he had made of Gallipoli during his time with the Australian Historical Mission in 1919. He had also had extensive discussions with Bean about the canvas, even requesting a private meeting in early April 1921 to ‘amplify the historical data available to him’.139 His finished canvas presented the 3rd Brigade climbing the cliffs of the peninsula in the early dawn light. However, Treloar received expressions of concern from veterans over its details. In particular, there was some criticism that the men were shown wearing the slouch hat and not the cap typical of the early Australian uniform: ‘a few have challenged the correctness of this, claiming that the men be shown as wearing caps’.140 It appears Lambert was aware that some of the 3rd Brigade were likely to have worn caps, and there is evidence that he made several studies of the troops wearing them. Bean later recounted, in Gallipoli Mission, a

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conversation he had had with Lambert on the peninsula in 1919 about this very issue, suggesting that it was largely an artistic decision on Lambert’s part. Lambert had asked Bean whether some men had worn hats, and Bean assured him they had. Bean recalled that Lambert knew that the men had ‘landed in the little round peaked caps which were the general wear of Australian infantry’.141 Further, when painting the canvas in the 1920s, Lambert had consulted Treloar on this point too. In response, Treloar sent Lambert photographs taken on the morning of the landing. At least three of these photographs showed men wearing the felt hat typical of the Australians, although many also wore caps. However, not one of these photographs proved definitively what the members of the 3rd Brigade, who were the first ashore, had been wearing.142 Treloar felt that, providing there was no ‘certain evidence to the contrary’, it was plausible that a few of soldiers of the 3rd Brigade wore the slouch hat. In fact, he encouraged Lambert to include the slouch hat ‘in view of the fact that the introduction of hats would give a distinctively Australian touch to the picture, I think it would be justified’. Lambert responded that he would include a few slouch hats, but in fact painted all the men wearing them.143 These artistic decisions on Lambert’s part were not the only ones that conflicted with veterans’ recollections. They also complained about Lambert’s depiction of the scrub or foliage on the peninsula, claiming that it had been ‘higher and thicker’ than Lambert portrayed it.144 Additionally, it appears that Lambert ignored facts that veterans had described to him. For instance, during the mission in 1919, Balfour explained that the 3rd Brigade had been told to roll up their sleeves in order to be distinguishable from the Turkish forces, but in his portrayal of the landing Lambert rejected Balfour’s point outright. Bean himself thought rolled sleeves would add to the ‘vigour of the picture’, but Lambert commented that it was ‘disgusting’ and depicted all the men wearing their sleeves down.145 Lambert also exaggerated the steepness of the cliffs and compressed the landscape into one sweeping painting. This representation was based on Howe’s narrative of the events of the morning, and such manipulation allowed Lambert to capture a broader narrative and create an image that captured both the men landing as well as those scaling the cliffs.146 A disclaimer was printed in the guidebook to the War Museum’s 1922 exhibition below the description of the painting, giving evidence to support Lambert’s visualisation of the scene. Bean’s photograph, which depicted men on the morning of the landing wearing both caps and hats,

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one of the few images reprinted in the book, was cited as evidence supporting Lambert’s depiction.147 Further, an officer from the 9th Battalion who had been among the first soldiers to land and climb the cliffs was quoted as stating that the ‘consensus of opinion is that the men wore hats, though a percentage wore caps’.148 The scrub was dealt with in rather less detail, being attributed to a lack of growth after it had been ‘cut down or worn away during the campaign’. However, Lambert’s representation of the landscape was not questioned by the War Museum Art Committee, and Bean explained that though it was possible that the scrub ‘had not regained its full growth’ when Lambert visited, ‘it had had three years’ to do so.149

ACQUISITIONS Purchasing non-commissioned sketches and paintings from official war artists as well as artists working outside the scheme had always been part of Smart, Bean and Treloar’s plan for the art collection. As early as 1917, Bean had seen the necessity of acquiring ‘casual sketches’ from other artists, subject to the approval of the War Museum.150 However, this suggestion was not seriously taken up until the 1920s when artists began, of their own initiative, to submit work to the War Museum that had not been commissioned by the Art Committee. In the lead-up to the 1922 exhibition, the War Museum increasingly began to purchase noncommissioned paintings. Acquiring non-commissioned images was a quick way to fill the gaps and also allowed the War Museum Art Committee to amass a more comprehensive and diverse collection both in terms of the artists who contributed to it and the subject of their paintings.151 With regard to official artists’ work, Treloar commented that the museum had ‘purchased practically . . . all decent war pictures that have been exhibited by the official artists in Australia’. He added, somewhat ruefully, that ‘[t]his may get us a rather undesirable reputation for rather indiscriminate buying’. However, he reasoned that because the ‘subject to be illustrated is so vast’ and the paintings the museum had acquired already were ‘so limited’, it was ‘really very difficult to decide against any picture’.152 This reflected Treloar’s general approach to collecting, and he seemed to accept almost everything into the collection. By the late 1920s, this led Bean to comment that ‘[o]ur collection is so large that we are now having to cut it down and must look very critically at every exhibit except those, like the models and our list of pictures, we specifically desire to obtain to round off our collection’.153

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Although the War Museum Art Committee never articulated specific collecting guidelines, in the acquisition of non-commissioned paintings there was evidence of a deliberate shaping of the collection. The committee, for instance, rejected Crozier’s ‘Kamerad’ image, which he offered to the museum in 1922. As Bean claimed, the subject matter of the painting was ‘not the sort of thing one likes to dwell on’, adding that ‘the majority of fellows do not like to talk about it now’. It is difficult to identify the precise details of the image, but it seems the painting depicted Australian troops bayoneting German soldiers. Arguing that ‘it was not heroic’ and had been ‘the subject of a lot of crude boasting and glorification during the war’, Bean declared that he did ‘not like to think of that sort of picture in our memorial collection’.154 Non-commissioned paintings purchased by the War Museum were subjected to a similar level of scrutiny as the commissioned ones. In purchasing paintings Treloar was open to acquiring works by artists outside the official fifteen, providing they could prove they had witnessed the events they depicted in their work. Coates, for instance, offered several pieces to the museum in the 1920s. When considering whether to purchase Coates’ painting entitled First Australian Wounded at Gallipoli Arriving at Wandsworth Hospital, London (1921), Treloar noted that Coates had been ‘a member of the hospital staff and had an opportunity of making sketches’. He asserted that as a result the painting was ‘therefore accurate in essential details’.155 Meeson was anxious to have a piece in the museum’s art collection and offered her painting entitled Departure of the Last Australian Hospital Ship from Southampton, England (1919). In accepting the painting, Treloar assured the War Museum Art Committee that she had been ‘in a position to witness the incident’.156 Meeson’s painting was the first piece produced by a woman to enter the collection, and was followed shortly by Rodway’s officially commissioned portrait of Brigadier General Henry MacLaurin.157 In acquiring Meeson’s canvas, Treloar acknowledged that the collection had a limited number of paintings relating to the medical service.158 Indeed, despite initially being of the opinion that there were ‘many more subjects of greater importance’, he decided that Meeson’s painting had ‘a certain interest and, from the point of view of subject, would make rather a good companion picture to Mr Coates’ one entitled “Arrival of the First Australian Wounded at Wandsworth Hospital”’.159 Veterans were also asked to verify the details of non-commissioned paintings. Coates’ painting, Casualty Clearing Station (1920), was accepted subject to veterans’ approval. Although not officially commissioned, the

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image attracted the attention of Smart, who ‘stated that it was as good as any of the pictures of our official artists’.160 Fildes suggested that the painting ‘would make an interesting addition to the collection the Commonwealth is making to illustrate the events of the late war’, despite the fact that the picture ‘is not depicting any particular incident, [it] is an abstract idea dealing with the succouring of the wounded’.161 Treloar was interested in attaining this painting in order to broaden the museum’s art collection, stating that ‘bearing in mind that we have not placed a commission dealing with the work of the Medical Corps, it would appear desirable that we should purchase this picture’.162 However, while Bean was in favour of acquiring the painting, he stipulated that the War Museum Art Committee should only ‘get it . . . if in the opinion of some medical officer from France it is a truthful representation of a CCS’. He stipulated that it would need to be inspected by ‘an Australian medical officer who knew the CCS work in France’ and that it was ‘essential that they should have been at the front and seen the actual thing there’.163 After the High Commission Art Committee established the ‘record value’ of the painting, it was purchased in 1921.164 Government officials also intervened in selecting acquisitions for the art collection – evidence of the politicised nature of memory-making. In 1918, subject to approval from the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board and a veteran, Cabinet decided to acquire for the War Museum sketches of the Gallipoli peninsula in 1915 by the New Zealand artist and soldier Horace Moore-Jones, priced at £1500 for sixty-seven images. In 1920, their decision was made official when the sketches were approved during their exhibition in parliament.165 Given that MooreJones had already offered these images to the museum, which had turned them down, War Museum Art Committee members contested Cabinet’s judgement and asked ‘the Prime Minister to reconsider the decision’. The reasons the committee cited for declining the images were that the sketches ‘were of a record nature only, [and] were inferior to records already in the possession of the Museum’. Moreover, committee members argued that images of ‘greater merit’ had been bought at much lower prices. Further, they were concerned that the ‘very generous treatment accorded a New Zealand artist’ would be a source of ‘some embarrassment . . . [to] the committee by the comparison made between prices offered . . . to Australian artists’.166 However, the government ignored these concerns and acquired the images for the set amount. Although initially Bean thought the images had little aesthetic worth, he eventually allowed that a few would make a valuable addition to the collection.167

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‘A M E C C A

F O R A L L A U S T R A L I A N S ’: T H E O P E N I N G OF THE AUSTRALIAN WAR MUSEUM

Treloar was responsible for organising the War Museum’s first exhibition, which opened in Melbourne’s Exhibition Building on 25 April 1922. Guided by Bean, he decided what to include and arranged the layout of the display.168 What is exhibited in a museum is no accident.169 As art historian Carol Duncan puts it: ‘[W]hat we see and do not see in museums and on what terms and by whose authority we do or do not see it is closely linked to larger questions about who constitutes the community and who defines its identity.’170 Treloar and Bean’s intention for the museum was both to celebrate and remember the AIF’s experience of the war and to use it to inspire a distinct national spirit within the empire. Indeed, the title of Bean’s guidebook to the War Museum, The Relics and Records of Australia’s Effort in the Defence of the Empire, 1914–1918, suggests that the imperial element was very much a part of the narrative, alongside the distinctly Australian focus of the exhibition. Treloar would later explain: ‘[T]he objects for which it exists [are] . . . the development of a strong national esprit founded on true knowledge of the achievements of the Australian forces during the war, and our larger responsibilities to the memory of the men.’171 The arrangement of the museum emphasised both these educative and commemorative aims. Treloar organised the displays chronologically, the Main Hall being divided into smaller courts around the walls. As Bean explained in his guidebook to the 1922 exhibition, ‘[T]he true significance of the greater part of the exhibits lies, not in their character as battlefield curios, but as emblems of those splendid qualities which made the Australian soldier . . . “the greatest individual fighter in the war”.’174 His guidebook instructed the visitor on which route to take when moving through the exhibition, noting objects of particular significance – a direct attempt ‘to impress on visitors the sacred and memorial nature of the collection’.172 As Inglis notes, in the War Museum the visitor – cast as a pilgrim – took part in a commemorative ritual.173 Regrettably, the surviving archives provide little detail about the specific canvases selected for inclusion in the exhibition, but from Bean’s guidebook to the museum, the few photographs taken of the interior of the Exhibition Building and reports in the Australian press, it is possible to piece together a general impression of which images were exhibited and how they were displayed within the War Museum. Within the courts or sections around the Exhibition Building, artefacts from episodes in the war were displayed together with ‘pictures depicting outstanding incidents, portraits of

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prominent leaders, and sketches of places of interest’.175 The sketches and larger canvases were, it seems, thereby incorporated into the museum’s exhibits and featured within specific sections. Of the images that can be identified, all had been completed between 1918 and 1921, except for Lambert’s painting of the Gallipoli landing, which was completed just a few months before the exhibition in 1922.176 Approximately twelve of the paintings were from the first two lists drawn up in 1919, and almost every image, with the exception of Power’s image of Harbonnières, was commissioned under the art scheme. There was also the exception of sketches from soldiers, or ‘Digger Trench Art’, collected under the Australian War Records Section, which were displayed in the corridor leading to the Aeroplane Hall. The paintings in the exhibition of which there is a record were clearly selected by Bean and Treloar to tell a narrative of the war that depicted the AIF on the battlefield and privileged the heroism and humour of the soldiers. Treloar ‘designed [the exhibition] to visualise as far as possible all aspects of the AIF’s participation in the world’s greatest conflict’.177 Yet, not surprisingly, the emphasis was on the AIF on the battlefields of the Western Front and Gallipoli, as was demonstrated by the publicity accorded Lambert’s image of the landing, Crozier’s image of Anzac Cove and Leist’s image of Lone Pine – although there was possibly more emphasis on these images since the museum opened on the seventh anniversary of the Gallipoli campaign.178 As Tony Bennett writes: ‘In its remembrance of the heroism of Australian troops in Europe and the Middle East (the theatres of “real history”) [the War Museum] materialised an Australian past which could claim the same status, weight and dignity as the European pasts it so clearly sought to emulate and surpass.’179 Paintings depicting operations involving the AIF in 1918, which included Power’s Saving the Guns at Robecq (1920), Bell’s Dawn at Hamel (1921), Streeton’s Somme Valley Near Corbie (1919), Leist’s Capture of Mont St Quentin (1920) and Longstaff’s 8th August, 1918 (1918–19), appear to have overwhelmingly outweighed any other aspect of the war. Further, Dyson’s work was also, as the West Australian reported, ‘well represented’.180 Bean made special mention of three of these images: The Cook’s Return (‘Didn’t I just make Paris sit up!’) (1920), Small Talk (‘No, Brig.’, I says, ‘the Transport’s no good to me – send me back to the boys. I never joined the war to be a mule’s batman’) (1920) and The Amateur (‘Who’s cutting this hair – you or me?’) (1920). These images were described as ‘immortalising fragments of the humour of the AIF’.181 Overall, almost half of the images identified represented the Western Front. Given the privileging of the army on the battlefield and the debates of the previous years, it is notable that the navy was accorded a relatively

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prominent place in the exhibition. There was a specific naval court in the Main Hall, which displayed such paintings as Bryant’s First Convoy at Sea (1919–21) and Burgess’ HMAS Australia at the Surrender of the German Fleet (1919–20). According to the Age, ‘[T]he many paintings and sketches range from the departure from Australia, through the months in Egypt, over the Gallipoli adventure. The aim has been that both services shall be adequately represented in the museum. The naval pictures pass from the departure of the convoy and transports to the final humiliation of the German fleet.’182 However, within the limited scope of the collection, there were still areas of the AIF that were neglected, such as the Australian Flying Corps and medical services. This integration of paintings within the display of the broader collection of war records was similar to the Imperial War Museum’s use of official art, when it found accommodation for its collections, first at the Crystal Palace in 1920 and finally at the Hospital at Bethlem in 1936. However, in the Imperial War Museum there was a distinction between smaller images intended to be records and large-scale canvases of commemorative significance deemed as being of higher artistic value. Those images considered of record value were displayed alongside the artefacts they illustrated and functioned essentially as explanatory visual notes for objects used in specific actions. The larger canvases were displayed separately from the museum objects, in their own room within the museum.183 No such distinction was made in the case of the Australian canvases. For Bean and Treloar, a painting’s factual and aesthetic value were not mutually exclusive. Although they heavily emphasised accuracy in the official canvases, they were convinced that the art functioned both as an eyewitness record and as a memorial in art.184 As far as Bean and Treloar were concerned, the paintings combined a powerful narrative with potent imagery.185 Lambert’s image of the landing, for instance, was a central element of the Gallipoli display. For Bean, the painting was factually accurate and captured the moment when the ‘[g]lory of Anzac was revealed’.186 Lambert’s image received critical acclaim, with Alexander Colquhoun, artist and art critic, stating: ‘This is not a pretty picture, nor a cheerful one, and there is an uncanny lack of anything individual or personal in the scrambling, crawling, khaki figures scarcely discernible against the rocky precipitous ground. It speaks, however, as a declaration of sacrifice and achievement in a way that no other war picture has done.’187 Further, Bean described Power’s sketches of Ypres in 1917 as ‘vividly’ depicting the Australian artillery’s ‘most searching test’.188 Pragmatic considerations as well as commemorative aspirations were evident in Treloar and Bean’s use of the art. Visitors to the War Museum

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were able to purchase reproductions of ‘some of the more important of the war pictures on view in the Main Hall’.189 In 1922 there were only four reproductions available and, considering there were so many images on display in the exhibition, the decision of which to produce indicates Treloar’s ideas about which paintings were the most significant and which ones would appeal to the public. In the final pages of the guidebook the pictures that were ‘mounted and ready for framing’ could be bought for five shillings each. The four pictures Treloar chose were Bell’s Battle of Hamel (1921), Power’s First Division Artillery Going into Action at Ypres (1919) and two of Lambert’s paintings, Charge of the Light Horse at Beersheba (1920) and, not surprisingly, Anzac, the Landing 1915 (1920–22).190 Treloar was especially anxious that Lambert’s picture of the landing be completed not only in time for the exhibition but also in time to be reproduced. He was sure that the painting would ‘result in a substantial addition to certain Memorial Funds which we are building up’.191 Treloar’s decision about the reproductions, in part economically driven, shows an attempt to cater to what he assumed the public would be interested in remembering and therefore purchasing. At 10am on Anzac Day, 1922, the seventh anniversary of the landing on Gallipoli, the Australian War Museum was opened to the public. Almost five thousand people visited it on its first day.192 Over the following six weeks, 64 216 people passed through the doors of the Exhibition Building in Melbourne. The high demand made it ‘necessary to suspend admissions out of regard for the comfort of people already in the hall, and the safety of exhibits and show cases’. Although no systematic evidence of audience reception was collated, the guests who had attended the official opening reportedly had ‘high opinions of the interest and value of the collections’, and the reviews in the press were, as the Australian War Museum Committee reported, ‘invariably . . . favourable’.193 The paintings were an essential part of the exhibition and received high praise in Australian newspapers, one article claiming that the art was ‘a striking feature’.194 In fact, the paintings featured in almost every article published about the museum, with the reporter for the Argus stating that ‘[w]ar art has not been neglected, and the best examples of the work of the official artists of the AIF are hung on the walls of the museum’.195 Further, the reporter for the Age commented that Australians had in the museum’s ‘paintings, its photographs, its trophies . . . a record beyond price’ and quoted General Sir John Monash as stating that ‘the collection of war trophies, relics and pictures . . . should form a Mecca for Australians’.196 ***

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By the opening of the temporary exhibition of the War Museum in Melbourne in 1922, the majority of paintings on the lists drawn up by Smart, Bean and Treloar during the war, and revised by Bean and later Treloar, had been commissioned, although it would take another two decades for some of these to be completed. During this period, while Bean played a less active role, Treloar, and to a lesser extent Gullett, developed more inclusive collecting policies that expanded the art collection to incorporate a somewhat broader range of artists and subjects. However, in both their commissioning and display of the art, these men continued to focus on depicting the AIF at war while other aspects of Australia’s wartime experience remained unpainted. Bean and Treloar’s use of art within the War Museum in 1922 largely reflected the collection’s emphasis on the actions and operations involving the infantry on the Western Front – to some extent influenced by the fact that many of the canvases commissioned in the 1920s had yet to be completed. However, there was some evidence of a more conscious effort by these men to include canvases depicting the other services, such as the navy, in the exhibition. This period in the art scheme’s history reveals a more careful and purposeful approach to filling gaps in the collection than had been evident in the previous years. Rather than the improvised and haphazard character of commissioning during the war, Bean and Treloar’s decisions about particular subjects to commission and canvases to acquire were measured and guided by ideas about the intended display of the art and its audience. These ideas influenced not only what they commissioned but also the process of the production of the canvases. Indeed, Treloar and Bean were more closely involved with artists’ paintings in matters of both accuracy and artistry. Official artists had even less say in their work than they had immediately after the war, and Treloar and Bean as well as other members of the War Museum Art Committee were responsible for effectively editing the collection, modifying subjects for canvases as well as requesting artists to repaint or alter their work if it did not meet with the Art Committee’s or veterans’ approval. In their development of the art scheme during the lead-up to the first exhibition of the War Museum in Australia, both Treloar and Bean focused on preserving and remembering the men who fought in the conflict, privileging images of the army on the battlefield. The collection they had amassed by 1922 commemorated a narrow aspect of Australia’s war experience and emphasised the heroism of the ordinary soldier, influencing the ways in which successive generations of Australians have remembered the First World War.

CONCLUSION

The official art scheme that evolved between 1916 and 1922 laid the foundations for the later framing of Australia’s role in the First World War and established one of the nation’s most enduring commemorative practices. A product of the interaction and collaboration of numerous individuals seeking to produce paintings that commemorated Australia’s part in the war, the art amassed during this period was inherently national in focus. It ranged from roughly and rapidly sketched drawings by exclusively Australian artists on the battlefield to more polished and arresting canvases, and portrayed intimate and poignant moments of AIF soldiers at the front as well as sweeping panoramas of the landscapes in which they fought. A study of memory-making under the official art scheme during and immediately after the war reveals a process that was fluid and dynamic. Rather than any single individual dictating the shape of commemoration in the art collection, this period saw a combined effort between government officials, military officers and artists to depict Australia’s part in the war. This was a time of cooperation between various actors with differing motivations who worked together to amass a collection of official art that commemorated the experience of the AIF on the battlefields of Europe and the Middle East. Given the diversity of agency evident in the art scheme during this era, the traditional prominence accorded Bean as the central agent in shaping a memory of the First World War in Australia must be qualified to accommodate the more collaborative role he played during this early period and to take into account the way in which his

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suggestions and proposals, like many of his colleagues’, were subject to revision and amendment by those artists and government officials with whom he worked. That said, Bean, together with Smart and Treloar, did become one of the key individuals in the development of the art scheme. The men to whom they reported, such as Fisher and Pearce, were willing to accord this trio a dominant role in the production of the paintings, despite their manifest lack of artistic knowledge or training. Moreover, as the evolution of the relationship between Smart, Treloar and Bean and those artists working for the scheme shows, the artists themselves were willing to subordinate their aesthetic judgement to these men in order to meet the aims of the scheme. While artists enjoyed relative freedom over their work during wartime and were, in fact, important agents of memory in their own right during this period, they were prepared to take directions, even on artistic matters, from Smart, Bean and Treloar. Artists rarely protested, even when asked to alter or repaint their canvases as Smart, Bean and Treloar became progressively more involved in the production of the paintings immediately after the First World War. In the literature of memory studies, it is axiomatic that memory construction is necessarily contested. Yet the memory-making manifest in the creation of the Australian official art scheme reveals a remarkable unanimity of purpose. Despite the largely contingent nature of the production of the paintings during this period, the fundamental intention of the art scheme was uncontested. There was a consensus among those individuals commissioning the art as well as the official artists creating it that the collection of war paintings was to serve a particular function: to commemorate Australia’s role in the First World War for national posterity. Challenges to Smart, Bean and Treloar’s development of the scheme from those with whom they collaborated had more to do with the logistics and specifics of producing the paintings rather than any direct contest over its central aim. Opposition to the scheme, presented by such artists as Streeton, Talmage, Fildes and Hall, who advocated for rival programs or changes to the existing one, was largely concerned with the details of the scheme’s management and never questioned the role of the art collection in capturing and commemorating the war. This accord about the objectives of the art project, and the generally harmonious relationships between Smart, Bean, Treloar, official artists and numerous other collaborators, reveal a memory-making process that was generally consensual, not one of constant struggle over what was included or excluded – and consequently what was remembered or forgotten.

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Further, while there was the potential for a conflict over memory from individuals or groups operating outside the scheme, such as Ure Smith, Lloyd Jones and Penleigh Boyd as well as the government’s own Commonwealth Art Advisory Board, such debates never evolved into a direct rivalry with the official art program. Indeed, even those artists who were overlooked or neglected by the scheme did not openly challenge its aims. Many of these artists, for example expatriate female painters who captured what they witnessed and experienced of the war in Europe, were more concerned with being a part of the scheme than contesting it. Potential challenges like this were to some degree dispelled when, under Treloar’s directorship in the early 1920s, a few artworks by female artists, such as Meeson, were included in the collection. Given Smart, Bean and Treloar’s central role in the art scheme during this period, their decisions about the collection had lasting implications for the way in which the First World War was framed in the official paintings. Like the Canadian scheme, one of the central tenets of the Australian art program was the value of the eyewitness in recording the war visually. Smart, Treloar and Bean especially, who was himself appointed by the Australian Government to be an eyewitness to the war, believed that the most compelling and appropriate way to commemorate the conflict in art was through images that accurately represented the war created by those who had witnessed it. Consequently, artists were sent to the front to act as witnesses to war and played an important role in visually articulating it in their work. Further, the ways in which they interpreted their appointed role as eyewitness formed the foundation of the art collection during the war years and beyond. However, maintaining the accuracy that Smart, Bean and Treloar believed had been achieved in the art during the war was to prove difficult in its aftermath as evidence of the fighting on the battlefields faded. Increasingly, artists were asked to construct images not from their own eyewitness observation but from a range of other sources. As their work became subject to the scrutiny of veterans and the art committees in London and Australia, factual accuracy was increasingly privileged over the aesthetic quality of the painting in the collection. The eyewitness emphasis had already resulted in a collection that consisted of largely coherent – albeit narrow – themes and subjects. While some of the images produced under the Canadian and British schemes presented a critique of the war – often using more modernist styles to do so – the paintings produced by Australian official artists eschewed such statements, neither condemning nor glorifying the conflict – although later

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meanings imposed on or derived from these images have interpreted them as supporting a triumphalist narrative of the war. Indeed, whether fully supporting the conflict or holding anti-war sentiments, Australian artists did not directly comment on the war in their work, finding common ground in their admiration of the Australian soldier and their task of depicting his experience on the battlefields of France and Belgium and the Middle East. Smart, Bean and Treloar’s emphasis on sending artists to theatres in which Australians were fighting resulted in a collection that was inordinately focused on the army on the Western Front. Despite the example set by the Canadian War Memorials Fund and indeed the British War Memorials Committee, both of which made concerted efforts to capture a range of subjects, including the war experience at home, the Australian scheme focused almost exclusively on Australian theatres of combat. Consequently, the scheme represented a narrow vision of the nation’s wartime experience, one that, given the deployment of all artists except Lambert to the Western Front, was dominated by studies of Australian soldiers on the battlefields of France and Belgium and the environment in which they fought. This came at the expense of the depiction not only of services other than the army, such as the navy and Australian Flying Corps, but also the experience of the war at home, including its patriotic mobilisation and its political disputes. Further comparison with the Canadian art scheme reveals the Australian scheme as more nationally framed. Konody’s employment of artists of diverse nationalities working in a range of styles, including modernist ones, to ensure that the Canadian collection would best represent the artistic trends of the era were not mirrored in the Australian scheme. Instead, Smart, Bean and Treloar’s emphasis on employing only Australian artists ushered in a scheme that privileged the practices and tastes of late nineteenth-century Australian painting. Most artists considered the imagery of pre-Federation Australia appropriate to a national project of the nature of the art scheme, framing Australia’s war experience in visual tropes familiar to audiences at home. Many of these artists had worked in various forms of Impressionism in the years before the war, but some reverted to the academic style of painting in which they had been trained when working for the art scheme, seeing the gravity of the war as deserving of a return to traditional modes of expression. While the modernism of the Canadian war art rang hollow for some veterans after the war, the Australian art collection, with its largely harmonious style, was more favourably received, although veterans were still quick to judge it. Where

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the Australian collection succeeded was in part also owing to Bean’s conceptualisation and integration of the art as one of the sacred objects of the War Museum’s broader collection, alongside artefacts gathered at the front and diaries, letters and photographs. While discussions and debates about the use of art to capture and commemorate a dominion war experience within that of the British Empire were similar among both Canadian and Australian officials, the ways in which these ideas manifested themselves was different in each collection. The Canadian scheme commissioned a broader variety of subjects and more diverse range of artists than the Australian program, taking a somewhat more comprehensive approach to ‘war experience’. Despite following several of the trends established by the Canadian War Memorials Fund, the Australian art collection – made by, for and about Australians – that emerged between 1916 and 1922 presented the war as a predominantly ‘Australian story’, focusing almost exclusively on the exploits of the AIF in Europe. It established a tradition of not only sending artists to theatres where Australian troops were fighting but also, one could argue, began a trend in Australian commemoration, at the federal level at least, of neglecting imperial and transnational contexts while privileging the national. Almost a century from the establishment of the art scheme, the paintings and sketches amassed between 1916 and 1922 remain an important part of the Australian War Memorial’s First World War Galleries. When the newly renovated galleries opened in February 2015 to commemorate the centenary of the war, the exhibition presented a story of the Australian experience of the conflict updated for a twenty-first-century audience, with interactive, digitalised exhibits, although much of it remained true to Treloar and Bean’s vision for the display of the collection at the first exhibition in Melbourne in 1922. Although forming, for instance, only one element of the visual record and possibly being secondary to the three-dimensional dioramas, photographs and film, the sketches and paintings produced under the official art program still featured in the galleries. As with the first exhibition in 1922, Lambert’s work was privileged, and he was represented by a total of eighteen of the fiftyseven sketches and paintings on display – more than any other single artist. Indeed, despite the acquisition of paintings of this theatre throughout the twentieth century, Lambert’s images of Gallipoli, such as Anzac, the Landing 1915 and The Charge of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade at the Nek, still have a significant place in the displays dedicated to this campaign, as do his smaller sketches of the Middle East and his large-scale

CONCLUSION

179

canvases, such as Battle of Romani (1925–27) and The Charge of the Australian Light Horse at Beersheba. In fact, somewhat remarkably given that the art collection now consists of around five thousand images of the First World War, the sketches and paintings produced between 1916 and 1922 still play an essential part in framing the memory of the war presented in the Australian War Memorial. Two-thirds of those paintings displayed when the First World War Galleries were opened in 2015 had been commissioned or acquired under the official art scheme before 1922. Strikingly, given the dangers experienced by artists at the front, what was privileged in the updated galleries was not the images created by artists during the war – which represented only a quarter of the total artworks on display – but those from the ‘gap-filling’ period of the scheme, when Smart, Bean and Treloar began to take a more conscious approach to memory-making. Perhaps not surprisingly given the emphasis of this period on capturing those operations at which official artists had not been present, and on commissioning composite memorial canvases that synthesised the fighting, it is the paintings of the Gallipoli campaign and the final months of the war on the Western Front in 1918 that continue to dominate. Memory is fluid and constantly evolving, shaped and reshaped by individuals to meet the needs of the present. Successive directors and curators at the Australian War Memorial have revised the collection of war art, for instance with the acquisition in June 2015 of portraits by Rix Nicholas deemed too ‘intimate’ by the Australian War Museum Art Committee in the 1920s.1 Yet, while the influence of Smart, Bean and Treloar on today’s memory of the First World War should not be overemphasised, the art presented in the latest iteration of the Australian War Memorial’s galleries can be seen as a persistence of – or a return to – the priorities of remembrance deemed significant immediately after the war, revealing that the hierarchies of sites of memory in the twenty-first century continue to be informed by those of almost a century earlier.

APPENDIX

|

A

A R T I S T S A T T H E F R O N T, 1916–19 Artist

Date of visit(s) to the front

Division

Location

Bell, George (1878–1966)

October 1918 – April 1919 July – September 1919

4th Division

France and Belgium

Benson, George (1886–1960)

Officially commissioned April 1918

4th Division

France and Belgium

Bryant, Charles (1883–1937)

December 1917 – February 1918

2nd Division

France and Belgium

Crozier, Frank (1883–1948)

Officially commissioned November 1917

Headquarters Australian Corps

France and Belgium

Dyson, Will (1880–1938)

December 1916 – May 1917 July – November 1917 April – September 1918

Headquarters Australian Corps

France and Belgium

Fullwood, Henry (1863–1930)

May – August 1918 December 1918 – January 1919

5th Division

France and Belgium

Lambert, George December 1917 – June (1873–1930) 1918 December 1918 – August 1919

180

Anzac Mounted Egypt, Palestine, Division Gallipoli Australian Historical Mission

ARTISTS AT THE FRONT, 1916–19

181

(cont.) Artist

Date of visit(s) to the front

Division

Location

Leist, Fred (1873–1945)

September – December 1917 June – August 1918

5th Division

France and Belgium

Longstaff, John (1861–1941)

May – June 1918 October 1918

3rd Division

France and Belgium

Longstaff, Will (1879–1953)

Officially commissioned April 1918

2nd Division (Officer in Charge of camouflage)

France and Belgium

McCubbin, Louis Officially commissioned (1890–1952) April 1918

3rd Division (Officer in Charge of camouflage)

France and Belgium

Power, Harold Septimus (1877–1951)

September – December 1917 August 1918

1st Division

France and Belgium

Quinn, James (1869–1951)

February – March 1918 August 1918

Headquarters Australian Corps

France and Belgium

Scott, James (1877–1932)

Officially commissioned April 1918

1st Division

France and Belgium

2nd Division

France and Belgium

Streeton, Arthur May – August 1918 (1867–1943) October – November 1918

Note: Fry and Gray, Masterpieces of the Australian War Memorial, pp. 127–43; McMullin, Will Dyson, pp. 128–77; Official Artists’ Service Records, see series NAA: B2455.

APPENDIX

|

B

NATIONAL WAR RECORDS OFFICE ART COMMITTEE CANVASES, 1917–18 No.

Place

Subject

Date of event

Artist

1

At sea

Sydney–Emden Fight

2 September 1915

Arthur Burgess

2

At sea

Sinking of the Southland

9 November 1915

Originally assigned to Charles Bryant but later completed by Fred Leist

3

Ypres

1st Divisional Artillery going into action on 31 July 1917

31 July 1917

Septimus Power

4

Ypres

Battle of Polygon Wood

26 September 1917

Fred Leist

5

Before Amiens

Beginning of Australian offensive before Amiens, 8 August 1918 (or Hamel)

8 August 1918

Arthur Streeton

6

Mont St Quentin

Rushing of Mont St Quentin (by 5th Infantry Brigade)

31 August 1918

Originally assigned to Henry Fullwood but later completed by Fred Leist

7

Beersheba

Charge of the Australian Light Horse

n.d.

George Lambert

8

Portrait

General Birdwood

n.d.

James Quinn

9

Portrait

General Monash

n.d.

James Quinn

10

Portrait

General White

n.d.

John Longstaff

11

Portrait

General Bridges

n.d.

Originally assigned to John Longstaff but later completed by Florence Rodway

Note: NWRO Art Committee to Prime Minister’s Department, 20 September 1918, AWM93 18/7/12,

182

NATIONAL WAR RECORDS OFFICE ART COMMITTEE CANVASES

Completed

Medium

1920

Size

183

Current title

Reference no.

Oil on canvas Framed: 197.5 x 284 cm

‘Emden beached and done for’, 9 November 1914

ART00191

1927

Oil on canvas Unframed: 71.4 x 102.2 cm

Sinking of the Southland

ART09829

1919

Oil on canvas Unframed: 121.7 x 245 cm

First Australian Division Artillery ART03330 going into the 3rd Battle of Ypres

1919

Oil on canvas Unframed: 122.5 x 245 cm

Australian infantry attack in Polygon ART02927 Wood

1918

Oil on canvas Overall: 135.5 x 194.5 cm

Amiens, the key of the west

ART12436

1920

Oil on canvas Framed: 152 x 275 cm

Capture of Mont St Quentin

ART02929

1920

Oil on canvas Framed: 139.5 x 261.7 cm

The Charge of the Australian Light Horse at Beersheba, 1917

ART02811

1918

Oil on canvas Unframed: 76.4 x 63.6 cm

General Sir William Birdwood

ART03339

1918

Oil on canvas Framed: 100 x 87.2 cm

Lieutenant-General Sir John Monash ART03350

1921

Oil on canvas Unframed: 76.8 x 64.2 cm

General Sir Cyril Brudenell White

ART02985

1920

Oil on canvas Framed: 86.5 x 73.5 cm

Major General Sir William Bridges

ART03355

and Index of First World War Art, Art Section, AWM.

APPENDIX

LIST

|

C

FOR COMPOSITION

MEMORIAL CANVASES,

DECEMBER 1918

National War Records Office commissions No.

Place

Subject

Date of event

Artist

1

Gallipoli

Sailing of the first convoy from Albany

31 October 1914

Charles Bryant

2

Anzac

The landing

25 April 1915

George Lambert

3

Anzac

The first day at Pope’s Hill 25 April 1915

Ellis Silas

4

Anzac

The 4th Brigade Landing

25 April 1915

Ellis Silas

5

Anzac

The attack in the Bloody Angle

2 May 1915

Ellis Silas

6

Anzac

The taking of Lone Pine

6 August 1915

Fred Leist

7

Anzac

The charge of the Light Horse at the Nek

7 August 1915

George Lambert

8

France

The taking of Pozières

22–23 July 1916

Fred Leist

9

France

Saving the guns at Robecq

13 April 1918

Septimus Power

10

France

The retaking of VillersBretonneux

25 April 1918

Originally assigned to Henry Fullwood but completed by Will Longstaff

11

France

The taking of Péronne

1 September 1918

Originally assigned to George Bell but later completed by Henry Fullwood

184

LIST FOR COMPOSITION MEMORIAL CANVASES, DECEMBER 1918

185

Completed

Medium

Size

Current title

Reference no.

1920

Oil on canvas

Framed: 153 x 303 cm

First Convoy at Sea

ART00190

1920–22

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 199.8 x 370.2 cm

Anzac, the Landing 1915

ART02873

Never produced Never produced 1920

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 76.4 x 63.6 cm

Attack by 4th Australian Infantry Brigade at Bloody Angle, Anzac May 1915

ART02437

1921

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 122.5 x 245.5 cm

The Taking of Lone Pine

ART02931

1924

Oil on canvas

Framed: 179.5 x 333.2 cm

The Charge of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade at the Nek, 7 August 1915

ART07965

Never produced 1920

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 152.3 x 244 cm

Saving the Guns at Robecq

ART03332

1919

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 107.5 x 183.9 cm

Night attack by 13th Brigade on Villers-Bretonneux

ART03028

1919

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 138.2 x 244.5 cm

Attack on Péronne

ART02503

186

APPENDIX C

(cont.) No.

Place

Subject

Date of event

Artist

12

France

Panorama of Hindenburg Line

29 September 1918

Arthur Streeton

13

Palestine

Picture by Lambert

It was later decided that the subject would be Battle of Romani, 4 August 1916

George Lambert

14

France

Somme winter

1916–17

Will Dyson

15

Belgium

Ypres

Sep–Nov 1917

Will Dyson

16

No location specified

German offensive

March–May 1918

Will Dyson

17

No location specified

Australian types

n.d.

Will Dyson

18

To be chosen: three paintings for George Lambert

Australian War Records Section commissions No.

Place

Subject

Date of event

Artist

1

Mena, Egypt

Training of 1st Division in Desert

1914

George Benson

2

Anzac

Landing

1915

George Benson

3

Anzac

Shrapnel Gully or the Beach

Summer 1915

George Benson

4

Anzac

Beach

Summer 1915

Frank Crozier

5

Pozières

Sausage Valley

22–23 July 1916

Frank Crozier

6

Pozières

Bombardment of Pozières by the Germans

22–23 July 1916

Frank Crozier

7

Pozières

In the O.G. [Old German] Trenches

22–23 July 1916

Frank Crozier

8

Pozières

Any vivid impression or notable insight the artist obtained at Pozières or Mouquet Farm

22–23 July 1916

George Benson

LIST FOR COMPOSITION MEMORIAL CANVASES, DECEMBER 1918

187

Completed

Medium

Size

Current title

Reference no.

1919

Oil on canvas

Framed: 148.2 x 256 cm

Bellicourt tunnel

ART12437

1925–27

Oil on canvas

Framed: 134.2 x 256 cm

Battle of Romani, 4 August 1916

ART09556

Intended to be black and white images like others Dyson had created, these were never produced

Completed

Medium

Size

Current title

Reference no.

1921

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 112 x 153 cm

Training in the Desert, Mena

ART03607

Never produced 1919

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 92 x 321.5 cm

Anzac Looking South

ART00144

1919

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 123.4 x 184.6 cm

The Beach at Anzac

ART02161

1919

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 107 x 190 cm

Sausage Valley

ART00239

1918

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 106.2 x 191.5 cm

Bombardment of Pozières, July 1916

ART00240

Never produced There is no evidence to suggest the particular scene chosen

188

APPENDIX C

(cont.) No.

Place

Subject

Date of event

Artist

9

Pozières

In a dug-out at Pozières

22–23 July 1916

Frank Crozier

10

Somme

Somme Winter – Landscape towards Flers – the Duckboards

1916–17

Frank Crozier

11

Somme

Fatigue party

1916–17

Frank Crozier

12

Bullecourt

Death of Major Black (16th Battalion at Bullecourt)

11 April 1917

James Scott

13

Bullecourt

Battle of Bullecourt

May 1917

Frank Crozier

14

Messines

Mines at Messines

7 June 1917

George Benson

15

Ypres

Menin Road or the Ypres battlefield as the artist saw it

October 1917

James Scott

16

Ypres

Panorama of Ypres battlefield from Kemmel

October 1917

George Benson

17

Ypres

The Runner

October 1917

James Scott

18

Cambrai or Lille

Our Planes

November 1917 or July 1918

Will Longstaff

19

Amiens

Amiens

March 1918

Will Longstaff

20

Abbeville

Bombing raid

1918

Will Longstaff

21

VillersBretonneux

Night attack of the 13th Brigade

1918

Will Longstaff

22

Morlancourt

Last fight of Captain Meysey-Hammond

June 1918

James Scott

LIST FOR COMPOSITION MEMORIAL CANVASES, DECEMBER 1918

Completed

Medium

Size

Current title

Reference no.

1918

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 61 x 50.6 cm

Diggers sitting in dugout

ART00235

1919

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 59.8 x 70.5 cm

Winter near Flers

ART02187

189

Crozier had already produced an image of this subject (see Crozier, Fatigue Parties in the Moonlight near Flers, 1917, watercolour, white gouache on paper 25.4 x 23.8 cm, ART00224). There is no evidence that a new image was painted. 1919

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 142.4 x 193 cm

Death of Major Black

ART03416

Old Redoubt in front of Polygon Wood with Passchendaele in distance

ART19761

There is no evidence this was produced There is no evidence this was produced 1921

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 50.6 x 60.8 cm

Never produced. However, Benson had already sketched a similar scene in June 1917 (see Benson, Panorama of Mt Kemmel, Ypres Area, June 1917, pencil on paper, 20.4 x 62.6 cm, ART03605.037.002). This was acquired in 1921 1919

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 183 x 122.5 cm

The Runner

ART03417

1918–19

Oil on canvas

Framed: 263.5 x 171 cm

War planes of the Australian Flying Corps

ART03029

(There is no evidence to suggest which date or place Longstaff chose to depict) 1918–19

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 76.6 x 127 cm

Amiens from near Querrieu

ART03021

Night attack by 13th Brigade on VillersBretonneux

ART03028

There is no evidence this was produced 1919

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 107.5 x 183.9 cm

There is no evidence this was produced

190

APPENDIX C

(cont.) No.

Place

Subject

Date of event

Artist

23

Vaux sur Somme

Fall of Richthofen

June 1918

Louis McCubbin

24

Merris

Patrols in the corn

June 1918

James Scott

25

Before Amiens

Offensive of 8 August

8 August 1918

Will Longstaff

26

Sailly-le-Sec

Road to the battle

31 August 1918

Louis McCubbin

27

Mont St Quentin

Fight for Mont St Quentin as the artist saw it

31 August–1 September 1918

Louis McCubbin

28

Péronne

Attack of the 53rd and 54th Battalions towards the old ramparts at Péronne

1 September 1918

James Scott

29

Bullecourt

Hindenburg Line

18 or 29 September 1918

Will Longstaff

30

Not specified

The planes or the airmen, the drover, the stretcher-bearer

Not specified

Not specified

31

Not specified

Mounted escort of German Prisoners

Not specified

George Benson

32

Not specified

Pillbox

Not specified

James Scott

33

Not specified

Hospital scenes

Not specified

Daryl Lindsay

Note: The columns relating to place, subject, date of event and artist are copied from lists as see Scheme of Australian War Pictures, 16 December 1918, AWM16 4372 41/1. The remaining

LIST FOR COMPOSITION MEMORIAL CANVASES, DECEMBER 1918

Completed

Medium

Size

Current title

191

Reference no.

There is no evidence this was produced. Fullwood had made a small watercolour during his time in France of a similar scene (see Fullwood, Death of Baron von Richthofen, 1918, watercolour with pencil and charcoal on paper, 39.2 x 57 cm, ART02495) There is no evidence this was produced. 1918–19

Oil on canvas

Framed: 123 x 292 cm

8th August, 1918

ART03022

1921

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 122.6 x 183.2 cm

3rd Division Artillery passing through Sailly-leSec, August 1918 (also known as ‘Going in through Sailly-le-Sec, 1918’)

ART03152

There is no evidence that this painting was produced. McCubbin had already made several sketches of the fighting at Mont St Quentin during the war (see McCubbin, The Battle of Mont St Quentin in Progress as Seen from a Ridge near Clery and Painted between 2am and 4am on the Day of the Battle, 1918, oil on canvas, 66.6 x 102.2 cm, ART03051 and Battle of Mont St Quentin, Sketched during Battle, 1918, oil on canvas on plywood, 27.4 x 36.6 cm, ART03116). McCubbin also painted the original figures, background and modelling for the diorama of Mont St Quentin. Fred Leist also painted an image of Mont St Quentin (see Leist, Capture of Mont St Quentin, 1920, oil on canvas, 122.3 cm x 245 cm, ART02929) Never produced

1918

Oil on canvas

Framed: 156.5 x 243.5 cm

Breaking the Hindenburg Line

ART03023

Although images of aeroplanes or airmen were never completed, an image of stretcher bearers was later painted by Septimus Power (see Power, Stretcher Bearers, 1922, oil on canvas, 92.4 x 117.5 cm, ART03645) 1919–20

Oil on canvas

Framed: 127.5 x 153.5 cm

The Drover

ART00142

1919

Oil on canvas

Framed: 124.2 x 185.6

German pillbox

ART03418

There is little evidence of the specifics of these scenes they appear in the archives, and consequently some of the dates and locations are incorrect; columns have been collated using the Index of First World War Art, Art Section, AWM.

APPENDIX

|

D

BEAN’S FIVE LISTS, MAY 1919 First List No.

Place

Subject

Date of event

Artist

Suggested price (£)

1

Sea

Sydney–Emden fight

9 November 1914

Arthur Burgess

300

2

Sea

Sailing of the 1st Australian Division from Albany

1 November 1914

Charles Bryant

250

3

Anzac

The Landing

25 April 1915

George Lambert

500

4

France

1st Australian Division Artillery going into 3rd Battle of Ypres

31 July 1917

Septimus Power

400

5

France

Battle of Polygon Wood – Lieut. Turnour’s death

26 September 1917

Fred Leist

400

6

France

Opening of the Battle of Hamel

4 July 1918

Arthur Streeton

400

7

France

Attack on Péronne by 53rd Battalion

1 September 1918

Henry Fullwood

300

8

Beersheba

The charge of the Light Horse at Beersheba

1917

George Lambert

500

9

Portrait

Gen. Birdwood (and Gen. White)

n.d.

James Quinn

200

10

Portrait

Gen. Monash (and Gen. Griffiths)

n.d.

John Longstaff

200

192

BEAN’S FIVE LISTS, MAY 1919

193

Completed

Medium

Size

Current title

Reference no.

1920

Oil on canvas

Framed: 197.5 x 284 cm

‘Emden beached and done for’, 9 November 1914

ART00191

1920

Oil on canvas

Framed: 153 cm x 303 cm

First Convoy at Sea

ART00190

1920–22

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 199.8 x 370.2 cm

Anzac, the Landing 1915

ART02873

1919

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 121.7 x 245 cm

First Australian Division Artillery going into the 3rd Battle of Ypres

ART03330

1919

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 122.5 x 245 cm

Australian infantry attack in Polygon Wood

ART02927

1918

Oil on canvas

Overall: 135.5 x 194.5 cm

Amiens, the Key of the West

ART12436

1919

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 138.2 x 244.5 cm

Attack on Péronne

ART02503

1920

Oil on canvas

Framed: 139.5 x 261.7 cm

The Charge of the Australian Light Horse at Beersheba, 1917

ART02811

1918

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 76.4 x 63.6 cm

General Sir William Birdwood

ART03339

1918

Oil on canvas

Framed: 100 x 87.2 cm

Lieutenant-General Sir John Monash

ART03350

194

APPENDIX D

Second List Artist

Suggested price (£)

HMAS Australia leading in December 1918 the British fleet escorting the surrendered German navy

Arthur Burgess

200

Sea

2 February The men on the 1915 Southland’s decks after she was torpedoed

200 Originally assigned to Charles Bryant but later completed by Fred Leist

3

Anzac

Charge of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade

George Lambert

4

Anzac

The start of Quinn’s Post 25 April 1915 Ellis Silas

5

Anzac

The attack of the 4th Australian Infantry Brigade at Bloody Angle

2 May 1915

Ellis Silas

50

6

Anzac

Roll call

May 1915

Ellis Silas

50

7

Anzac

Taking of Lone Pine

6 August 1915

Fred Leist

300

8

France

Saving the Australian guns at Robecq

13 April 1918 Septimus Power

9

France

Retaking of VillersBretonneux

250 25 April 1918 Originally assigned to Henry Fullwood but later completed by Will Longstaff

10

France

Capture of Mont St Quentin

31 August 1918

11

France

12

France

No. Place

Subject

1

Sea

2

Date of event

7 August 1915

400

50

300

Fred Leist

300

Panorama of Somme August/ valley, etc., at Péronne September 1918

Arthur Streeton

300

September Australian artillery (or 1917 pack train) in the mud of the Ypres battlefield

Septimus Power

300

BEAN’S FIVE LISTS, MAY 1919

195

Completed

Medium

Size

Current title

Reference no.

1919–20

Oil on canvas

Framed: 167.2 x 259 cm

HMAS Australia at the Surrender of the German Fleet in the Firth of Forth

ART00192

1927

Oil on canvas

Framed: 96.2 x 126.6 cm

Sinking of the Southland

ART09829

1924

Oil on canvas

Framed: 179.5 x 333.2 cm

The charge of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade at the Nek, 7 August 1915

ART07965

Never produced 1920

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 76.4 x 63.6 cm

Attack by 4th Australian Infantry Brigade at Bloody Angle, Anzac, May 1915

ART02437

1920

Oil on canvas

Framed: 131.8 x 183.5 cm

Roll Call

ART02436

1921

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 122.5 x 245.5 cm

The Taking of Lone Pine

ART02931

1920

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 152.3 x 244 cm

Saving the Guns at Robecq

ART03332

1919

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 107.5 x 183.9 cm

Night attack by 13th Brigade on VillersBretonneux

ART03028

1920

Oil on canvas

Framed: 152 x 275 cm

Capture of Mont St Quentin

ART02929

Framed: 147.3 x 233.7 cm

Bringing Up the Guns

ART03334

Never produced

1921

Oil on canvas

196

APPENDIX D

(cont.) No. Place

Subject

Date of event

Artist

Suggested price (£)

13

France

First battle of Somme (Pozières trenches showing conditions in Somme fighting in Aug. 1916); artist to have reasonable latitude in choice of subject provided it shows conditions in which Australians fought

August 1916

Charles Wheeler

250

14

France

n.d. The artist’s main impression (subject to approval by Committee)

George Bell

250

15

Palestine Picture

n.d.

George Lambert

400

16

Portrait

Gen. White (Gens Howse & Griffiths)

n.d.

James Quinn

200

17

Portrait

Gen. Chauvel (or Gens Hobbs & Walker)

n.d.

John Longstaff

200

18

Black and Ten drawings showing white humour of Australian troops

n.d.

Will Dyson

200

BEAN’S FIVE LISTS, MAY 1919

Completed

Medium

Size

Current title

197

Reference no.

It is not clear which incident Wheeler chose to paint or whether he was allowed to select his own subject

It is not clear which event or scene Bell chose or was authorised to paint

Bean did not specify the event or scene, although the AWMC made suggestions in July 1919, and it was later settled by the AWMAC that Lambert would paint an image of Romani Quinn painted portraits of both Generals White and Howse (see Quinn, Major General Sir Cyril Brudenell White, 1918, oil on canvas, 94.5 x 81.9 cm, ART03347, and Major General Sir Neville Howse, VC, 1918, oil on canvas, 38.4 x 97.8 cm, ART03351). George Coates was commissioned with a portrait of General Griffiths (see Coates, Brigadier General Thomas Griffiths, 1919, oil on canvas, 27 x 101.5 cm, ART00197) These portraits were assigned to various other artists (see Quinn, Major General Sir Joseph Hobbs, 1918, oil on canvas, 93.9 x 81.4 cm, ART03348, Major General Sir Harold Walker, 1918, oil on canvas, 93.4 x 81 cm, ART03349, and Lieutenant General Sir Harry Chauvel, 1919, oil on canvas, 121.2 x 75.2 cm, ART03340. See also McInnes, Lieutenant General Sir Harry Chauvel, 1938, oil on canvas, 146 x 121.8 cm, ART13521) It is unclear whether Dyson completed these drawings, but he did produce a series of oil paintings capturing AIF humour. See, for instance, Dyson, The Cook’s Return (‘Didn’t I just make Paris sit up!’), 1920, oil on canvas on wood, 69 x 58 cm, ART02428; Small Talk (‘No Brig., I says send me back to the boys – the transport’s no good to me I never joined the war to be a mule’s batman!’), 1920, oil on board, 53.4 x 69 cm, ART02430; The Amateur (‘Who’s cutting this hair, you or me?’), 1920, oil on cardboard, 77.4 x 66.4 cm, ART02434; Rations (‘Seen any of our mob about?’), 1920, oil on hardboard, 68.8 x 53 cm, ART02432; Yanks and a Veteran (‘As long as you are there to tell us what to do’), 1920, oil on cardboard, 68 x 56.6 cm, ART02426; The scarecrow (‘It’s a bloomin’ civvy!’), 1920, oil on canvas on wood, 58.4 x 48.8 cm, ART02429

198

APPENDIX D

(cont.) No. Place

Subject

Date of event

19

Sculpture Figure or group for front n.d. of AIF Memorial typifying the spirit of Australian soldier

20

France

21

France Etchings of British official n.d. artists (France and and Egypt), Col. Marsh’s Egypt drawings etc.

Artist

Suggested price (£)

Web Gilbert

300

Battle of the Hindenburg 29 September Arthur Streeton Line 1918

300

Various artists

200

Artist

Suggested price (£)

Third List No.

Place

Subject

Date of event

1

Anzac

The evacuation 19 December Charles Bryant 1915

150

2

Anzac at Landing (or Summer)

Panorama from 1915 the sea

Charles Bryant

150

3

Helles

Charge of the 2nd Australian Infantry Brigade

8 May 1915

Originally assigned to George Lambert but later completed by Charles Wheeler

400

4

France

The taking of Pozières

23 July 1916

Fred Leist

300

5

Palestine

Three further pictures

n.d.

George Lambert

1000

6

Portrait

General Bridges

n.d.

By artist in Australia (Originally assigned to John Longstaff but later completed by Florence Rodway)

200

BEAN’S FIVE LISTS, MAY 1919

Completed

Medium

Size

Current title

199

Reference no.

There is little evidence to suggest this was ever produced, although Gilbert produced many other sculptures for the AWM

Never produced It is not clear which images were purchased, but it is likely that these included images of the fighting in the Middle East by the British war artist James McBey as several of his images were acquired for the art collection in 1920

Completed

Medium

Size

Current title

Oil on canvas

Framed: 130.8 x 238.1 cm

Charge of the 2nd Infantry Brigade at Krithia

Reference no.

Never produced Never produced

1927

ART09558

Never produced It is not clear what the subjects of these images were or whether they were ever produced 1920

Oil on canvas

Framed: 86.5 x 73.5 cm

Major General Sir William Bridges

ART03355

200

APPENDIX D

Fourth List Subject

Artist

Suggested price (£)

Large pictures

George Lambert

300 (for each image)

Fred Leist Septimus Power Arthur Streeton Smaller pictures

Henry Fullwood

200 (for each image)

George Bell Charles Wheeler Two portraits or one picture

James Quinn

200 (for each image)

John Longstaff One picture or 12 humorous drawings

Will Dyson

200

Fifth List No. Subject

Artist suggested

Suggested price (£)

Completed

Artist

1

The Runner

Fred Leist

200

1923

Charles Wheeler

2

The Stretcher-Bearers

Fred Leist

200

1922

Septimus Power

3

The Digger

Fred Leist

200

1926

Charles Wheeler

4

The Supreme Sacrifice

Charles Wheeler (‘if he cares to tackle it’)

200

There is no evidence to suggest

5

The training of 1st Australian Division in the Mena Desert

Septimus Power

300

1921

George Benson and Frank Crozier

6

Group of Gen. Bridges’ staff by pyramids

George Lambert

500

1922–26

George Coates and Dora Meeson

7

Group of leaders in conference first night at Anzac, when decision was arrived at to stay

George Lambert

350

There is no evidence to suggest

Note: Bean, ‘Australian War Memorial Pictures’, c. May 1919, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. original lists. The remaining columns have been collated using the Index of First World War

BEAN’S FIVE LISTS, MAY 1919

201

The specific subject of these images is not clear

The specific subject of these smaller images is not clear

The specific subject of these images is not clear

There is little evidence of the specifics of the scenes or events Dyson was asked to produce, and it is not clear whether he was commissioned with one image or several drawings

Medium

Size

Current title

Reference no.

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 76.2 x 101.6 cm

The Runner

ART09015

Oil on canvas

Framed: 92.4 x 117.5 cm

Stretcher Bearers

ART03645

Oil on canvas

Framed: 146.4 x 113 cm

The Digger

ART09327

this image was produced

Oil on canvas

Framed: 142 x 182.5 cm

Training in the Desert, Mena

ART03607

Oil on canvas

Framed: 116.9 x 160.3 cm

General William Bridges and His Staff Watching the Manoeuvres of the 1st Australian Division in the Desert in Egypt, March 1915

ART09425

this image was produced

Information relating to place, subject, date of event, artist and suggested price are taken from Bean’s Art, Art Section, AWM.

APPENDIX

TRELOAR’S

|

E

AMENDMENTS

TO THE THIRD LIST OF PAINTINGS, C.

1920

Third List of Pictures No.

Subject

Suggested artist

Suggested price (£)

1

The evacuation

Charles Bryant

250

2

Charge of the 2nd Australian Infantry Brigade at Krithia

Originally assigned to George Lambert but later completed by Charles Wheeler

500

3

The taking of Pozières

Charles Wheeler

400

4

Battles of Fromelles

Charles Wheeler

400

5

Battles of Messines

Charles Wheeler

300

6

Messines/Wytschaete Ridge from Mont Kemmel

George Benson

150

7

Second attack at Bullecourt

George Benson

300

8

Trench life at Anzac

Frank Crozier

200

9

Training in the desert at Mena

George Benson and Frank Crozier

250

10

Collection of 140 pen, pencil and W.C. [watercolour] sketches

George Benson

100

202

TRELOAR’S AMENDMENTS TO THE THIRD LIST OF PAINTINGS

Completed

203

Medium

Size

Current title

Reference no.

Oil on canvas

Framed: 130.8 x 238.1 cm

Charge of the 2nd Infantry Brigade at Krithia

ART09558

1922–25

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 133 x 224.5 cm

Battle of Fromelles

ART07981

1923

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 137 x 229 cm

Battle of Messines

ART03557

Painted in 1917; acquired in 1920

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 76.2 x 127.2 cm

Mont Kemmel from near Hill 60

ART03597

1923

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 107.5 x 107 cm

Trench Life at Anzac

ART02189

1921

Oil on canvas

Framed: 142 x 182.5 cm

Training in the Desert, Mena

ART03607

Never produced 1927

Never produced

Never acquired

Several of these images are now part of the art collection, but it is unclear exactly how many of these images were acquired at this time

204

APPENDIX E

(cont.) No.

Subject

Suggested artist

Suggested price (£)

11

The Tank Redoubt Incident

Not specified

400

12

Capture of Turkish General at Gaza

Not specified

400

13

Third Brigade Incident, Es Salt Second Raid

Not specified

500

14

2nd Australian Light Horse Brigade crossing Jordan, March 1918

Not specified

500

15

1st Australian Light Horse Brigade at Abu Tellul, July 1918

Not specified

500

16

A Damascus incident

Not specified but later completed by Septimus Power

500

17

Battle of Hindenburg Line

Not specified

400

18

Attack on Sari Bair

George Lambert

400

19

Incident in capture of Pacific Islands

Not specified

300

20

AE2 in the Sea of Marmora

Treloar suggested Arthur Burgess paint the image but it was later completed by Charles Bryant

300

21

Destroyer raid on Rabaul

Arthur Burgess

300

22

Australian Squadron in Simpsons hafen [sic]

Arthur Burgess

300

Note: Treloar, Third List of Pictures, c. 1920, AWM38 3DRL 6673/287. Information relating columns have been collated using the Index of First World War Art, Art Section, AWM.

TRELOAR’S AMENDMENTS TO THE THIRD LIST OF PAINTINGS

Completed

205

Medium

Size

Current title

Reference no.

Oil on canvas

Framed: 196 x 273.5 cm

Damascus Incident

ART03647

Never produced Never produced Never produced Never produced Never produced 1923

Never produced Never produced It is unclear exactly which incident was decided upon, but Charles Bryant later completed an image entitled Landing at Kabakaul, 1925, oil on canvas, 123.1 x 262 cm, ART08010 1925

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 122.6 x 183 cm

AE2 in the Sea of Marmora, April 1915

ART09016

Never produced Never produced to subject, artist and suggested price are taken from Treloar’s original list. The remaining

APPENDIX

|

F

IMAGES DISPLAYED IN THE WAR MUSEUM, MELBOURNE, 1922 No. Title

Date of event

Artist

Completed

Medium

1

First Convoy at Sea

1914

Charles Bryant

1920

Oil on canvas

2

HMAS Australia at the Surrender of 1918 the German fleet

Arthur Burgess

1920

Oil on canvas

3

Anzac, the Landing, 1915

1915

George Lambert

1922

Oil on canvas

4

The Charge of the Australian Light Horse at Beersheba, 1917

1917

George Lambert

1920

Oil on canvas

5

Bombardment of Pozières, July 1916

1916

Frank Crozier

1919

Oil on canvas

6

Sausage Valley

1916

Frank Crozier

1919

Oil on canvas

7

Bringing up the Ammunition, Flanders, Autumn 1917

1917

Septimus Power

1920

Oil on canvas

8

Heavy Going in Flanders Mud

1917

Septimus Power

1917

Watercolour and charcoal with white on paper on board

9

Saving the Guns at Robecq

1918

Septimus Power

1920

Oil on canvas

10

Dawn at Hamel, 4 July 1918

1918

George Bell

1921

Oil on canvas

11

The Somme Valley near Corbie

1918

Arthur Streeton

1919

Oil on canvas

206

IMAGES DISPLAYED IN THE WAR MUSEUM, MELBOURNE, 1922

207

Size

Reference no.

Displayed

Commissioned or purchased

153 x 303 cm

ART00190

Naval Court

Commissioned

167.2 x 259 cm

ART00192

Naval Court

Commissioned

199.8 x 370.2 cm

ART02873

Gallipoli Display

Commissioned

139.5 x 261.7 cm

ART02811

Palestine Display

Commissioned

221.3 x 137 cm

ART00240

Pozières, Bullecourt and Messines

Commissioned

137 x 220 cm

ART00239

Pozières, Bullecourt and Messines

Commissioned

183 x 274 cm

ART03333

Unspecified

Commissioned

37.6 x 53.5 cm

ART03315

Third Battle of Ypres

The exact images are not specified in the Museum’s guidebook but this could have been one of them

152.3 x 244 cm

ART03332

Villers-Bretonneux Court

Commissioned

168.5 x 273.5 cm

ART03590

Villers-Bretonneux Court

Commissioned

153 x 245.5 cm

ART03497

August 1918

Commissioned

208

APPENDIX F

(cont.) No. Title

Date of event

Artist

Completed Medium

12

Capture of Mont St Quentin

1918

Fred Leist

1920

Oil on canvas

13

The Cook’s Return (‘Didn’t I just make Paris sit up!’)

n.d.

Will Dyson

1920

Oil on canvas on wood

14

Small Talk

n.d.

Will Dyson

1920

Oil on board

15

The Amateur (‘Who’s cutting this hair, you or me?’)

n.d.

Will Dyson

1920

Oil on cardboard

16

The Taking of Lone Pine

1915

Fred Leist

1921

Oil on canvas

17

Australian Infantry Attack in Polygon Wood

1917

Fred Leist

1919

Oil on canvas

18

The Beach at Anzac

1915

Frank Crozier

1919

Oil on canvas

19

‘Emden beached and done for’, 9 November 1914

1914

Arthur Burgess

1920

Oil on canvas

20

Australian Artillery going into action at Harbonnières

1918

Septimus Power

1920

Oil on canvas

21

First Australian Division Artillery going into the 3rd Battle of Ypres

1917

Septimus Power

1919

Oil on canvas

22

Digger art

Mixed Various artists dates

Mixed dates

Mixed media

23

8th August, 1918

1918

Will Longstaff

1919

Oil on canvas

24

The man with the donkey, Anzac 1915

1915

George Benson

1919

Oil on canvas

25

Portraits of leaders of the Light Horse (unspecified)

n.d.

Likely those images painted by James Quinn and John Longstaff

Mixed dates

Oil on canvas

Note: Australian War Museum, Relics and Records; Age (Melbourne); Argus (Melbourne); Herald (Melbourne); Exhibition Building, Melbourne, c. 25 April 1922, J00290 and J00302, AWM; Index of First World War Art,

IMAGES DISPLAYED IN THE WAR MUSEUM, MELBOURNE, 1922

209

Size

Reference no.

Displayed

Commissioned or purchased

152 x 275 cm

ART02929

Mont St Quentin Court

Commissioned

69 x 58 cm

ART02428

Humour of the AIF

Commissioned

53.4 x 69 cm

ART02430

Humour of the AIF

Commissioned

77.4 x 66.4 cm

ART02434

Humour of the AIF

Commissioned

122.5 x 245.5 cm

ART02931

Unspecified

Commissioned

152.3 x 274 cm

ART02927

Arms and the Artist

Commissioned

123.4 x 184.6 cm

ART02161

End of the Hall

Commissioned

197.5 x 284 cm

ART00191

End of the Hall

Commissioned

151 x 218.5 cm

ART03336

End of the Hall

Acquired in 1921

152 x 274.2 cm

ART03330

Unspecified

Commissioned

Mixed sizes

Unspecified

Wall near the entrance to the Aeroplane Hall

Collected by AWRS during the war, not specifically commissioned

123 x 292 cm

ART03022

Unspecified

Commissioned

128.9 x 148.3 cm

ART00143

Unspecified

Acquired in 1920

Unspecified

Unspecified

Unspecified

Commissioned

Sydney Morning Herald, all 25 April 1922; photographs of the interior of the Australian War Museum, Art Section, AWM.

NOTES

Introduction

1 There was some debate at the time about who was the first soldier to land at Gallipoli. Bean believed it was Duncan Chapman; see Bean, Anzac to Amiens, p. 82. 2 Papers relating to Duncan Chapman’s war service, NAA: B2455, CHAPMAN D. 3 Letter from A. Chapman to Minister of Defence, 24 August 1916, NAA: B2455, CHAPMAN D. 4 Statement, Commanding Officer, 45th Battalion, AIF, n.d., NAA: B2455, CHAPMAN D. 5 Department of Defence to W.R.A. Chapman, 11 December 1924, NAA: B2455, CHAPMAN D. 6 Service Record of Duncan Chapman, NAA: B2455, CHAPMAN D. 7 Duncan Chapman to C.F. Chapman, c. July 1915, reprinted in Daily Mercury (Mackay, Qld), 26 August 1915, p. 7. 8 Kay, ‘First Anzac ashore at Gallipoli, Duncan Chapman, remembered by Queensland city’, 8 August 2016, ABC News; media statement, ‘$1M for ANZAC memorial to be delivered in Maryborough’, Queensland Government Cabinet and Ministerial Directory, 12 September 2017, (retrieved 11 February 2018). 9 The Australian War Memorial was granted its status as the national memorial under the Australian War Memorial Act 1925. See Australian War Memorial Act 1925 (Commonwealth). Consequently, given that this book deals with the period 1916–22, I use ‘museum’ rather than ‘memorial’ except when referring to the current iteration of the institution. 10 Gooding, Gallipoli Revisited, p. 209; Bean, Gallipoli Mission, p. 110. 11 ‘Australian War Museum opening on April 25’, Argus (Melbourne), 18 April 1922, p. 5. 12 The term ‘site of memory’ was first coined by Pierre Nora in Nora (ed.), Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past (trans. Lawrence D. Kritzman, Columbia University Press, New York, 1996–98). In this book I draw on Jay Winter’s development and employment of the term in Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995). Winter’s use includes such sites as monuments as well as such forms as art, which he argues are overlaid with

210

NOTES TO PAGES 4–8

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

34

35

36 37 38

211

cultural significance in relation to remembering the past, particularly in terms of conflict and those who died in war. Sayers, Australian Art, p. 121. Index of First World War Art, Art Section, AWM. Condé, ‘John Treloar’, p. 457. Beaumont, Broken Nation, p. xix. Ibid. Fry and Gray, Masterpieces of the Australian War Memorial; Speck, Painting Ghosts; Churcher, The Art of War; McMullin, Will Dyson. Condé, ‘John Treloar’, pp. 451–64. Winter, Remembering War, p. 4. My definition draws on Jay Winter’s discussion of remembrance practices in Remembering War, pp. 79–180, Misztal’s examination of commemorative activities in her Theories of Social Remembering, pp. 126–32, and the discussion of the interaction between individual, civil society and the state in the commemoration of war in Ashplant, Dawson and Roper, ‘The politics of war memory and commemoration’, pp. 9–10. Winter, Remembering War, p. 138. Crane, ‘Writing the individual back into collective memory’, p. 1378. Ashplant, Dawson and Roper, ‘The politics of war memory and commemoration’, p. 10. Gillis, ‘Memory and identity’, in Gillis (ed.), Commemorations, p. 7. Ashplant, Dawson and Roper, ‘The politics of war memory and commemoration’, p. 10. Beaumont, Broken Nation, p. xxv. Ibid. Inglis, C.E.W. Bean, pp. 14–15. Graham Seal addresses the conflation of an invented Anzac tradition with the ‘self-generated culture of the digger’; see Seal, Inventing Anzac, pp. 1–35. Bean (ed.), The Anzac Book; Condé, ‘Imagining a collection’, p. 33; Kent, ‘The Anzac Book and the Anzac legend’. Seal, Inventing Anzac, p. 9. Until recently, Ken Inglis’s essay and Dudley McCarthy’s biography were the most comprehensive studies published on Bean; see Inglis, C.E.W. Bean, and McCarthy, Gallipoli to the Somme. Both books focus on Bean’s role as war correspondent and historian, and do not address in detail his part in collecting and exhibiting war records of Australia’s experience of the conflict; see Rees, Bearing Witness, and Coulthart, Charles Bean. Henry Smart was christened Henry Hobbs Westcott Smart but known as Henry Casimir Smart. Statutory Declaration, 2 February 1939, NAA: A461 G348/1/14. Memorandum from Smart to Official Secretary, 26 July 1938, NAA: A461 G348/1/14. Treloar Casualty Form – Active Service, 1915, NAA: B883, VX39804; McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, pp. 37–8. ‘War Memorial Director’, Canberra Times, 29 January 1952, p. 4.

212

NOTES TO PAGES 8–12

39 Denis Winter, ‘Treloar, John Linton (1894–1952)’, in Australian Dictionary of Biography [ADB], (retrieved 15 November 2012). 40 Confino, ‘Collective memory and cultural history’, pp. 1386–1403; Winter, ‘Setting the framework’, p. 9. 41 Ashplant, Dawson and Roper, ‘The politics of war memory and commemoration’, p. 6. 42 Winter, Remembering War, p. 4. I have also drawn on the theories of the French sociologist and philosopher Maurice Halbwachs, whose influential writings on collective memory in the twentieth century have underpinned contemporary memory studies. Halbwachs wrote of the importance of seeing collective memory through ‘social frameworks’; see Halbwachs, On Collective Memory. 43 Hobsbawm and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition, p. 1. 44 Gillis, ‘Memory and identity’, p. 7. 45 Anderson, Imagined Communities, pp. 6–7; Gillis, ‘Memory and identity’, p. 7; Ashplant, Dawson and Roper, ‘The politics of war memory and commemoration’, p. 8. 46 Griffiths, Hunters and Collectors, p. 197. 47 Winter, ‘The performance of the past’, in Tilmans, van Vree and Winter (eds), Performing the Past, p. 12. 48 Ibid. 49 Confino, ‘Collective memory and cultural history’, p. 1393. 50 Gillis, ‘Memory and identity’, p. 5. 51 Ashplant, Dawson and Roper, ‘The politics of war memory and commemoration’, p. 9. 52 Ibid., p. 12. 53 Confino, ‘Collective memory and cultural history’, p. 1393. 54 Joanna Bourke has recently commented that the term ‘war art’ is not so easily defined; see Bourke (ed.), War and Art, p. 13. 55 Brandon, Art and War, pp. 4–5. 56 Ibid., p. 5. 57 Brandon, ‘The Canadian War Museum’s art collection’, p. 24. 58 Ashplant, Dawson and Roper, ‘The politics of war memory and commemoration’, p. 37. 59 Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory; Hynes, A War Imagined; Eksteins, The Rites of Spring; and Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning. 60 Williams, The Quarantined Culture. 61 Ashplant, Dawson and Roper, ‘The politics of war memory and commemoration’, p. 36. 62 Williams, The Quarantined Culture, pp. 1–4; Ure Smith, ‘Australian art today’, n.p. 63 Serle, From Deserts the Prophets Come, pp. 89–118. 64 Smith, Place, Taste and Tradition, pp. 112–61. 65 Cork, A Bitter Truth, p. 139. See Caroline Lord’s PhD thesis for the most in-depth discussion of New Zealand’s art scheme to date: Lord, ‘A forgotten contribution’; see also Haworth, Behind the Twisted Wire.

NOTES TO PAGES 12–19

213

66 Ashplant, Dawson and Roper, ‘The politics of war memory and commemoration’, p. 15. 67 Although beyond the scope of this book, the New Zealand official art program would provide a fruitful comparison with the Canadian and Australian models, extending even further the commemorative imperial context. 68 Cook, Clio’s Warriors, p. 11. 69 Sheftall, ‘Mythologising the Dominion fighting man’, pp. 83–90. 70 Cook, Clio’s Warriors, p. 11. 71 Sheftall, Altered Memories of the Great War, p. 5. 72 Winter, Remembering War, p. 1.

1 A record for posterity, 1916–17 1 Will Dyson to Andrew Fisher, 23 August 1916, AWM93 18/7/5 Part 1. 2 Ibid. 3 Gavin Fry, Anne Gray and Catherine Speck credit Dyson with starting the scheme and being central in its development; see Fry and Gray, Masterpieces of the Australian War Memorial, p. 10, Gray, A. Henry Fullwood, pp. 21–3, and Speck, Painting Ghosts, p. 18. Betty Churcher and Laura Brandon assert that it was Bean who was responsible for lobbying for an art scheme; see Churcher, The Art of War, pp. 5–6, and Brandon, Art and War, pp. 49–50. 4 Beaumont, Broken Nation, p. 168. 5 Ibid., p. 173. 6 Hughes to Pearce, 21 April 1916, Pearce Papers, AWM 3DRL/2222 3/3. 7 Hughes, cited in Meaney, Australia and World Crisis, 1914–1923, p. 137. 8 Ibid., pp. 134–8. 9 Hughes, cited in ibid., p. 138. 10 Andrews, The Anzac Illusion, p. 88. 11 Andrews, ‘25 April 1916’, p. 16. 12 Scates et al., ‘“Such a great space of water between us”’, pp. 220–1. 13 Andrews, The Anzac Illusion, p. 82; High Commissioner’s Annual Report 1916, NAA: A458 F108/8 Part 3. 14 Andrews, The Anzac Illusion, p. 86. 15 Beaumont, Broken Nation, p. 176. 16 Andrews, The Anzac Illusion, p. 86; Beaumont, Broken Nation, p. 177. The Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, formed in Egypt in 1915, was later split into I and II ANZAC Corps, which served on the Western Front. In November 1917, the five Australian divisions were formed into a single Australian Corps. 17 ‘The luncheon: Mr Hughes’s address’, Sydney Morning Herald, 27 April 1916. 18 Ibid. 19 McKernan, The Australian People and the Great War, p. 120. 20 Andrews, The Anzac Illusion, p. 86. 21 Beaumont, Broken Nation, p. xxii; Beaumont, ‘“Unitedly we have fought”’, p. 402. 22 Beaumont, ‘“Unitedly we have fought”’, p. 402.

214

NOTES TO PAGES 20–3

23 McMullin, Will Dyson, p. 126. 24 ‘War cartoons shown: Will Dyson’s new medium’, Herald (Melbourne), 18 August 1916. 25 McMullin, Will Dyson, p. 126. The British-Australasian was a newspaper published in London for Australians and New Zealanders. 26 Winter, ‘Forms of kinship and remembrance in the aftermath of the Great War’, in Winter and Sivan (eds), War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century, p. 55. 27 Scates et al., ‘“Such a great space of water between us”’, p. 221. 28 Pearce, cited in Andrews, ‘25 April 1916’, p. 13. 29 Andrews, ‘25 April 1916’, pp. 13–15. 30 Ibid., p. 19. 31 Ziino, A Distant Grief, p. 59. 32 Ibid. 33 Luckins, The Gates of Memory, p. 87. 34 McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, p. 32. 35 Bean, ‘The Australian War Records: An account of the present development overseas and suggestions of course necessary to be taken at the end of the War’, c. 1918, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 1. 36 Bean, ‘Australia’s records: Preserved as sacred things, pictures, relics and writings’, 29 September 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2, p. 45. 37 Beaumont, Broken Nation, p. 189. 38 Ziino, A Distant Grief, p. 59. 39 Beaumont, Australia’s War, 1914–18, p. 17. 40 McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, p. 36. 41 Wellington, Exhibiting War, p. 4. 42 Winter, Remembering War, p. 136. 43 Bastian, Andrew Fisher, p. 3. 44 High Commissioner’s Annual Report 1916, A458 F108/8 Part 3; Bastian, Andrew Fisher, p. 305; High Commissioner – Annual Report, 1917, A458 F108/8 PART 4; High Commissioner’s Annual Report, 1918, A458 F108/8 Part 5; High Commissioner’s Annual Report, 1919, NAA: A458 F108/8 Part 6. 45 High Commissioner’s Annual Report 1916, A458 F108/8 Part 3. 46 Bastian, Andrew Fisher, p. 303. 47 Day, Andrew Fisher, p. 353. 48 ‘“Our job is not to talk but to act”: Australia’s part in the war’, Westminster Gazette, 31 January 1916, NAA: A1/1916/17188; newspaper clippings from January and February 1916, Fisher Papers, MS 2919/10/118 Folio Box 7, Folder 29a, NLA. 49 Bastian, Andrew Fisher, p. 298; Day, ‘Andrew Fisher and the “Australian Spirit”’, pp. 111–13. 50 Edwards, Prime Ministers and Diplomats, p. 32. 51 Scott, Australia During the War, p. 304. 52 Edwards, Prime Ministers and Diplomats, p. 32. 53 Meaney, Australia and World Crisis, 1914–1923, p. 134. 54 Bastian, Andrew Fisher, p. 313.

NOTES TO PAGES 23–7

215

55 High Commissioner’s Annual Report 1916, NAA: A458 F108/8 Part 3. 56 Bastian, Andrew Fisher, p. 304. 57 High Commissioner’s Annual Report 1916, NAA: A458 F108/8 Part 3; Information Concerning the Commonwealth Service of H.C. Smart, 9 October 1937, NAA: A461 G348/1/14; ‘The “Anzac Bulletin”: Mr Fisher’s newspaper’, Barrier Miner, 14 July 1916; High Commissioner’s Annual Report 1916, NAA: A458 F108/8 Part 3. 58 High Commissioner’s Annual Report 1917, NAA: A458, F108/8 Part 4. 59 High Commissioner’s Annual Report 1916, NAA: A458 F108/8 Part 3. 60 McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, pp. 33–5; Stanley, ‘Gallipoli to Pozières’, pp. 281–9. 61 Bean, Anzac to Amiens, p. 264. 62 Andrews, The Anzac Illusion, p. 56; Kent, ‘The Anzac Book and the Anzac legend’, pp. 376–90. 63 Earlier draft of Bean’s article that appeared in the Commonwealth of Australia Gazette, ‘Australia’s records: Preserved as sacred things, pictures, relics and writings’, 29 September 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 64 Bean, Gallipoli Mission, p. 5, and McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, p. 32. 65 Bean to Pearce, 8 November 1916, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 66 Samuel, Island Stories, p. 83. 67 McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, p. 36. 68 Department of Defence Minutes, 22 March 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 69 Cook, Clio’s Warriors, p. 14. 70 Ibid., p. 11. 71 Report of the Committee of the Privy Council, 6 January 1915, BBK/E/1/9, PA; Cook, Clio’s Warriors, p. 16. 72 Beaverbrook to Borden, Report on the Joint Establishment of the Canadian Representative at the Front and Canadian War Records, 1916, BBK/E/1/ 20, PA. 73 Cook, Clio’s Warriors, p. 16. 74 Beaverbrook to Borden, 1 January 1915 [1916] BBK/E/1/10, PA. The date 1915 is clearly erroneous, given the subject matter of the cable. 75 Cook, Clio’s Warriors, p. 20. 76 Ibid., p. 19. 77 Ibid., p. 20. 78 Doughty, cited in Tippett, Art at the Service of War, p. 17. 79 Ibid. 80 Cook, Clio’s Warriors, p. 20. 81 Doughty, cited in ibid.; Doughty, cited in Tippett, Art at the Service of War, p. 18. 82 Cook, Clio’s Warriors, p. 16. 83 Beaverbrook to Borden, Report on Canadian War Records Office for 1916, 11 January 1917, BBK/E/1/29, PA. 84 Beaverbrook to Borden, Report on the Joint Establishment of the Canadian Representative at the Front and Canadian War Records, 1916, BBK/E/1/ 20, PA.

216

NOTES TO PAGES 27–32

85 Beaverbrook to Borden, Report on Canadian War Records Office for 1916, 11 January 1917, BBK/E/1/29, PA. 86 Extract of letter from Smart to Beaverbrook, July 1917, BBK/E/3/48, PA. 87 Bean, ‘The Australian War Records’, c. 1918, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 1; Smart to Beaverbrook, July 1917, BBK/E/3/48, PA. 88 Bean, ‘The Australian War Records’, c. 1918, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 1. 89 Fisher to Hughes, 8 February 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 90 Kavanagh, ‘Museum as memorial’, pp. 77–97. 91 Sir Martin Conway to the First Commissioner, HM Office of Works, Memorandum on the Scope of the National War Museum, n.d., ART/WA1/ 527, IWM. 92 Sir Martin Conway to unknown, August 1917, ART/WA1/527, IWM. 93 Walter Long, Secretary of State for the Colonies, to Sir Ronald MunroFerguson, 14 May 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2; Walter Long to the Duke of Devonshire, 5 July 1917, Sir Robert Borden Fonds, MG26-H, Reel C-4336, OC 527, Vol. 105, LAC. 94 Memorandum: The National War Museum has been Established by Order of the Cabinet, n.d., ART/WA1/527, IWM. 95 Bean’s Diary, 18 November 1917, AWM38 3DRL 606/94/1. 96 Bean, Matters for consultation with General White, 9 February 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 97 Duke of Devonshire to Walter Long, 30 July 1917, Sir Robert Borden Fonds, MG26-H, Reel C-4336, OC 527, Vol. 105, LAC; McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, p. 40. 98 Kemp to Borden, 25 July 1918, Sir Robert Borden Fonds, MG26-H, Reel C-4336, OC 527, vol. 105, LAC. 99 Cook, Clio’s Warriors, pp. 32–3. 100 Bean, ‘The Australian War Records’, c. 1918, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 1. My emphasis. 101 McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, p. 41. 102 White to Trumble, 19 July 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 103 Bean to Pearce, 3 August 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 104 Ibid.; Bean, ‘Australia’s records’, 29 September 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 105 Ibid. 106 Macintyre, ‘The writing of Australian history’, pp. 16–19. 107 Griffiths, Hunters and Collectors, p. 200. 108 Memorandum for the Minister, 15 August 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 109 Sir Harry Weedon to Pearce, 22 August 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 110 Pearce, Department of Defence memorandum, 29 August 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2; McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, pp. 40–1. 111 Bean to Pearce, 3 August 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2; Fisher, High Commissioner’s Annual Report 1916, NAA: A458 F108/8 Part 3; Bean ‘Australia’s records’, 29 September 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 112 Department of Defence, Draft Press Notice, n.d., AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2.

NOTES TO PAGES 32–6

217

113 Bean, ‘Australia’s records’, 29 September 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2; Conway to unknown, August 1917, ART/WA1/527, IWM. 114 McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, p. 42. 115 Pearce, handwritten note, 22 September 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 116 Department of Defence to AIF Headquarters, 30 November 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 117 Department of Defence, Draft Press Notice, n.d., AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2; ibid. 118 Dyson to Fisher, 12 September 1916, AWM93 18/7/5 Part 1. 119 ‘Literature: Publications received, the Barbarians in Belgium’, Queenslander, 5 August 1916; Silas, Crusading at Anzac Anno Domini 1915. 120 Silas, cited in Laffin (ed.), An Eyewitness Account of Gallipoli, p. 4. 121 Malvern, Modern Art, Britain and the Great War, p. 11. 122 Ibid., p. 13. 123 Vane Lindesay, ‘Dyson, William Henry (Will) (1880–1938)’, in ADB, (retrieved 15 July 2014). 124 Dyson, Kultur Cartoons. 125 Dyson, Exhibition of War Satires and Other Cartoons, p. 1. 126 First published in the Daily Sketch in 1916. 127 McMullin, Will Dyson, p. 115. 128 Ibid., p. 126. 129 War Office to Australian High Commission, 6 December 1916, AWM93 18/7/5 Part 1. See also letters between Dyson and High Commission, October–December 1916, and letters between High Commission and the War Office, October and December 1916, AWM93 18/7/5 Part 1. 130 Dyson to R. Muirhead Collins, 4 November 1916, AWM93 18/7/5 Part 1. 131 Fisher to Pearce, 24 August 1916, AWM93 18/7/5 Part 1. 132 Bastian, Andrew Fisher, p. 247. 133 Ibid. 134 Day, ‘Andrew Fisher and the “Australian spirit’”, p. 113. 135 Tom Roberts to Alfred Deakin, 11 March 1910, NAA: A2 1912/2035. 136 Gibson, The Uses of Art, p. 47; Bastian, Andrew Fisher, p. 247. 137 Federal Executive Council Minute Paper, NAA: A1573 1911/1. 138 Will Dyson, Fisher, in Graphic, 3 June 1911; Bastian, Andrew Fisher, p. 208. 139 Fisher to Pearce, 24 August 1917, AWM93 18/7/5 Part 1. 140 Hughes to Fisher, 21 December 1916, AWM93 8/2/23; Dyson to High Commission, 24 October 1916, AWM93 8/2/23. 141 Pearce to Fisher, 31 August 1916, AWM93 18/7/5 Part 1. 142 Birdwood to Collins, 27 September 1916, AWM93 18/7/5 Part 1; Pearce Papers 3DRL/2222, AWM. 143 Birdwood to Fisher, 31 July 1916, Fisher Papers MS2919/1/218, NLA. 144 Ibid.; Birdwood to Pearce, 20 February 1916, Pearce Papers 3DRL/2222 3/1 Box 3, AWM. 145 Birdwood to Collins, 27 September 1916, AWM93 18/7/5 Part 1. 146 High Commission to Birdwood, 19 September 1916, AWM93 18/7/5 Part 1; Birdwood to Collins, 27 September 1916, AWM93 18/7/5 Part 1.

218

NOTES TO PAGES 36–41

147 Ibid. 148 High Commission to Birdwood, 19 September 1916, AWM93 18/7/5 Part 1; Birdwood to Collins, 27 September 1916, AWM93 18/7/5 Part 1. 149 Cubitt to Official Secretary, High Commission, 24 October 1916, AWM93 18/7/5 Part 1. 150 Dyson to Captain Collins, October 1916, AWM93 18/7/5 Part 1. 151 Minutes of Conference, 25 September 1916, RG9-III DI Vol. 4746, Folder 175 File 3, LAC and Will Dyson to Andrew Fisher, 23 August 1916, AWM93 18/7/5 Part 1. 152 Beaverbrook, cited in Tippett, Art at the Service of War, p. 23. 153 Beaverbrook to Kemp, 6 September 1917, RG24 Vol. 436 File HQ 54–21– 1–89, LAC and Beaverbrook and Rothermere, Canadian War Memorials Report of the Executive Committee, 1919, BBK/E/1/29, PA. 154 Tippett, Art at the Service of War, p. 25. 155 Ibid., p. 26. 156 Cubitt to Official Secretary, High Commission, 24 October 1916, AWM93 18/7/5 Part 1. 157 ‘Will Dyson goes to front’, Ballarat Courier, 9 November 1916, p. 3. 158 War Office to Australian High Commission, 6 December 1916, AWM93 18/7/5 Part 1. 159 Will Dyson, Service Record, NAA: B2455 DYSON W; Bean’s Diary, 14 December 1916, AWM38 3DRL606/68/1. 160 McMullin, Will Dyson, p. 127; Fisher to the Minister for Defence, 1 July 1919, AWM93 18/7/5 Part 3. 161 Bean, ‘The Australian War Records’, c. 1918, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 1; Bean to Pearce, 16 September 1916, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 162 Ibid. 163 Ibid. 164 Pearce to Hughes, 4 November 1916, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 165 Hughes to Fisher, 5 December 1916, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 166 Fisher to Hughes, 8 February 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 167 Ibid. 168 Hughes to Fisher, 26 March 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 169 Galbally and Gray (eds), Letters from Smike, p. 34. 170 Fisher to Hughes, 31 January 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 171 Galbally and Gray (eds), Letters from Smike, p. 32. 172 Fisher to Hughes, 31 January 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 173 Burke, Eyewitnessing, p. 148. 174 Masterman, cited in Tippett, Art at the Service of War, p. 23. 175 McQuire, Visions of Modernity, p. 124. 176 Beaverbrook to Borden, January 1917, Canadian War Records Office Report, BBK E/1/29, PA. 177 High Commissioner’s Annual Report for 1916, 31 May 1917, A458 F108/8 PART 3. 178 Bean, ‘Australia’s records’, 29 September 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 179 Minutes of the Department of Defence, 11 July 1918, AWM93 8/2/23.

NOTES TO PAGES 41–5

219

180 Flitch, ‘The Great War’, in Nevinson and Flitch, The Great War, Fourth Year, p. 7. 181 Holliday, cited in Tippett, Art at the Service of War, p. 23. 182 Treloar to Bean, 4 August 1921, AWM38 2DRL 6673/287. 183 Jolly, ‘Composite propaganda photographs during the First World War’, pp. 155–6. 184 Hurley, ‘War photography’, Australasian Photo-Review, 15 February 1919. 185 Ibid.; Jolly, ‘Australian First World War photography’, p. 142. 186 Bean, ‘Australia’s records’, 29 September 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 187 Bean’s Diary, 27–28 September 1917, AWM38 3DRL 606 Series 1 Item 165; Dixon, ‘Spotting the fake’, pp. 166, 178. 188 Bean’s Diary, 20 November 1917, AWM38 3DRL 606/94/1. 189 Bean, ‘Australia’s records’, 29 September 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2; Jolly, ‘Composite propaganda photographs during the First World War’, p. 162. 190 Condé, ‘Capturing the records of war’, p. 138; Gay, The Naked Heart, p. 204. 191 Bean to Smart, 6 February 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 3. 192 Jolly, ‘Composite propaganda photographs during the First World War’, p. 156. 193 Ibid. 194 Beaverbrook to Borden, January 1917, Canadian War Records Office Report, BBK E/1/29, PA; Brandon, Art and War, p. 46; Tippett, Art at the Service of War, p. 23. 195 Bean, ‘The Australian War Records’, c. 1918, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 1. 196 Treloar to Bean, 4 August 1921, AWM38 2DRL 6673/287. 197 Bean, ‘The Australian War Records’, c. 1918, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 1. 198 Beaverbrook, Report on the Canadian War Records Office, 31 August 1919, RG24, vol. 1749, File DHS 7–1, LAC. 199 Tippett, Art at the Service of War, p. 23. 200 Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning, p. 6. 201 Konody, ‘On war memorials’, p. 6. 202 Beaverbrook, Report on the Canadian War Records Office, 31 August 1919, BBK E/1/29, PA. 203 Tippett, Art at the Service of War, pp. 4–5; Paret, Imagined Battles, pp. 46–9. 204 McNairn, Behold the Hero, p. 109; Tippett, Art at the Service of War, p. 45. 205 Fisher, High Commissioner Annual Report, 1917, NAA: A458 F1008/8 Part 4. 206 Treloar, ‘Preface’, in Treloar (ed.), Australian Chivalry, p. v. 207 Bean, ‘The Australian War Records’, c. 1918, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 1. 208 Bean to Department of Defence, 18 September 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/ 286. 209 Konody, ‘On war memorials’, p. 15. 210 Tippett, Art at the Service of War, p. xi. 211 Minutes of the Department of Defence, 11 July 1918, AWM93 8/2/23.

220

NOTES TO PAGES 45–51

212 Treloar, ‘Report on the work of the Australian War Records Section from May 1917 to September 1918’, AWM224 MSS553 Part 1; Statement from AIF Headquarters, cited in McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, p. 37. 213 Fisher to Hughes, 8 February 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 214 White to Trumble, 19 July 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 215 AIF Records and Australian National Records – London Committee, 28 March 1917, AWM93 12/12/1/ Part 2. 216 White to Trumble, 19 July 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 217 Minutes Department of Defence, 1 October 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 218 Muirhead Collins to General Birdwood, 4 May 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2; Buckley, AIF Records and Australian National Records, 4 May 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2; AIF Records and Australian National Records – London Committee, 28 March 1917, AWM93 12/12/1/ Part 2. 219 Bean, ‘The Australian War Records’, c. 1918, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 1. 220 Ibid.; Minutes of Department of Defence, War Trophies, 1 October 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 221 Bean, ‘The Australian War Records’, c. 1918, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 1; Minutes of Department of Defence, War Trophies, 1 October 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 222 Ibid.; Smart to Bean, 16 May 1917, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 223 Memorandum from Smart to Bean, 27 July 1917, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 224 Bean, ‘The Australian War Records’, c. 1918, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 1.

2 Implementing the art scheme, 1917–18 1 Beaverbrook, Report on the Canadian War Records Office, 30 March 1918, BBK/E/1/29, PA. 2 McCarthy, Gallipoli to the Somme, p. 266. Smart is largely overlooked in scholarship on Australia’s war record collection, despite his integral role during the war years. In McKernan’s history of the Australian War Memorial, Smart remains a footnote in history, overshadowed by the increasing influence of both Bean and Treloar over commemoration of the war in the interwar years. He is mentioned only once in McKernan’s book; see Here is Their Spirit, p. 36. McCarthy’s biography of Bean contains the best description of Smart and his work for Australia’s war records; see McCarthy, Gallipoli to the Somme, pp. 260–6. 3 Smart to Stanley Bruce, 27 May 1927, NAA: A461 G348/1/14; Memorandum from Smart to Official Secretary, 26 July 1938, NAA: A461 G348/1/14; Smart to Bean, 23 April 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 3. 4 McCarthy, Gallipoli to the Somme, p. 260. 5 Smart to Stanley Bruce, 27 May 1927, NAA: A461 G348/1/14. 6 McCarthy, Gallipoli to the Somme, p. 261. 7 Information Concerning the Commonwealth Service of H.C. Smart, 9 October 1937, NAA: A461 G348/1/14. 8 McCarthy, Gallipoli to the Somme, p. 262. 9 Bean, ‘The Australian War Records: An account of the present development overseas . . .’, c. 1918, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 1.

NOTES TO PAGES 51–5

221

10 Treloar, ‘Report on the work of the Australian War Records Section from May 1917 to September 1918’, AWM224 MSS553 Part 1. 11 Information Concerning the Commonwealth Service of H.C. Smart, 9 October 1937, NAA: A461 G348/1/14; AIF Record Preliminary Question, n.d., AWM93 12/12/1 Part 3; Griffiths, ‘Proposal to establish an Australian War Records Section in London’, 29 March 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 12 Griffiths to Birdwood, 2 May 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 13 Birdwood to Griffiths, 4 May 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 14 Smart to Griffiths, 7 May 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 15 Bean, ‘The Australian War Records: An account of the present development overseas . . .’, c. 1918, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 1. 16 The CWMF committee consisted of Beaverbrook, Lord Rothermere, as chairman, Lieutenant J. Harold Watkins as the committee’s secretary and the art critic Paul Konody, but was later expanded to include those responsible for commissioning paintings of the war in Canada, namely Edmund Walker, chairman of the Board of Trustees of the National Gallery of Canada, and Lady Perley. See Beaverbrook, Report on the Canadian War Records Office, 31 August 1919, BBK/E/1/29, PA. 17 Tippett, Art at the Service of War, p. 33. 18 Ibid., pp. 30–3. 19 Collins to Birdwood, 28 March 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2; AIF Records and Australian National Records, c. 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 20 Smart to Bean, 13 February 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286; ‘Mr Frank Gibson. Death follows accident’, Argus (Melbourne), 24 February 1931. 21 Tippett, Art at the Service of War, pp. 34, 46. 22 Smart to Bean, 9 May 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 23 Smart to Bean, 13 February 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 24 Bean, ‘The Australian War Records: An account of the present development overseas . . .’, c. 1918, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 1. 25 Streeton to Spencer, 28 November 1917, Walter Baldwin Spencer Papers, MLMSS 875, SLNSW. 26 Will Dyson to Edward Dyson, May 1918, MS 10617 Box 269, SLV. 27 Lambert to Gullett, 25 July 1918, AWM40 48 Gullett Papers. 28 McCarthy, Gallipoli to the Somme, p. 262. 29 Collins to Birdwood, 28 March 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 30 Chris Cunneen and Ann G. Smith, ‘Collins, Sir Robert Henry Muirhead (1852–1927)’, in ADB, (retrieved 12 November 2013); Collins to Birdwood, 28 March 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 31 Birdwood to Collins, 21 April 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 32 Defence Department to Commandant of AIF Headquarters, 30 November 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 33 Birdwood to Collins, 21 April 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 34 Reid, Australian Artists at War, p. 5. 35 AIF Records and Australian National Records, c. 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 36 Smart to Bean, 9 May 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 37 Bean to Smart, 21 December 1917, AWM93 18/7/8 Part 1.

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NOTES TO PAGES 55–9

38 McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, p. 44. 39 Bean, ‘The Australian War Records: An account of the present development overseas . . .’, c. 1918, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 1. 40 McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, p. 44. 41 Muirhead Collins to Prime Minister’s Department, 19 February 1917, AWM93 8/2/23. 42 Condé, ‘John Treloar’, pp. 453–5. 43 Ibid., p. 452. 44 McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, pp. 30–61. 45 Condé, ‘John Treloar’, p. 455. 46 Treloar, ‘Report on the work of the Australian War Records Section from May 1917 to September 1918’, AWM224 MSS553 Part 1. 47 Bean, cited in Denis Winter, ‘Treloar, John Linton (1894–1952)’, in ADB, (retrieved 3 November 2013). 48 Condé, ‘John Treloar’, p. 455. 49 Smart to Bean, 25 May 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 3. 50 Treloar, ‘Report on the work of the Australian War Records Section from May 1917 to September 1918’, AWM224 MSS553 Part 1. 51 Smart to Bean, 9 May 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 52 Beaverbrook, Report on the Canadian War Records Office, 31 August 1919, BBK/E/1/29, PA. 53 Bean to Smart, 25 May 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286; Malvern, Modern Art, Britain and the Great War, p. 13. 54 Robertson, ‘Norman Lindsay and the “Asianisation” of the German soldier in Australia during the First World War’, p. 212. 55 Bean, draft of ‘Australia’s records: Preserved as sacred things, pictures, relics and writings’, 29 September 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. This was later published as an article in the Commonwealth of Australia Gazette; see Charles Bean, ‘Australia’s records: Preserved as sacred things, pictures, relics and writings’, Commonwealth of Australia Gazette, No. 6, 15 January 1918, pp. 45–8. 56 Gibson, The Uses of Art, p. 45. 57 Bourke (ed.), War Art, p. 13. 58 Bean, ‘The Australian War Records: An account of the present development overseas . . .’, c. 1918, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 1. 59 Muirhead Collins to the Prime Minister’s Department, 19 February 1917, AWM93 8/2/23. 60 Beaverbrook, Report on the Canadian War Records Office, 30 March 1918, BBK/E/1/29, PA. My emphasis. 61 Times (London), 2 March 1918, cited in Tippett, Art at the Service of War, p. 34. 62 Konody, ‘The Canadian war memorials’, p. 27. 63 Ibid. 64 Tippett, Art at the Service of War, p. 45. 65 Bean, cited in Rees, Bearing Witness, p. 160. 66 McCarthy, Gallipoli to the Somme, p. 7. 67 Bean, ‘The technique of a contemporary war historian’, p. 66; Bean, ‘The writing of the Australian Official History of the Great War’, p. 110.

NOTES TO PAGES 59–64

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68 Will Dyson to Edward Dyson, May 1918, MS 10617 Box 269, SLV. For discussion on Bean’s writing about the Great War see Winter, Making the Legend, and Barrett, ‘Historical reconsiderations VII’, pp. 102–14. 69 McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, pp. 42–9. 70 Smart to Bean, 16 May 1917, AWM38 3DRL6673/286; unknown to Leist, 3 July 1917, AWM93 18/7/8 Part 1. 71 Bean, ‘Australia’s records’, 29 September 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2. 72 Ibid. 73 Treloar, ‘Report on the work of the Australian War Records Section from May 1917 to September 1918’, AWM224 MSS553 Part 1. 74 ‘War time in London’, Sydney Morning Herald, 3 October 1917, p. 10. 75 ‘General war cables: Australian artists busy’, North Western Advocate and the Emu Bay Times, 18 February 1918. 76 ‘Art in Australia: The genius of Norman Lindsay’, Argus (Melbourne), 1 October 1918, p. 6. 77 Marjorie J. Tipping, ‘Boyd, Theodore Penleigh (1890–1923)’, in ADB, (retrieved 7 September 2014). 78 Penleigh Boyd, cited in ‘Art and war: Victorian painter’s experiences’, Cairns Post, 19 April 1918, p. 2. 79 Ibid. 80 Henry Boote, ‘Art and war’, Australian Worker, 17 October 1918, p. 13. 81 Speck, Painting Ghosts, p. 20. 82 Ibid. 83 Ibid. 84 William Trahair, 10 June 1918, AWM93 8/2/23. 85 Sydney Ure Smith to the Honourable W. Elliot Johnson, 13 July 1918, AWM93 8/2/23. 86 ‘Art and the war’, in Minutes of the Meeting of the Historic Memorials Committee, 17 October 1918, NAA: A457 B508/7. 87 Wodehouse, A Checklist of the War Collections. 88 Beaverbrook to Walker, 14 December 1917, 5.41-C, File 1, NGC; Rolfe, ‘Harold Gilman’s “Halifax Harbour” (1918)’, pp. 689–93. 89 Beaverbrook, ‘Report on the Canadian War Records’, 31 August 1919, BBK/ E/1/29, PA. 90 Tippett, Art at the Service of War, p. 49. ‘Central Canada’ refers to a region consisting of the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. 91 Bennett, cited in Harries and Harries, The War Artists, p. 87. 92 Harries and Harries, The War Artists, p. 87. 93 Smart to Bean, 16 May 1917, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 94 Condé, ‘John Treloar’, p. 457; Smart to Bean, 16 May 1917, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286; Bean to Edwin and Lucy Bean, 19 January 1919, AWM38 3DRL 7447/7. 95 Smith, Australian Painting, 1788–1970, p. 129. 96 Ibid., p. 152. 97 McCarthy, Gallipoli to the Somme, p. 262. 98 High Commission to Prime Minister’s Department, 26 April 1917, AWM93 8/2/23.

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NOTES TO PAGES 64–8

99 McCarthy, Gallipoli to the Somme, p. 262. 100 ‘Australian artists at the fighting fronts: Progress of war records’, Argus (Melbourne), 18 May 1918, p. 7. 101 Streeton, ‘Australian artists and war: To the editor of The Argus’, Argus (Melbourne), 17 December 1917, p. 15. 102 Streeton to Stewart [Smart], 12 October 1917, AWM93 18/7/12; Streeton to Spencer, 28 November 1917, Walter Baldwin Spencer Papers, MLMSS 875, SLNSW. 103 Streeton to Stewart [Smart], 12 October 1917, AWM93 18/7/12; Streeton to Spencer, 28 November 1917, Walter Baldwin Spencer Papers, MLMSS 875, SLNSW. 104 Streeton to Stewart [Smart], 12 October 1917, AWM93 18/7/12. 105 Streeton, ‘Australian artists and war: To the editor of The Argus’, Argus (Melbourne), 17 December 1917, p. 15; Richard Haese, ‘Evergood, Miles [born Myer Blashki] (1871–1939)’, in ADB, (retrieved 2 December 2014). 106 Smart to Streeton, 27 September 1917, AWM93 18/7/12; Streeton to Stewart [Smart], 12 October 1917, AWM93 18/7/12; Streeton to Stewart [Smart], 4 October 1917, AWM93 18/7/12. 107 High Commission to Prime Minister’s Department, 4 May 1917, AWM93 8/2/23; Smart to Bean, 16 May 1917, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286; Memorandum from Prime Minister’s Department, 28 May 1917, AWM93 8/2/23. 108 Smart to Bean, 28 December 1917, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. Spence never took up an official commission with the art scheme. 109 Streeton to Stewart [Smart], 12 October 1917, AWM93 18/7/12; Streeton to the High Commission, 21 September 1917, AWM93 18/7/12. 110 Streeton to Tom Roberts, 21 December 1917, Letters from A. Streeton, 1889–1931, MFMG 27511, NLA. 111 Smart to Bean, 16 May 1917, AWM38 3DRL6673/286; Streeton to Roberts, 21 December 1917, Letters from A. Streeton, 1889–1931, MFMG 27511, NLA; Streeton to Spencer, 28 November 1917, Walter Baldwin Spencer Papers, MLMSS 875, SLNSW. 112 Streeton to Spencer, 28 November 1917, Walter Baldwin Spencer Papers, MLMSS 875, SLNSW. 113 Smart to Bean, 28 December 1917, AWM38 3DRL/6673 286. 114 Streeton to Spencer, 15 December 1917, Walter Baldwin Spencer Papers, MLMSS 875, SLNSW. 115 Dyson, cited in McMullin, Will Dyson, pp. 159–60. 116 Streeton, cited in McMullin, Will Dyson, p. 160. 117 Alfred Daplyn, ‘Australasian artists in Europe’, Argus (Melbourne), 12 June 1918, p. 6. 118 Smart to Bean, 28 December 1917, AWM38 3DRL/6673 286. 119 Letters between Wheeler and Bean, c. 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/323. 120 Burgess in a letter from Walter Massy-Greene to George Pearce, 16 May 1918, AWM36 Bundle 59.

NOTES TO PAGES 68–71

225

121 Handwritten note by Pearce on letter from Massy Greene, 18 May 1918, AWM36 Bundle 59; George Macandie to Andrew Fisher, 27 May 1918, AWM36 Bundle 59. 122 ‘Australian artists at the fighting fronts: Progress of war records from our correspondents’, Argus (Melbourne), 18 May 1918, p. 7. 123 Excerpt of letter from Norman Lindsay to Premier of New South Wales in letter from Premier’s Department to Prime Minister’s Department and Department of Defence, 7 August 1918, AWM93 8/2/23. 124 John Anderson and Geoffrey Serle, ‘Watt, William Alexander (1871–1946)’, in ADB, (retrieved 17 September 2014); Watt to Pearce, 23 October 1918, AWM93 8/2/23. 125 Pearce to Stevens, 3 September 1918, AWM93 8/2/23. 126 Beaverbrook and Rothermere, Report on the CWMF, August 1919, BBK E/1/29, PA. 127 Orpen to Colonel Buchan, c. 1917, ART/WA1/089, IWM. Orpen himself was transferred from the British to the Canadian art scheme; see correspondence between Beaverbrook and Orpen, 1917, ART/WA1/089, IWM. 128 By 1921 the CWMF had hired one Danish artist, one Serbian artist, two Australian artists (Quinn and Coates), three Belgian artists and sixty-six British artists; see Butlin, The Practice of Her Profession, p. 274. For a full list of those artists hired by the CWMF and their work; see Wodehouse, A Checklist of the War Collections. 129 Walker to Beaverbrook, 29 December 1917, Sir Edmund Walker Papers, MS COLL. 1, Box 31 File 1, FRBL. 130 Colonel M.C. Osborne, Military Secretary, to John Innes, 21 February 1918, MG26-H, Reel C-4413 Vol. 238 RLB 2388 Item 133109, LAC. 131 Tippett, Art at the Service of War, p. 50. 132 Beaverbrook to Perley, 2 August 1917, RG24 Vol. 1749 File DHS 7–3, LAC. 133 Fosbery, cited in Tippett, Art at the Service of War, pp. 28–30. 134 Ibid., p. 30. 135 Minutes of the British War Memorials Committee, 1918, ART/WA1/ 525, IWM. 136 Bean, Matters for Consultation with General White, 9 February 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 137 Streeton to Spencer, 15 December 1917, Walter Baldwin Spencer Papers, MLMSS 875, SLNSW. 138 Bean to High Commission, 31 August 1918, AWM93 8/2/23. 139 Treloar, ‘Report on the work of the Australian War Records Section from May 1917 to September 1918’, AWM224 MSS553 Part 1. 140 Cyril Leyshon-White to Bean, 20 February 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 141 Bean to Leyshon-White, 7 March 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 142 Bean to General White, 9 February 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 143 Sydney Ure Smith to the Honourable W. Elliot Johnson, 13 July 1918, AWM93 8/2/23. 144 AIF Orders, 26 February 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 145 Ibid. 146 Treloar to Bean, 12 April 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286.

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NOTES TO PAGES 72–7

147 Smart to Bean, 9 April 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 148 Treloar to Bean, 12 April 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 149 ‘Report of a committee appointed to select 7 artists required for work in the Australian War Records Section’, 10 April 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 150 R. Wenham, letter of application for AIF artist, 7 March 1918, AWM16 4351/2/1 Part 1 and C. Campbell, letter of application for AIF artist, 1 March 1918, AWM16 4351/2/1 Part 1. 151 Private Bragg, letter of application for AIF Artist, 24 February 1918, AWM16 4351/2/1 Part 1. 152 Fry and Gray, Masterpieces of the Australian War Memorial, pp. 127, 137. 153 Sergeant A.H. Ballment, letter of application for AIF Artist, 5 March 1918, AWM16 4351/2/1 Part 1. 154 Treloar, 5 October 1918, AWM54 492/12/3. 155 Ibid. 156 Speck, Beyond the Battlefield, p. 59. 157 Higonnet, ‘Not so quiet in No-Woman’s-Land’, p. 205. 158 Speck, Painting Ghosts, p. 20. 159 Shute, ‘Heroines and heroes’, pp. 23–42. 160 Bassett, “‘Ready to serve”’, p. 16. 161 Beaumont, ‘Whatever happened to patriotic women, 1914–1918?’, p. 276. 162 Speck, Painting Ghosts, p. 20. 163 MacFall, cited in Bernard Smith, ‘Lindsay, Ruby (1885–1919)’, in ADB, (retrieved 5 December 2014). 164 Speck, Painting Ghosts, p. 20. 165 Ibid. 166 Agenda for Meeting of the Committee of the Canadian War Memorials Fund, 26 November 1917, Paul Konody Papers, Arch 19 Items 82–90, IWM; Memoranda Re Artists Employed By the Canadian War Memorials Fund, 8 March 1918, ART/WA1/522/1, IWM; Speck, Painting Ghosts, p. 21. 167 Ibid., p. 32. 168 Ibid., p. 21. 169 Treloar, cited in Speck, Painting Ghosts, p. 60. 170 Daniel Thomas, ‘Smith, Grace Cossington (1892–1984)’, in ADB, (retrieved 21 July 2014). 171 Speck, Painting Ghosts, p. 57. As Joy Damousi argues, women played a central role in the anti-conscription campaigns; see Damousi, ‘Socialist women and gendered space’, pp. 254–73. This was an important part of wartime experience in Australia, one that the official art scheme neglected entirely. 172 Konody, ‘On war memorials’, p. 15. 173 Beaverbrook, Report on the Canadian War Records Office, 31 August 1919, BBK/E/1/29, PA. 174 Konody, ‘On war memorials’, p. 15. 175 CWMF, cited in O’Keefe, Some Sort of Genius, p. 205. 176 Lipke, ‘A history and analysis of vorticism’, p. 23. 177 Tippett, Art at the Service of War, p. 32. 178 Smith, Australian Painting Today, p. 9.

NOTES TO PAGES 77–82

227

179 180 181 182 183 184

Ibid., p. 12. Williams, The Quarantined Culture, p. 24. Burn, National Life and Landscapes, p. 76. Williams, The Quarantined Culture, p. 24. Smith, Place, Taste and Tradition, p. 153. Alison Fraser, ‘Quinn, James Peter (1869–1951)’, in ADB, (retrieved 12 September 2014). 185 Smart to Bean, 29 December 1917, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 186 Burn, National Life and Landscapes, p. 7.

3 Gazing on strange and terrible lands, 1916–18 1 Treloar (ed.), Australian Chivalry, p. iv. 2 For an understanding of the practice and use of art during the war, at least in Britain, see Fox, British Art and the First World War, 1914–1924. 3 Futurist Manifesto, cited in Hynes, A War Imagined, p. 7. 4 Ibid., p. 10. 5 Fry, cited in Sutton (ed.), Letters of Roger Fry, p. 380. 6 Tippett, ‘The history of the Canadian War Memorial Scheme’, p. 130. 7 Augustus Bridle, ‘The arts and the war’, Maclean’s Magazine, February 1916, p. 71. 8 Tippett, ‘The history of the Canadian War Memorial Scheme’, p. 130. 9 Streeton, cited in Galbally and Gray (eds), Letters from Smike, p. 139. 10 Hynes, A War Imagined, pp. 3–24. 11 Lloyd Jones, ‘War and art’. 12 Tippett, Art at the Service of War, p. 13. 13 Marion Ryan, ‘Art versus the Royal Academy: Young artists get a real chance to depict war’, press cutting sent from Alfred Yockney to C.R.W. Nevinson, January 1918 [no publication or page reference available], ART/WA1/ 509, IWM. 14 Historic Memorials Committee, c. 1922, NAA: CP103/11 319; Sayers, Australian Art, p. 121. 15 Bean to Griffiths, 10 January 1918, AWM16 4351/2/1 Part 1; Bean, Matters for Consultation with General White, 9 February 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/ 286. 16 Treloar to Bean, 18 May 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 17 Bean, ‘The Australian War Records: An account of the present development overseas . . .’, c. 1918, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 1. 18 Bean to Mr Ross, 10 July 1918, AWM16 4351/2/20. 19 Galbally and Gray (eds), Letters from Smike, pp. 150–2. 20 Streeton to Spencer, 11 October 1918, Walter Baldwin Spencer Papers, MLMSS 875, SLNSW. 21 Orpen to Colonel Buchan, c. 1917, ART/WA1/089, IWM; Tippett, ‘The history of the Canadian War Memorial Scheme’, p. 130. 22 Ibid., p. 151. 23 Clause 7, Artist Agreement, 3 May 1918, AWM93 18/7/12; Bean to Griffiths, 10 January 1918, AWM16 4351/2/1 Part 1.

228

NOTES TO PAGES 82–6

24 Will Dyson to Edward Dyson, c. May 1918, MS 10617, Box 269, SLV. 25 Bell to Smart, 29 December 1918, AWM93 18/7/1. 26 Treloar to Bean, 18 May 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286; Lambert, Thirty Years of an Artist’s Life, p. 73. 27 CWMF to Lambert, c. 1917, cited in Lambert, Thirty Years of an Artist’s Life, p. 73; Walker to Beaverbrook, 4 October 1919, Sir Edmund Walker Papers, MS COLL. 1, Box 24 File 60, FRBL. 28 Lambert to Konody, 5 November 1917, MLDOC 1189, SLNSW. 29 The only Australian artists to accept commissions with the CWMF were James Quinn, who painted a portrait for the collection, and George Coates. Coates accepted a position because he was unable to paint for Australia during the war given that he served as a sergeant in the British Army. After the war, he was commissioned by the Australian scheme. 30 These terms had been approved by the High Commission and the military in late 1916; see Acting Accountant Memo, 3 June 1918, AWM93 18/7/12. 31 Lieutenant Colonel J.L. Whitlam to Colonel Anderson, 10 December 1916, Service Record, NAA: B2455 DYSON W. 32 Smart, ‘Statement in Regard to Australian Official War Artists’, 4 June 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 33 Clause 6, Artist Agreement, 3 May 1918, AWM93 18/7/12. 34 Ibid. 35 Treloar, ‘Report on the work of the Australian War Records Section from May 1917 to September 1918’, AWM224 MSS553 Part 1. 36 Dodgson, ‘Conditions to be accepted by all Artists before receiving a permit to work at the Front or in the War Zone’, March 1917, ART/WA1/ 489, IWM. 37 Clause 6 and Clause 8, Artist Agreement, 3 May 1918, AWM93 18/7/12. 38 Smart to Streeton, 20 July 1917, AWM93 18/7/12. 39 Instructions Regarding the Control of the AWRS Artists in France, c. 1918, AWM25 1013/35. 40 Bean and Dyson, ‘Note from Mr Bean and Lieutenant Dyson as to camouflage’, c. 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/213. 41 Clause 1, Artist Agreement, 3 May 1918, AWM93 18/7/12. 42 Konody to Norman Wilkinson, 5 September 1917, Paul Konody Papers, Arch 19, Item 3, IWM; Konody to Nevinson, 5 September 1917, Paul Konody Papers, Arch 19, Item 9, IWM; Konody to John Lavery, 11 September 1917, Paul Konody Papers, Arch 19, Item 13, IWM. 43 Harries and Harries, The War Artists, p. 87. 44 Thomas Derrick, cited in ibid. 45 Ibid., p. 88. 46 List of Pictures Commissioned for the Canadian War Memorials Fund, 15 June 1918, Paul Konody Papers, Arch 19, Item 48, IWM. 47 Lambert, Thirty Years of an Artist’s Life, pp. 75–98. 48 Bean to Smart, 21 December 1917, AWM93 18/7/8 Part 1. 49 AWRS to AIF Artists, 8 July 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 50 Treloar to Benson, 1 June 1918, AWM16 4351/2/3. 51 AWRS to AIF Artists, 8 July 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286.

NOTES TO PAGES 86–90

229

52 Longstaff to Treloar, c. 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286; Benson to Treloar, 16 July 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 53 Scott to Treloar, 19 July 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 54 McCubbin to Treloar, 11 July 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 55 Henry Fullwood, Death of Baron von Richthofen, 1918, watercolour with pencil and charcoal on paper, 39.2  57 cm, ART02495, AWM. 56 Clause 7, Artist Agreement, 3 May 1918, AWM93 18/7/12. 57 Instructions Regarding the Control of Work of the AWRS Artists in France, c. 1918 AWM25 1013/35. 58 Will Longstaff’s sketchbook, ART19796, AWM; Gray, ‘Will Longstaff’s sketch-book’, pp. 52–3. 59 The 1st Brigade AIF captured this position near Templeux-le-Guerard, and the picture is dated 18 September 1918; see James Scott, Enemy MachineGun Position, watercolour over pencil on paper, 25.2  35.4 cm, 1918, ART03379, AWM. 60 Hughes, The Art of Australia, p. 100. 61 Cork, A Bitter Truth, p. 169. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid., p. 198. 64 See Appendix A for dates of artists’ visits to the front. Bean, ‘Australia’s records’, 29 September 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2; Report on Australian War Artists and Sculptor, c. September 1919, NAA: MP367/1 580/2/2411. 65 Dyson was almost continuously at the front – from December 1916 to May 1917. He took a short break in London in June but was back at the front by the end of July 1917 (see McMullin, Will Dyson, pp. 107–85). Leist and Power left for France on 3 September 1917, spending from 5 September to 1 December 1917 in the field (see letters between Leist and Smart, AWM93 18/7/8 Part 1). 66 Dyson, Australia at War. 67 McMullin, Will Dyson, p. 137. For a discussion of how Bean grappled with writing about the Third Battle of Ypres, see Haultain-Gall, ‘Bean, the Third Battle of Ypres and the Australian narrative of the First World War’, pp. 135–51. 68 Letters between Leist and Smart, c. September 1917, AWM93 18/7/8 Part 1. 69 Letters between Bryant and Smart and Smart and Griffiths, November– December 1917, AWM93 18/7/2; Service Record, 1917–18, NAA: B2455 BRYANT CDJ. 70 Beaumont, Australia’s War, p. 23. 71 Beaumont, Broken Nation, pp. 273–4, 279–81, 363–74. There is also little evidence to suggest that any attempt was made to select artists for the Australian War Records Section from soldiers already serving in the Middle East. 72 Smart, ‘Statement in Regard to Australian Official War Artists’, 4 June 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 73 Lambert, transcript of a presentation given by George Lambert of his role as Official Artist, c. 1918, MLMSS 97/4 Item 6, SLNSW. 74 Record of Officers’ Service, Lambert Service File, NAA: B2455 LAMBERT GEORGE WASHINGTON.

230

NOTES TO PAGES 90–3

75 Beaumont, Australia’s War, pp. 26–7; Lambert, Thirty Years of an Artist’s Life, pp. 75–98. 76 Wilson, The Myriad Faces of War, pp. 554–81. 77 Quinn was sent out to France on 16 February 1918, and Longstaff followed in May 1918 (see Casualty Form – Active Service, Service Record, NAA: B2455 QUINN JAMES PETER). Longstaff was originally attached to the 3rd Division (see letter from Griffiths to Secretary of Department of Defence, 24 May 1918, Service Record, NAA: B2455 LONGSTAFF JOHN). 78 Fullwood was sent to France from 10 May to 3 August and Streeton from 14 May to 14 August 1918. Colonel Dodds DAG AIF to Bean, 8 May 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/299; Service Record, 1918–19, NAA: B2455 FULLWOOD A H; letter to Chief Paymaster, 24 September 1918, AWM93 18/7/12. 79 Beaumont, Australia’s War, pp. 23–6. 80 Ibid., p. 26; McMullin, Will Dyson, pp. 169–77. 81 Bell had been ready to go to the front since June 1918 (see Smart, ‘Statement in Regard to Australian Official War Artists’, 4 June 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286). Instead he arrived on the Western Front on 5 October 1918 and stayed until 7 April 1919, returning for a second visit from 1 July to 12 September 1919 (see Service Record, NAA: B2455 BELL G.H.F.). 82 Letters between Streeton and Smart, October to November 1918, AWM93 18/7/12. 83 Bean to Prime Minister’s Department, 5 October 1918, and Bean, ‘Australian Artists’, 5 October 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 84 Ibid. 85 Streeton to Australia House, 18 October 1918, AWM93 18/7/12. 86 Lambert, cited in Lambert, Thirty Years of an Artist’s Life, p. 93. 87 Letters between Bryant and Smart, December 1917 – February 1918, AWM93 18/7/2. 88 Bryant to Smart, c. 1918, AWM93 18/7/2. 89 ‘Artists and battle pictures’, Kalgoorlie Miner, 8 October 1918, p. 6. 90 Bryant cited in Moore, ‘The official Australian war artists’, n.p. 91 Streeton to Spencer, 11 October 1918, Walter Baldwin Spencer Papers, MLMSS 875, SLNSW. 92 Lambert, cited in Moore, ‘The official Australian war artists’, n.p. 93 Clause Five, Artist Agreement, 3 May 1918, AWM93 18/7/12. 94 Streeton to Spencer, 11 October 1918, Walter Baldwin Spencer Papers, MLMSS 875, SLNSW. 95 Unknown to Smart, 24 December 1918, AWM93 18/7/12. 96 Streeton to Smart, 15 October 1918, AWM93 18/7/12. 97 Ibid. 98 Unknown to Smart, 24 December 1918, AWM93 18/7/12. 99 Beaverbrook, Memorandum of the Preliminary Meeting of the Imperial Permanent Memorials Committee, 6 March 1918, ART/WA1/522/1, IWM. 100 McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, p. 57; Streeton to Roberts, 6 July 1918, Letters from A. Streeton, 1889–1931, MFMG 27511, NLA.

NOTES TO PAGES 94–7

231

101 Dyson had stated in his proposal to Fisher that he ‘should wish for no facilities for moving about’. He added that ‘it would be advantageous for me to be in a position to avail myself of any such facilities as might offer’ (see Dyson to Fisher, 12 September 1916, AWM93 18/7/5 Part 1). A.J. Hill, ‘Gullett, Sir Henry Somer (Harry) (1878–1940)’, in ADB, (retrieved 24 January 2018). 102 McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, p. 54; McMullin, Will Dyson, p. 258. 103 Will Dyson to Ted Dyson, May 1918, MS 10617 Box 269, SLV. 104 Bean, ‘Will Dyson, artist and soldier’. 105 Streeton to Roberts, 20 July 1918, Letters from A. Streeton, 1889–1931, MFMG 27511, NLA. 106 Streeton to Nora Streeton, 26 October 1918, cited in Galbally and Gray (eds), Letters from Smike, p. 153. 107 See Streeton to Roberts, 6 July 1918, Letters from A. Streeton, 1889–1931, MFMG 27511, NLA. 108 Will Dyson to Ted Dyson, May 1918, MS 10617 Box 269, SLV. 109 Bean, cited in McMullin, Will Dyson, p. 137. 110 ‘Will Dyson wounded third narrow escape’, Ballarat Courier, 17 November 1917; ‘Will Dyson injured’, North Western Advocate and the Emu Bay Times, 22 November 1917. 111 Will Dyson to Ted Dyson, May 1918, MS 10617 Box 269, SLV. 112 Watson, ‘Canada and Wyndham Lewis the artist’, p. 62. 113 Dyson, Australia at War, p. vi. 114 Bean’s Diary, August 1917, AWM3DRL606/86/1. 115 Letters from Streeton to Smart, 4 and 19 June 1918, AWM93 18/7/12. 116 Bean commented that Lambert cut ‘a most picturesque figure, with his keen sharp face, clear eyes, pointed yellow beard, and smart turned up Australian hat’; see Bean’s Diary, 10 September 1918, AWM38 3DRL606/116A/1. 117 Lambert, Thirty Years of an Artist’s Life, p. 87. 118 Scott to Treloar, 19 July 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 119 Streeton to Smart, 19 July 1918, AWM93 18/7/12. 120 Bryant, cited in Moore, ‘The official Australian war artists’, n.p. 121 Eric Kennington to Konody, c. 1918, Paul Konody Papers, Arch 19, Item 20, IWM. 122 Streeton to Roberts, 6 July 1918, Letters from A. Streeton, 1889–1931, MFMG 27511, NLA. 123 Lambert cited in Gooding, Gallipoli Revisited, p. 35. 124 Beatty, cited in Tippett, Art at the Service of War, p. 54. 125 Nevinson, cited in ibid. 126 Dyson to Fisher, 12 September 1916, AWM93 18/7/5 Part 1. 127 Streeton to Roberts, 20 July 1918, Letters from A. Streeton, 1889–1931, MFMG 27511, NLA. 128 Lambert, Pocketbook, c. 1918, image pencil on paper, ART11394.010, AWM. 129 Smart to Streeton, 20 July 1917, AWM93 18/7/12. 130 Streeton to Roberts, 20 July 1918, Letters from A. Streeton, 1889–1931, MFMG 27511, NLA.

232

NOTES TO PAGES 97–104

131 Streeton to Spencer, 11 October 1918, Walter Baldwin Spencer Papers, MLMSS 875, SLNSW. 132 Streeton to Smart, 15 July 1918, AWM93 18/7/12. 133 Dyson to Fisher, 12 September 1916, AWM93 18/7/5 Part 1. 134 Bean, Gallipoli Mission, p. 111. 135 Bean, ‘Will Dyson, artist and soldier’. 136 Will Dyson to Ted Dyson, c. September 1918, MS 10617 Box 269, SLV. 137 Will Dyson to Ted Dyson, May 1918, MS 10617 Box 269, SLV. 138 Dyson, Australia at War, p. 18. 139 Ibid. 140 Wieland, ‘Winter witness’, p. 103. 141 Marriot, ‘Will Dyson war drawings’. 142 ‘Mr Dyson’s war drawings’, Times Literary Supplement, 5 December 1918. 143 Bean’s Diary, 16 December 1916, AWM38 3DRL606/68/1. 144 Dyson, Australia at War, p. 30. 145 Will Dyson to Ted Dyson, n.d., MS 10617 Box 269, SLV. 146 Sayers, Australian Art, p. 81. 147 Fry and Gray, Masterpieces of the Australian War Memorial, p. 11. 148 Ann E. Galbally, ‘Hall, Lindsay Bernard (1859–1935)’, in ADB, (retrieved 24 January 2014). 149 Sayers, Australian Art, p. 80. 150 Katherine Harper, ‘Ashton, Julian Rossi (1851–1942)’, in ADB, (retrieved 24 January 2014). 151 Sayers, Australian Art, p. 80. 152 Fry and Gray, Masterpieces of the Australian War Memorial, p. 137. 153 J. Fenton-Smith, ‘Lister, William Lister (1859–1943)’, in ADB, (retrieved 24 January 2014). 154 Speck, Painting Ghosts, p. 26. 155 Gleeson, Impressionist Painters, 1881–1930, p. 10. 156 Grishin, Australian Art, p. 119. 157 Ibid. 158 Smith, Australian Painting, 1788–1970, p. 128. 159 Fry and Gray, Masterpieces of the Australian War Memorial, pp. 127, 141–2. 160 Gray, George W. Lambert Retrospective, pp. 10–11. 161 Fry and Gray, Masterpieces of the Australian War Memorial, pp. 127–43. 162 Holbrook, Anzac, p. 26. 163 Harrington, British Artists and War, p. 7. 164 Cork, A Bitter Truth, p. 73. 165 Hynes, A War Imagined, p. 33. 166 Ibid., p. 34. 167 Lady Butler, cited in Cork, A Bitter Truth, pp. 72–3. 168 Times (London), cited in Williams, The Quarantined Culture, p. 26. 169 Gough, ‘The empty battlefield’, p. 39. 170 Jackson, A Painter’s Country, p. 40. 171 Ibid. 172 Gough, ‘The empty battlefield’, p. 44.

NOTES TO PAGES 104–10

173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181

182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194

195 196 197

233

Ibid., pp. 44–5. Jackson, A Painter’s Country, p. 40. Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning. Burn, National Life and Landscapes, p. 75. Ibid., p. 74. Speck, Painting Ghosts, p. 26. Burn, National Life and Landscapes, p. 72. Ibid., p. 118; Speck, Painting Ghosts, p. 26. Most artists admired the soldiers they met at the front. Leist commented that ‘the boys here are d – d good chaps’; see Leist to Smart, c. 1917, AWM93 18/ 7/8 Part 1. Streeton to Smart, 4 June 1918, AWM93 18/7/12. Streeton to Roberts, 6 July 1918, Letters from A. Streeton, 1889–1931, MFMG 27511, NLA. Streeton to Roberts, 31 July 1918, Letters from A. Streeton, 1889–1931, MFMG 27511, NLA. Burn, National Life and Landscapes, p. 72. Lambert, cited in Moore, ‘The official Australian war artists’, n.p. Lambert, Thirty Years of an Artist’s Life, pp. 82–3. Lambert, cited in Speck, Painting Ghosts, p. 26. Australian War Records Section, Catalogue of Australian Official War Pictures and Photographs. Ibid. ‘Our part in the war: Fine pictorial display’, West Australian, 27 May 1918. Ibid. Laugesen, Boredom is the Enemy, p. 55; Slater, entry 18 January 1918, cited in Slater and Widdowson, The War Diaries of William Slater, p. 71. Camoufleur, ‘Musketeers of brush and pencil with the AIF: Art under fire: The battlefield as studio’, Herald (Melbourne), 1 February 1919, AWM16 4531/2/15 Part 2. W. Bishop, ‘Views and comments: Exhibition of war pictures’, Advertiser, 3 January 1919, p. 8. Daplyn, ‘Australian artists at the Royal Academy’, Sydney Morning Herald, 25 January 1919, p. 7. British-Australasian, cited in ibid.

4 A beautiful graveyard, 1919 1 Index of First World War Art, Art Section, AWM. 2 The paintings covered such subjects as the Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery, Navy, Air Force, Veterinary Corps, forestry, railway construction, munition works, medical, transport, battlefields and ruins, embarkation and disembarkation, training camps, scenes of soldiers on leave, shipping and ports, land work and symbolic paintings of the war; see Canadian War Memorials Fund [CWMF], The Housing of the Canadian War Memorials, pp. 2–3; Tippett, Art at the Service of War, p. 70; Eric Brown cited in ibid., p. 75. 3 Tippett, Art at the Service of War, p. 69.

234

NOTES TO PAGES 110–14

4 Robert Ross, cited in ibid., p. 58. 5 Harries and Harries, The War Artists, p. 95. 6 ‘Canadian war art to order’, Boston Christian Science Monitor, 4 November 1918. 7 ‘Artists picture Canada in war’, New York Times, 11 June 1919. 8 ‘The Canadian Memorials Exhibition at the Royal Academy’, The Studio: An Illustrated Magazine of Fine and Applied Art, vol. 115, no. 311, 1919; Tippett, Art at the Service of War, p. 3; CWMF, Canadian War Memorials Exhibition. 9 Wodehouse, A Checklist of the War Collections. 10 ‘Canadian war art to order’, Boston Christian Science Monitor, 4 November 1918. 11 Meighen to Beaverbrook, 25 November 1920, BBK/E/1/50, PA. 12 Tippett, Art at the Service of War, p. 80. 13 Charles Bean to Edwin and Lucy Bean, 19 January 1919, AWM38 3DRL 7447/7. 14 Robert Borden, cited in Tippett, Art at the Service of War, p. 80. 15 Muirhead Bone, cited in ibid. 16 Bean to Edwin and Lucy Bean, 19 January 1919, AWM38 3DRL 7447/7. 17 Bean, cited in Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works, Report Together with Minutes of Evidence Relating to the Proposed Australian War Memorial, p. 4; Williams, The Quarantined Culture, p. 24. 18 Treloar, cited in McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, p. 183. 19 Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning, p. 5. 20 Condé, ‘John Treloar’, p. 457. 21 Ibid. 22 Bean, cited in Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works, Report Together with Minutes of Evidence Relating to the Proposed Australian War Memorial, p. 4. 23 Bean to Edwin and Lucy Bean, 19 January 1919, AWM38 3DRL 7447/7. My emphasis. 24 Bean, ‘Australian Artists’, 5 October 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286; Bean, ‘The Australian War Museum’, July 1919, NAA: A1 1919/9418. 25 Smart to Bean, 22 November 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286, and Bean to Captain H.G. Brain, 27 November 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 26 NWRO Art Committee to Prime Minister’s Department, 20 September 1918, AWM93 18/7/12. 27 Treloar (ed.), Australian Chivalry, p. iv. 28 Harries and Harries, The War Artists, p. 91. 29 Malvern, ‘War, memory and museums’, p. 190. 30 Ibid., p. 189. 31 Brandon, Art and War, p. 40. 32 Ibid. 33 Unknown to Prime Minister’s Department, 18 November 1919, AWM93 18/7/12. 34 See Appendix B.

NOTES TO PAGES 114–19

235

35 Extract of Minutes of NWRO Art Committee Meeting Relating to Composition Pictures, 26 November 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286; Beaumont, Broken Nation, p. xix. 36 Treloar to Bean, n.d., AWM38 3DRL 6673/286; Beaumont, ‘Australia’s global memory footprint’, p. 52. 37 For more detail on the representation of Mont St Quentin in art, photography and diorama, see Stanley, The Men of Mont St Quentin, pp. 143–6. 38 Ibid., pp. 49–50. 39 Memorandum to the Secretary of the Prime Minister’s Department, 25 June 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 40 Ibid. 41 Scheme of Australian War Pictures, 13 December 1918, AWM16 4372 41/1. 42 Dodds, Memo on Private Crozier, 6 November 1917, AWM16 4351/2/20. 43 ‘Surrender of the German Fleet: No Australian record’, Brisbane Courier, 1 March 1919, p. 12. 44 Ibid. 45 Unknown to Box, 25 November 1918, AWM93 18/7/6. 46 Smart to unknown, 25 November 1918, AWM93 18/7/6. 47 ‘Surrender of the German Fleet: No Australian record’, p. 12. 48 McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, p. 65; Bean, ‘Australian War Memorial Pictures’, c. May 1919, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 49 ‘Surrender of the German Fleet: No Australian Record’, p. 12. 50 Sydney Ure Smith, Bertram Stevens and Charles Lloyd Jones, ‘Australian war memorials’, Sydney Morning Herald, 24 December 1918, p. 5. 51 Ibid. 52 Harries and Harries, The War Artists, p. 91; Ure Smith, Stevens and Lloyd Jones, ‘Australian war memorials’, p. 5. 53 Streeton, cited in Galbally and Gray (eds), Letters from Smike, p. 143. 54 Ure Smith, Stevens and Lloyd Jones, ‘Australian war memorials’, p. 5. 55 Inglis, Sacred Places, p. 118. 56 Ure Smith, Stevens and Lloyd Jones, ‘Australian war memorials’, p. 5. 57 Hugh M’Kinney, ‘Australian war memorials: Letter to the Editor of the Herald’, Sydney Morning Herald, 28 December 1918, p. 11. 58 ‘War memorials’, Construction and Local Government Journal, 30 December 1918. 59 Bean, ‘Australian Artists’, 5 October 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 60 See Appendix C. 61 Pearce to Acting Prime Minister William Watt, 27 August 1918, AWM93 8/2/23. 62 Prime Minister’s Department to Department of Defence, 16 December 1918, AWM93 8/2/23. 63 Memorandum from the Prime Minister’s Department to the Department of Defence, 16 December 1918, AWM93 8/2/23. 64 High Commission to Department of Defence, 20 September 1918, AWM93 8/2/23.

236

NOTES TO PAGES 119–25

65 ‘War paintings: Australian artists at work’, Queensland Times, 16 September 1918. 66 Lambert to Australian High Commission, c. 1918, cited in Lambert, Thirty Years of an Artist’s Life, pp. 89–90. 67 Lambert to Smart, c. October 1918, AWM93 18/7/7 Part 1; Lambert to Australian High Commission, c. 1918, cited in Lambert, Thirty Years of an Artist’s Life, pp. 89–90. 68 Bean to Edwin and Lucy Bean, 19 January 1919, AWM38 3DRL 7447/7. 69 Bean to Captain H.G. Brain, 27 November 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 70 Bean to Smart, 27 November 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 71 Bean, ‘The Australian War Museum’, July 1919, NAA: A1 1919/9418. 72 Bean, ‘Matters for consultation with General White’, 9 February 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 73 Treloar to Bean, n.d., AMW38 3DRL 6673/286. 74 Treloar to Bean, 18 May 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 75 Bean to Smart, 25 May 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 76 Ibid. 77 Smart to Bean, 29 May 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 78 Fred Leist, Australian Infantry Attack in Polygon Wood, England, 1919, oil on canvas, 122.5  245 cm, ART02927, AWM. 79 Bean, ‘The Australian War Records: An account of the present development overseas . . .’, c. 1918, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 1. 80 Bean, ‘Australian War Memorial Pictures’, c. May 1919, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 81 Smart to Bell, 9 May 1919, AWM93 18/7/1; George Bell, Race Meeting with the General’s Chargers, c. 1918–19, watercolour on paper, 25.4  35.4 cm, ART50037, AWM. 82 Talmage to Smart, 16 June 1919, AWM93 18/7/1. 83 Smart to Talmage, 18 June 1919, AWM93 18/7/1. 84 Bean, ‘The Australian War Records: An account of the present development overseas . . .’, c. 1918, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 1. 85 Bean to Gullett, 1 December 1919, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 86 Scheme of Australian War Pictures, 16 December 1918, AWM16 4372 41/1. 87 Bean to Prime Minister’s Department, 5 October 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 88 Scheme of Australian War Pictures, 16 December 1918, AWM16 4372 41/1. 89 Assmann, ‘Re-framing memory’, in Tilmans, van Vree and Winter (eds), Performing the Past, p. 43. 90 Scheme of Australian War Pictures, 16 December 1918, AWM16 4372 41/1. 91 Ibid. 92 Bean to Treloar, 20 October 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 93 McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, p. 56; Back and Webster, Moments in Time, p. 9. 94 McCubbin to Treloar, 11 July 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286; Bean cited in Back and Webster, Moments in Time, p. 9. 95 Inglis, ‘A sacred place’, p. 101. 96 Bean, ‘The Australian War Museum’, July 1919, NAA: A1 1919/9418.

NOTES TO PAGES 125–31

237

97 McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, p. 23; Bean to Treloar, 14 May 1918, AWM16 4372/21/3. 98 Wellington, ‘Narrative as history, image as memory’, in McAleer and Longair (eds), Curating Empire, p. 111. 99 Bean to Treloar, 14 May 1918, AWM16 4372/21/3. 100 Bean to Treloar, 20 October 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 101 Back and Webster, Moments in Time, p. 21. 102 Bean, ‘The Australian War Museum’, July 1919, NAA: A1 1919/9418. 103 Anne-Marie Condé asserts that the dioramas were an important avenue through which Bean ‘contributed to the shaping of Australia’s perception of the First World War’ (Condé, ‘A marriage of sculpture and art’, p. 56). Jennifer Wellington also argues that the ‘narrative and content’ of the dioramas were closely controlled by Bean (Wellington, ‘Narrative as history, image as memory’, p. 109). 104 Wellington, ‘Narrative as history, image as memory’, p. 111. 105 See Appendix D; Bean to Smart, 6 August 1919, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 106 Ibid. 107 Bean also suggested that Web Gilbert be commissioned with a sculpture for the front of the War Museum representing the spirit of the Australian soldier, although he did not outline the particulars of this sculpture, and there is no evidence that it was produced; see Bean, ‘Australian War Memorial Pictures’, c. May 1919, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 108 Ibid.; Smart to Bean, 6 August 1919, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 109 Ibid. 110 Bean to Gullett, 1 December 1919, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 111 Bean to Smart, 6 August 1919, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 112 Agenda for Meeting of the AWMC, July 1919, AWM170 1/2 Part 1. 113 Appendix A in Agenda for Meeting of the AWMC, July 1919, AWM170 1/2 Part 1. 114 Agenda for Meeting of the AWMC, July 1919, AWM170 1/2 Part 1. 115 Smart to Acting Official Secretary, 11 December 1919, AWM93 18/7/2. 116 Bean, ‘Australian War Memorial Pictures’, c. May 1919, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286; Smart to Bean, 6 August 1919, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 117 Bean to Gullett, 1 December 1919, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 118 Bean, ‘Australian War Memorial Pictures’, c. May 1919, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286; Smart to Bean, 6 August 1919, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 119 Bean, ‘Australian War Memorial Pictures’, c. May 1919, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286; Smart to Bean, 6 August 1919, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286; Agenda for Meeting of the AWMC, July 1919, AWM170 1/2 Part 1. 120 Bean to Gullett, 1 December 1919, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 121 Silas, Crusading at Anzac Anno Domini 1915. 122 Bean to Gullett, 1 December 1919, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 123 Bean to Gullett, 20 December 1919, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 124 Bean to Gullett, 1 December 1919, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 125 Treloar to Bean, 17 April 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/323.

238

NOTES TO PAGES 131–5

126 Bean to Henry Gullett, 3 January 1920, AWM38 3DRL 6673/287; Bean, ‘Australian War Memorial Pictures’, c. May 1919, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 127 Letters between Treloar and Bean about Wheeler, 1920–29, AWM38 3DRL 6673/323. 128 Treloar’s notes on Wheeler, 29 December 1919, AWM38 3DRL 6673/323. 129 Smart to Coates, 19 April 1918, AWM93 18/7/4. 130 Coates to Smart, 25 January 1919, AWM93 18/7/4. 131 Smart to Bean, 27 January 1919, AWM93 18/7/4. 132 Department of Defence to High Commission, 20 June 1919, AWM93 18/7/4. 133 Coates to Smart, 17 December 1919, AWM93 18/7/4. See also George Coates, Brigadier General Thomas Griffiths, 1919, oil on canvas, 127  101.5 cm, ART00197, and Major General Edwin Tivey, 1919, oil on canvas, 76.5  63.5 cm, AWM ART00196. 134 Smart, Fildes and Talmage, Memorandum of the NWRO Art Committee, 14 January 1920, AWM93 18/7/4. 135 Smart, Note in Fullwood’s file, 1 July 1919, AWM93 18/7/6. 136 Fildes to Smart, 25 August 1919, AWM93 18/7/6. 137 Talmage to Smart, 28 October 1919, AWM93 18/7/6. 138 Smart, Memo on Lieutenant Fullwood’s picture illustrating the attack on Péronne, 4 December 1919, AWM93 18/7/6. 139 Ibid. Smart, Memo re ‘The Attack on Péronne’, 4 December 1919, AWM93 18/7/6. 140 Bean to Smart, 6 August 1919, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. Extract from Minutes of Meeting of the NWRO Art Committee, 13 October 1919, AWM93 18/7/6. 141 Gullett to Bean, 31 October 1919, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. For further detail on how Villers-Bretonneux has been commemorated by Australians and the French, see the work of Romain Fathi, in particular Fathi, ‘“They attack Villers-Bretonneux and block the road to Amiens”’, pp. 53–71. 142 Smart to Fullwood, 14 April 1919, AWM93 18/7/6. 143 Robert Ross to unknown, c. April 1918, ART/WA1/524, IWM. 144 Bell to Smart, 11 June 1919, AWM93 18/7/1; Smart to Bell, 12 June 1919, AWM93 18/7/1; Smart to Treloar, 13 May 1919, AWM93 18/7/1. 145 Bean to Treloar, 20 October 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 146 Smart to unknown, 5 June 1919, AWM93 18/7/6. 147 Bean, ‘The Australian War Records: An account of the present development overseas . . .’, c. 1918, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 1. 148 Smart to Acting Official Secretary, 11 December 1919, AWM93 18/7/2. 149 Smart to Power, March 1919, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 150 Smart to Bell, January 1919, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 151 George to Amy Lambert, 17 February 1919, MLMSS 97/4, SLNSW. 152 Winter and Prost, The Great War in History, p. 174. 153 Gullett to Bean, 31 October 1919, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 154 Bean, Memo for Australian War Pictures Committee, 16 January 1919, AWM93 18/7/6. 155 Bean, Gallipoli Mission, p. 8.

NOTES TO PAGES 135–43

156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193

239

Gammage, in ibid., p. vi. Bean, Gallipoli Mission, p. 4; McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, p. 59. Bean, Gallipoli Mission, p. 9; Gooding, Gallipoli Revisited, pp. 232–3. Gooding, Gallipoli Revisited, p. 38. Ibid., pp. 25–38. Bean, Gallipoli Mission, pp. 5, 9; Gooding, Gallipoli Revisited, pp. 232–3. Cable from High Commission, 7 January 1919, AWM93 8/2/23. Smart, cited in Lambert, Thirty Years of an Artist’s Life, p. 95. Cable from High Commission, 7 January 1919, AWM93 8/2/23. Treloar to unknown, 18 June 1918, AWM25 1013/29 Part 2. Bean to Brain, 27 November 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. Gooding, Gallipoli Revisited, p. 202. Lambert to Smart, 11 December 1918, AWM38 3DRL 6673/302. Ibid. Bean, cited in Lambert, Thirty Years of an Artist’s Life, p. 96. Smart to Bean, 14 December 1918, AWM93 18/7/8 Part 1; Bean, cited in Lambert, Thirty Years of an Artist’s Life, p. 96. Lambert, cited in Lambert, Thirty Years of an Artist’s Life, p. 97. Cable from High Commission, 7 January 1919, AWM93 8/2/23. Bean, Diary, February–March 1919, AWM38 3DRL 606/230/1; Gooding, Gallipoli Revisited, p. 233. Gooding, Gallipoli Revisited, p. 233. Ibid., pp. 79–82. Ibid., p. 162. Bean, Gallipoli Mission, p. 108. Ibid., p. 110. Ibid., p. 73. Bean, cited in Lambert, Thirty Years of an Artist’s Life, p. 96. George to Amy Lambert, 16 February 1919, MLMSS 97/4, SLNSW. Gooding, Gallipoli Revisited, p. 202. Ibid. George to Amy Lambert, 24 February 1919, MLMSS 97/4, SLNSW. George to Amy Lambert, 16 February 1919, MLMSS 97/4, SLNSW. Bean, Gallipoli Mission, p. 112. Ibid. George to Amy Lambert, 17 February 1919, MLMSS 97/4, SLNSW. George to Amy Lambert, 8 March 1919, MLMSS 97/4, SLNSW. George to Amy Lambert, 17 February and 2, 7 and 9 March 1919, all MLMSS 97/4, SLNSW. Bean, cited in McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, p. 79. Lambert to AIF Headquarters, 8 May 1919, AWM25 1013/29 Part 2; Lambert, cited in Gooding, Gallipoli Revisited, p. 187.

5 A suitable memorial, 1920–22 1 McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, p. 66. 2 Bean, ‘The Australian War Records’, c. 1918, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 1.

240

NOTES TO PAGES 143–8

3 Bean, cited in McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, p. 66; Bean, ‘The Australian War Museum’, July 1919, NAA: A1 1919/9418. 4 Inglis, Sacred Places, pp. 316–18. 5 Ibid., p. 317. 6 Kavanagh, Museums and the First World War, p. 135. 7 McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, pp. 66–7. 8 Inglis, ‘A sacred place’, pp. 100–1. 9 Poynton to Hughes, 14 April 1921, AWM93 12/12/6. 10 Ibid. 11 Treloar, Notes on the Australian War Museum, 9 January 1922, AWM124 3/6. 12 McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, p. 82. 13 Ibid., pp. 82–3. 14 Williams, The Quarantined Culture, p. 116. 15 ‘Melbourne, Tuesday 24 June 1919’, Age (Melbourne), 24 June 1919, p. 4. 16 McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, p. 78. 17 Australian War Memorial Act 1925 (Commonwealth). 18 Kavanagh, Museums and the First World War, p. 145. 19 Kenworthy in Imperial War Museum Bill, House of Commons Debate, 12 April 1920, vol. 127, cc 1465–9, Order for Second Reading read. 20 Myers in Imperial War Museum Bill, House of Commons Debate, 12 April 1920, vol. 127, cc 1465–9, Order for Second Reading read. 21 Myers in ibid. Despite these speeches from Kenworthy and Myers, the Bill was passed with 110 to fourteen lords voting in its favour. 22 Mr Choquette, Canadian Parliament Senate Debates, 13th Parliament, First Session, May 1918, vol. 1, p. 684. 23 Sheftall, Altered Memories of the Great War, pp. 133–4. 24 Ibid., p. 134. 25 Konody, ‘On war memorials’, p. 15. 26 Senator Beaubien, Canadian Parliament Senate Debates, 13th Parliament, First Session, May 1918, vol. 1, p. 686. 27 Tippett, Art at the Service of War, p. 101. 28 Lucy Woodsworth, cited in ibid., p. 102. 29 Vancouver Parent-Teachers’ Association, cited in ibid. 30 Beaverbrook, cited in Holroyd, Augustus John, p. 673. 31 Hughes, cited in Williams, The Quarantined Culture, p. 108. 32 McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, p. 64. 33 Bean to Fisher, 13 January 1919, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 34 Bean, ‘The Australian War Records’, c. 1918, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 1. 35 Meeting of the AWMC, 17 January 1921, AWM170 1/2 Part 1. 36 Tippett, Art at the Service of War, p. 95. 37 Beaverbrook to Arthur Meighen, 14 December 1920, BBK/A/247, PA; Walker to McCurdy, 11 November 1920, Sir Edmund Walker Papers, MS COLL. 1, Box 25, File 4, FRBL; Paul Konody, ‘Canada in war to be seen on canvas’, New York Sun, 3 June 1919. 38 Walker to McCurdy, 11 November 1920, Sir Edmund Walker Papers, MS COLL. 1, Box 25, File 4, FRBL.

NOTES TO PAGES 148–53

39 40 41 42 43 44

45 46 47 48

49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69

241

Beaverbrook to Meighen, 14 December 1920, BBK/A/247, PA. McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, pp. 69–70. Ibid., p. 73. ‘War museum a national memorial: Reconstructing deeds that made history’, Sunday Times, 27 March 1921, p. 18. Gullett to Poynton, 4 May 1920, AWM38 3DRL 6673/656. Bean was focused on writing the official histories during this period and, although agreeing to work as Acting Director of the War Museum from June to August 1919 while waiting for Gullett’s return to Australia, he was keen for Gullett to take over the position and later supportive of Treloar’s appointment as Gullett’s successor. See McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, pp. 67–74. Bean, ‘The Australian War Records’, c. 1918, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 1. Treloar, Notes on the Australian War Museum, 9 January 1922, AWM124 3/6. Bean’s sketch plan for the Australian War Museum, c. 1920, AWM124 3/6. Treloar, Notes on the Australian War Museum, 9 January 1922, AWM124 3/6. The Australian War Memorial has created a virtual exhibition based on Bean’s original plan for the display of the official art and photography. See ‘Art of Nation: Australia’s official art and photography of the First World War’, AWM, (retrieved 17 February 2018). CWMF, The Housing of the Canadian War Memorials, p. 4; Brandon, ‘The Canadian war memorial that never was’, p. 4. Beaverbrook to Walker, 9 December 1918, Sir Edmund Walker Papers, MS COLL. 1, Box 24, FRBL. Konody, ‘On war memorials’, p. 16, and CWMF, The Housing of the Canadian War Memorials, p. 5. Harries and Harries, The War Artists, p. 93. Robert Ross to BWMC, April 1918, ART/WA1/524, IWM; Harries and Harries, The War Artists, p. 93. Harries and Harries, The War Artists, p. 93. Muirhead Bone, ‘The War Memorial’, c. 1918, ART/WA1/525, IWM. Robert Ross to BWMC, 8 April 1918, ART/WA1/524, IWM. CWMF, The Housing of the Canadian War Memorials, p. 7. Ibid., pp. 4, 8. Ibid., p. 7. Ibid. Konody, ‘On war memorials’, p. 14. CWMF, The Housing of the Canadian War Memorials, p. 4. Ibid., p. 8. Ibid., p. 7. Harries and Harries, The War Artists, p. 94. Treloar to Bean, 20 April 1926, AWM38 3DRL 6673/794. ‘Masterpieces that face the wall: Canada conceals her war pictures’, Daily Express, 9 September 1926. Unknown artist, ‘Art in “Excelsior”’, Montreal Star, 1929. Mackenzie King to Beaverbrook, 17 July 1928, BBK/A/241, PA.

242

NOTES TO PAGES 153–7

70 Minutes of Meeting of the AWMC, 17 January 1921, AWM170 1/1. 71 Preziosi, ‘Modernity again’, in Deconstruction and the Visual Arts, ed. Brunette and Wills, pp. 141–3. 72 Treloar, Notes on the Australian War Museum, 9 January 1922, AWM124 3/6. 73 Bean cited in McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, p. i. 74 Treloar, Notes on the Australian War Museum, 9 January 1922, AWM124 3/6. 75 Memorandum from Treloar to Secretary of the Department of Defence, 13 May 1920, AWM93 8/2/23. 76 Minutes of AWMC, 17 January 1921, AWM170 1/2 Part 1, and Treloar to Hall, 20 January 1921, AWM315 235/004/003. 77 Minutes of the Meeting of the AWMC, 31 July 1919, AWM170 1/1; Treloar, ‘Additional pictures for the War Museum collections’, 10 January 1921, AWM38 3DRL 6673/287. 78 Minutes of AWMC, 17 January 1921, AWM170 1/2 Part 1. 79 A.J. Hill, ‘Gullett, Sir Henry Somer (Harry) (1878–1940)’, in ADB, (retrieved 24 January 2014); Gullett, The Australian Imperial Force in Sinai and Palestine 1914–18. 80 Andrew Markus, ‘Heyes, Sir Tasman Hudson Eastwood (1896–1980)’, in ADB, (retrieved 24 January 2014). 81 Treloar to Hall, 20 January 1921, AWM315 235/004/003; Ann E. Galbally, ‘Hall, Lindsay Bernard (1859–1935)’, in ADB, (retrieved 24 January 2014). 82 Treloar, ‘Additional pictures for the War Museum collections’, 10 January 1921, AWM38 3DRL 6673/287. 83 AWMC to High Commission for transfer through Prime Minister’s Department, 5 June 1923, AWM93 18/1/101. 84 Gullett to Bean, 6 January 1920, AWM38 3DRL 6673/287. 85 Smart to Bean, c. 1921, AWM38 3DRL 6673/287. 86 Treloar to Bean, 20 February 1920, AWM38 3DRL 6673/287. 87 Bean to Gullett, 3 January 1920, AWM38 3DRL 6673/287. 88 Treloar to Fullwood, 14 October 1920, 3DRL 6692, AWM. 89 Minutes of Meetings of the AWMAC, 4 February 1921, 16 March 1921, 29 April 1921, 4 May 1921, 10 June 1921 and 7 November 1921, AWM170 4/1. 90 Treloar to Bean, 17 March 1921, AWM38 3DRL 6673/287. 91 The image of the tank was accepted, but there is no evidence the second image was acquired. Frank Crozier, The Tank’s First Stunt, Flers 1916, Melbourne, 1922, oil on canvas, 61.2  92 cm, ART02186, AWM; Treloar to Bean, 16 May 1922, AWM38 3DRL 6673/287. 92 Treloar to Bean, 16 May 1922, AWM38 3DRL 6673/287. 93 Gullett to Bean, 13 January 1920, AWM38 3DRL 6673/287. 94 Treloar to Bean, 17 March 1921, AWM38 3DRL 6673/287. 95 William McInnes, Captain Ross Smith, 1920, Melbourne, oil on canvas, 76.2  63.8 cm, ART03179, AWM. 96 Treloar to Bean, 17 March 1921, AWM38 3DRL 6673/287.

NOTES TO PAGES 157–62

243

97 Treloar to Bean, 25 February 1921, and Bean to Treloar, 2 March 1921, AWM38 3DRL 6673/287. 98 Bean to Leist, 22 August 1920, AWM38 3DRL 6673/304. 99 Minutes of the Meeting of the AWMC, 17 January 1921, AWM124 3/6 (see appendices). 100 Ibid. 101 Treloar to Bean, 2 December 1929, AWM38 3DRL 6673/298. 102 Treloar to Bean, 27 June 1921, AWM38 3DRL 6673/287. 103 See appendices. 104 Treloar to Bean, 10 January 1921, AWM38 3DRL 6673/287; Bean, ‘Australian War Memorial Pictures’, c. May 1919, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 105 Treloar to Bean, 10 January 1921, AWM38 3DRL 6673/287. 106 Scheme of Australian War Pictures, 16 December 1918, AWM16 4372 41/1, and Treloar to Bean, 27 June 1921, AWM38 3DRL 6673/287. 107 Minutes of the Meeting of the AWMC, 17 January 1921, AWM170 1/1; Treloar to Bean, 27 June 1921, AWM38 3DRL 6673/287. 108 Treloar to Bean, 27 June 1921, AWM38 3DRL 6673/287. 109 In amending the list of paintings, Treloar incorporated many of the subjects from Bean’s list, although only twelve of the twenty-two subjects on the revised third list were suggested to Treloar by Bean; see Treloar to Bean, 10 January 1921, AWM38 3DRL 6673/287, and Bean, ‘Australian War Memorial Pictures’, c. May 1919, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 110 Treloar to Bean, 4 August 1921, AWM38 3DRL 6673/287. 111 Treloar to Power, 11 December 1925, AWM93 18/4/40. 112 Muirhead Bone, ‘The War Memorial’, c. 1918, ART/WA1/525, IWM. 113 Treloar to Bean, 5 May 1921, AWM93 18/1/42; Treloar to Adams, 6 April 1936, AWM93 18/1/42. 114 Bean to Gullett, 1 December 1919, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286; Gullett to Bean, 8 December 1919, AWM38 3DRL 6673/286. 115 Ibid. 116 Treloar to Bean, 5 May 1921, AWM38 3DRL 6673/314. 117 Treloar to Bean, 4 August 1921, AWM38 3DRL 6673/287. 118 Treloar to Bean, 27 January 1920, AWM38 3DRL 6673/287. 119 Bean to Treloar, 28 January 1920, AWM38 3DRL 6673/287. 120 Treloar sent Bean a clipping from the Daily Express about the Canadian war art; see Treloar to Bean, 20 April 1926, AWM38 3DRL 6673/794. 121 ‘People startled by radical art: Controversy has been aroused by war memorial paintings’, Mail and Empire, 4 September 1920. 122 ‘More shocks in store for ordinary folk at “ex” art gallery’, Star Weekly (Toronto), 23 August 1920. 123 Vance, Death So Noble, pp. 106–10. 124 Minutes of Meeting of the AWMC, 17 January 1921, AWM170 1/1. 125 War Museum Committee to Lambert, c. 1922, AWM38 3DRL 6673/302. 126 Cook, Clio’s Warriors, p. 51. 127 Thomson, ‘Anzac memories’, p. 25. 128 Treloar to Bean, 27 June 1921, AWM38 3DRL 6673/287. 129 Artists Agreement, c. 1920, AWM170 4/1.

244

130 131 132 133 134 135

136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151

152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161

NOTES TO PAGES 163–8

Treloar to Bean, 8 December 1921, AWM38 3DRL 6673/296. Bean to Treloar, 12 December 1921, AWM38 3DRL 6673/296. Treloar to Bean, 8 December 1921, AWM38 3DRL 6673/296. Bean to Treloar, 12 December 1921, AWM38 3DRL 6673/296. Bazley to Coates, 22 March 1924, AWM38 3DRL 6673/296. Although she was not officially commissioned with this image, Speck explains that Meeson regularly helped Coates with his paintings; see Speck, Painting Ghosts, pp. 73–6. Treloar to Bean, 5 May 1921, AWM38 3DRL 6673/314. Australian War Museum, The Relics and Records of Australia’s Effort in the Defence of the Empire, 1914–1918 [hereafter Relics and Records], p. 14. Ibid. Memorandum from Treloar to Secretary Home and Territories Department, 24 March 1921, AWM93 18/2/28 Part 1. Treloar to Bean, n.d., AWM38 3DRL 6673/302. Bean, Gallipoli Mission, p. 110. Treloar to Bean, n.d., AWM38 3DRL 6673/302. Treloar to Lambert, 8 April 1921, and reply, 11 April 1921, AWM93 18/2/ 28 Part 1. Australian War Museum, Relics and Records, p. 14. Bean, Gallipoli Mission, p. 110. Gooding, Gallipoli Revisited, p. 209. Ibid., p. 63. Ibid., p. 14. Ibid. Bean, ‘The Australian War Records’, c. 1918, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 1. One of the most famous paintings of the Australian War Memorial’s collection, Will Longstaff’s Menin Gate at Midnight (1927, London, oil on canvas, 140.5  271.8 cm, AWM ART09807), was later acquired in this way, as a non-commissioned canvas. Given the narrow focus of the Australian war art scheme during and immediately after the First World War on images of the battlefield, paintings such as Longstaff’s were to fill an important gap in the collection. Drawing on the spiritualism popular in the interwar years, Menin Gate at Midnight captured the imagination of a community in mourning (Fry and Gray, Masterpieces of the Australian War Memorial, p.110, and Hutchison, ‘Art (Australia)’). Treloar to Bean, 5 May 1921, AWM38 3DRL 6673/314. Bean to Griffiths, 6 December 1927, AWM38 3DRL 6673/294. Bean to Treloar, 18 May 1922, AWM315 235/004/003. Treloar to Bean, 19 February 1921, AWM38 3DRL 6673/296. Treloar to Secretary of Home and Territories Department, 10 June 1921, AWM315 895/004/014/023. Speck, Painting Ghosts, p. 91. Treloar to Bean, 19 February 1921, AWM38 3DRL 6673/296. Treloar to Bean, 24 May 1921, AWM315 895/004/014/023. Treloar to Bean, 19 May 1920, AWM315 895/004/014/023. Fildes to Smart, 24 January 1920, AWM38 3DRL 6673/296.

NOTES TO PAGES 168–72

245

162 Treloar to Bean, 19 May 1920, AWM315 895/004/014/023. 163 Bean to Treloar, 29 May 1920, AWM315 895/004/014/023. 164 Prime Ministers Department to High Commissioner, 20 July 1920, AWM315 895/004/014 02. 165 Pedersen, Anzac Treasures, p. 101. 166 Agenda for the Meeting of the AWMC, 14 October 1920, AWM170 1/2 Part 1. 167 Pedersen, Anzac Treasures, p. 101. 168 McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, p. 72. 169 Jordnova, ‘Objects of knowledge’, in Vergo (ed.), The New Museology, pp. 25–6. 170 Duncan, ‘The art museum as ritual’, in Preziosi (ed.), The Art of Art History, p. 425. 171 Treloar to unknown, 28 September 1925, AWM93 6/3/1. 172 Arthur Bazley to Treloar, 30 April 1922, AWM38 3DRL 6673/712. 173 Bean, ‘Australia’s records’, c. September 1917, AWM93 12/12/1 Part 2; Inglis, ‘A sacred place’, p. 123; Melrose, ‘“A praise that never ages”’. 174 Australian War Museum, Relics and Records, p. 5. 175 Ibid., p. 7. 176 See Appendix F. 177 Gullet’s notes on Publicity for the War Museum, c. 1922, AWM40 107. 178 Lambert’s painting of the landing received a lot of publicity in the lead-up to the Museum’s opening. See ‘A valuable painting for the Australian War Museum’, Daily Telegraph (Launceston, Tas.), 7 April 1922, p. 4. 179 Bennett, The Birth of the Museum, p. 123. 180 ‘War Museum: Notable collection, weapons and art’, West Australian, 20 April 1922, p. 8. 181 Australian War Museum, Relics and Records, p. 34. 182 ‘The War Museum: “A Mecca for Australians”’, Age (Melbourne), 25 April 1922, p. 5. 183 Malvern, ‘War, memory and museums’, p. 188. 184 Condé, ‘John Treloar’, p. 457. 185 Gooding, Gallipoli Revisited, p. 202. 186 Australian War Museum, Relics and Records, p. 14. 187 Alexander Colquhoun, Herald (Melbourne), 4 May 1922. 188 Australian War Museum, Relics and Records, p. 24. 189 Ibid., p. 54. 190 Ibid., p. 82. The titles given here are as they appeared in the guidebook. Today all except Bell’s have been altered: Power’s 1st Div. Artillery Going into Action at Ypres is known as First Australian Division Artillery Going into the Third Battle of Ypres, ART03330, AWM; Lambert’s Charge of the LH Brigade, Beersheba is known as The Charge of the Australian Light Horse at Beersheba, 1917 ART02811, AWM; and The Landing at Anzac is known as Anzac, the Landing 1915, ART02873, AWM. 191 Treloar to Lambert, 24 January 1924, AWM93 18/2/28. 192 McKernan, Here is Their Spirit, p. 76; Minutes of the Meeting of the AWMC, 14 June 1922, AWM170 1/1.

246

NOTES TO PAGES 172–9

193 Minutes of the Meeting of the AWMC, 14 June 1922, AWM170 1/1. 194 ‘Australian War Museum’, Queenslander, 22 April 1922, p. 19. See also ‘Australian War Museum opening on April 25: A most interesting display’, Argus (Melbourne), 18 April 1922, p. 5, and ‘Australian War Museum: Formal opening yesterday’, Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 25 April 1922, p. 3. 195 ‘Australian War Museum opening on April 25: A most interesting display’, Argus (Melbourne), 18 April 1922, p. 5. 196 ‘The War Museum: “A Mecca for Australians”’, Age (Melbourne), 25 April 1922, p. 5.

Conclusion

1 Ruby Cornish, ‘Hilda Rix Nicholas war portraits once deemed “too intimate” bought by Australian War Memorial’, ABC News, 24 June 2015.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ARCHIVAL SOURC ES Australian War Memorial, Canberra AWM16 AWM25 AWM36 AWM38 AWM40 AWM54 AWM93 AWM124 AWM170 AWM224 AWM315 FWW Index PR 3DRL/2222 PR 3DRL/6692

Australian War Records Section registry files and register of file titles, 1914–18 War, 1914–21 Department of Defence, written records, 1914–18 War, 1913–20 Official History, 1914–18 War: Naval records of Arthur W. Jose, 1912–30 Official History, 1914–18 War: Records of C. E. W. Bean, Official Historian, 1914–63 Official History, 1914–18 War: Records of H. S. Gullett, 1916–23 Department of Defence, written records, 1939–45 War, 1926–92 Australian War Memorial registry files – first series, 1902–93 Department of the Navy, Naval historical collection, 1788–1987 Australian War Memorial Council and related committee records, 1918–85 Department of Defence, Unit manuscript histories, 1914–46 Australian War Memorial registry files – second series, 1917–90 Art Section, Australian War Memorial: Index of First World War Art Pearce, Sir George Foster (b. 1870 – d. 1952) Fullwood, Albert H. (Lieutenant, War Artist, b. 1873 – d. 1930)

Imperial War Museum, London ARCH 19 ART/WA1

Paul Konody Papers, 1907–44 War Artists Archive

Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa MG26-H RG9-III RG24

Sir Robert Borden fonds [textual record, graphic material], 1911–37 Canadian Expeditionary Force fonds [multiple media], 1912–23 Department of National Defence fonds [multiple media], 1870–1989

247

248

BIBLIOGRAPHY

National Archives of Australia, Canberra A1

A2 A457 A458

A461

A1573 B2455 CP103/11

Department of External Affairs and Department of Home and Territories, correspondence files, annual single number series, 1890–1969 [main correspondence files series of the agency] Prime Minister’s Department, correspondence files, annual single number series, 1895–1926 Department of External Affairs and Prime Minister’s Department, correspondence files, multiple number series, first system, 1900–28 Department of External Affairs and Prime Minister’s Department, correspondence files, multiple number series, second system, 1899–1939 Department of External Affairs and Prime Minister’s Department, correspondence files, multiple number series (third system) [main correspondence files series of the agency], 1901–50 Volumes of original Minute Papers approved by Federal Executive Council, 1901– First Australian Imperial Force Personnel Dossiers, 1914–20 Prime Minister’s Department, General correspondence files, 1921–32

National Archives of Australia, Melbourne

Department of Defence, General correspondence files, 1917–29

MP367/1

National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa 5.41-C

Canadian War Art

National Library of Australia, Canberra MFMG 27511 MS 2919

Letters from A. Streeton, 1889–1931 Papers of Andrew Fisher, 1883–1983

Parliamentary Archives, London BBK

Beaverbrook Papers, 1869–1976

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney MLDOC 1189

MLMSS 97 MLMSS 875

Letters received from Australian artists, relating to their work in connection with the Canadian War Memorials of World War I, 1917 George Lambert and Lambert family papers and pictorial material, 1874–1942 Walter Baldwin Spencer Papers, letters received from Australian artists and art promoters, 1899–1928

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249

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PUBLISHED SOURCES Australian government records Australian Parliament, Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works, Report Together with Minutes of Evidence Relating to the Proposed Australian War Memorial, Australian Commonwealth Government, Canberra, 1928 Australian War Records Section, Catalogue of Australian Official War Pictures and Photographs: Pictures of Gallipoli, the Western Front and Palestine, Australian Commonwealth Office, London, 1918

Articles and book chapters

Andrews, Eric, ‘25 April 1916: First Anzac Day in Australia and Britain’, Journal of the Australian War Memorial, no. 23, October 1993, pp. 13–20 Ashplant, Timothy G., Graham Dawson and Michael Roper, ‘The politics of war memory and commemoration: Contexts, structures and dynamics’, in Commemorating War: The Politics of Memory, ed. Timothy G. Ashplant, Graham Dawson and Michael Roper, pp. 3–85, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, NJ, 2009 Assmann, Aleida, ‘Re-framing memory: Between individual and collective forms of constructing the past’, in Performing the Past: Memory, History, and Identity in Modern Europe, ed. Karin Tilmans, Frank van Vree and Jay Winter, pp. 35–50, Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2010 Barrett, John, ‘Historical reconsiderations VII: No straw man: C.E.W. Bean and some critics’, Australian Historical Studies, vol. 23, no. 90, 1988, pp. 102–14 Bassett, Jan, ‘“Ready to serve”: Australian women and the Great War’, Journal of the Australian War Memorial, no. 2, 1983, pp. 8–16 Bean, Charles, ‘Australia’s records: Preserved as sacred things, pictures, relics and writings’, Commonwealth of Australia Gazette, no. 6, 15 January 1918, pp. 45–8 ——‘The technique of a contemporary war historian’, Historical Studies Australia and New Zealand, vol. 2, no. 6, 1942, pp. 65–79 ——‘The writing of the Australian Official History of the Great War: Sources, methods and some conclusions’, Royal Australian Historical Society, no. 24, 1938, pp. 85–112 ——‘Will Dyson, artist and soldier’, Reveille, 1 February 1938 Beaumont, Joan, ‘Australia’s global memory footprint: Memorial building on the Western Front, 1916–2015’, Australian Historical Studies, vol. 46, no. 1, 2015, pp. 45–63

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Kavanagh, Gaynor, Museums and the First World War: A Social History, Leicester University, London, 1994 Laffin, John (ed.), An Eyewitness Account of Gallipoli, Rosenberg Publishers, Sydney, 2010 Lambert, Amy, Thirty Years of an Artist’s Life: The Career of G.W. Lambert, ARA, Australian Artist Editions, Sydney, 1977 Laugesen, Amanda, Boredom is the Enemy: The Intellectual and Imaginative Lives of Australian Soldiers in the Great War and Beyond, Ashgate Publishing, London, 2011 Luckins, Tanja, The Gates of Memory: Australian People’s Experiences of Memories of Loss and the Great War, Curtin University Books, Fremantle, WA, 2004 Malvern, Sue, Modern Art, Britain and the Great War: Witnessing, Testimony and Remembrance, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2004 McCarthy, Dudley, Gallipoli to the Somme: The Story of C.E.W. Bean, John Ferguson, Sydney, 1983 McKernan, Michael, Here is Their Spirit: A History of the Australian War Memorial 1917–1990, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1991 ——The Australian People and the Great War, Nelson, Melbourne, 1980 McMullin, Ross, Will Dyson: Cartoonist, Etcher and Australia’s Finest War Artist, Angus & Robertson, London, 1984 McNairn, Alan, Behold the Hero: General Wolfe and the Arts in the Eighteenth Century, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal and Kingston, 1997 McQuire, Scott, Visions of Modernity: Representation, Memory, Time and Space in the Age of the Camera, Sage Publications, London, 1998 Meaney, Neville, A History of Australian Defence and Foreign Policy 1901–23, vol. 2: Australia and World Crisis, 1914–1923, Sydney University Press, Sydney, 2009 Misztal, Barbara A., Theories of Social Remembering, McGraw-Hill, Maidenhead, 2003 Nevinson, C. R. W., and John Ernest Crawford Flitch, The Great War, Fourth Year, G. Richards, London, 1918 Nora, Pierre (ed.), Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, trans. Lawrence D. Kritzman, Columbia University Press, New York, 1996 O’Keefe, Paul, Some Sort of Genius: A Life of Wyndham Lewis, Pimlico, London, 2001 Paret, Peter, Imagined Battles: Reflections on War in European Art, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill and London, 1997 Pedersen, Peter, Anzac Treasures: The Gallipoli Collection of the Australian War Memorial, Murdoch Books, Sydney, 2014 Preziosi, Donald (ed.), The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009 Rees, Peter, Bearing Witness: The Remarkable Life of Charles Bean, Australia’s Greatest War Correspondent, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2015 Reid, John, Australian Artists at War: Compiled from the Australian War Memorial Collection, Sun Books, Melbourne, 1977

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Samuel, Raphael, Island Stories: Unravelling Britain, Verso, London, 1998 Sayers, Andrew, Australian Art, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001 Scott, Ernest, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, vol. 9: Australia During the War, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1936 Seal, Graham, Inventing Anzac: The Digger and National Mythology, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 2004 Serle, Geoffrey, From Deserts the Prophets Come: The Creative Spirit in Australia 1788–1972, Heinemann, Melbourne, 1973 Sheftall, Mark, Altered Memories of the Great War: Divergent Narratives of Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, I.B. Tauris, London, 2009 Silas, Ellis, Crusading at Anzac Anno Domini 1915, British-Australasian, London, 1916 Slater, Helen, and David Widdowson (eds), The War Diaries of William Slater, Astrovisuals, Strathmore, Vic, 2000 Smith, Bernard, Australian Painting, 1788–1970, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1971 ——Australian Painting Today, Queensland University Press, Brisbane, 1962 ——Place, Taste and Tradition: A Study of Australian Art since 1788, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1988 Speck, Catherine, Beyond the Battlefield: Women Artists of the Two World Wars, Reaktion Books, London, 2014 ——Painting Ghosts: Australian Women Artists in Wartime, Craftsman House, Melbourne, 2004 Stanley, Peter, Quinn’s Post, Anzac, Gallipoli, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2005 ——The Men of Mont St Quentin: Between Victory and Death, Scribe Publications, Melbourne, 2009 Sutton, Denys (ed.), Letters of Roger Fry, Chatto & Windus, London, 1972 Tippett, Maria, Art at the Service of War: Canada, Art, and the Great War, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1984 Treloar, John (ed.), Australian Chivalry: Reproductions in Colour and Duo-Tone of Official War Paintings, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1933 Vance, Jonathan Franklin William, Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning, and the First World War, University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver, 1997 Wellington, Jennifer, Exhibiting War: The Great War, Museums, and Memory in Britain, Canada and Australia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2017 Williams, John Frank, The Quarantined Culture: Australian Reactions to Modernism 1913–1939, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995 Wilson, Trevor, The Myriad Faces of War: Britain and the Great War 1914–1918, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1986 Winter, Denis, Making the Legend: The War Writings of C.E.W. Bean, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1992 Winter, Jay, Remembering War: The Great War between Memory and History in the Twentieth Century, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2006 ——Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995 Winter, Jay, and Antoine Prost, The Great War in History: Debates and Controversies, 1914 to the Present, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005

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Wodehouse, R., A Checklist of the War Collections of World War I, 1914–1918 and World War II, 1940–1945, Queen’s Printer, Ottawa, 1968 Woodcock, George, Wyndham Lewis in Canada, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, 1971 Ziino, Bart, A Distant Grief: Australians, War Graves and the Great War, UWA Press, Perth, 2007

Theses

Brandon, Laura, ‘The Canadian War Museum’s art collections as a site of meaning, memory and identity in the twentieth century’, PhD thesis, Carleton University, 2002 Lipke, William, ‘A history and analysis of vorticism’, PhD thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1966 Lord, Caroline, ‘A forgotten contribution: Re-establishing the production and significance of New Zealand’s official First World War artists’, PhD thesis, University of Canterbury, 2015 Melrose, Craig, ‘“A praise that never ages”: The Australian War Memorial and the “national” interpretation of the First World War, 1922–35’, PhD thesis, University of Queensland, 2004 Scheib, Michael, ‘Painting Anzac: A history of Australia’s war art scheme of the First World War’, PhD thesis, University of Sydney, 2015 Tippett, Maria, ‘The history of the Canadian War Memorial Scheme as a study of patronage and visual record of the Great War’, PhD Thesis, University of London, 1982

Newspapers and magazines Advertiser (Adelaide) Age (Melbourne) Argus (Melbourne) Art in Australia Australian Worker Australasian Photo-Review Ballarat Courier Barrier Miner Boston Christian Science Monitor Brisbane Courier British Australasian (London) Cairns Post Canberra Times Colour (London) Commonwealth of Australia Gazette Construction and Local Government Journal Daily Express Daily Mercury (Mackay, Qld) Daily Telegraph (Launceston, Tas.) Graphic (London) Herald (Melbourne)

258

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Kalgoorlie Miner Maclean’s Magazine Mail and Empire (Toronto) Montreal Star New York Sun New York Times North Western Advocate and the Emu Bay Times (Burnie and Devonport, Tas.) Queensland Times Queenslander Reveille Star Weekly (Toronto) Studio: An Illustrated Magazine of Fine and Applied Art (London) Sunday Times Sydney Morning Herald Telegraph (Brisbane) Times Literary Supplement West Australian Westminster Gazette

ONLINE S OURCES Australian Centre for Biography at the Australian National University, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Australian War Memorial, Australian War Memorial, ‘Art of Nation: Australia’s official art and photography of the First World War’, Australian War Memorial Act 1925, assented to 26 September 1925, Cornish, Ruby, ‘Hilda Rix Nicholas war portraits once deemed “too intimate” bought by Australian War Memorial’, ABC News, 24 June 2015, Kay, Ross, ‘First Anzac ashore at Gallipoli, Duncan Chapman, remembered by Queensland city’, 8 August 2016, ABC, retrieved 11 February 2018, Library of Parliament, ‘Canadian Parliamentary Historical Resources’, Queensland Government Cabinet and Ministerial Directory, ‘$1M for ANZAC memorial to be delivered in Maryborough’, 12 September 2017, retrieved 11 February 2018, United Kingdom Parliament, ‘Historic Hansard 1803–2005’,

INDEX

Note: Entries in bold denote colour figures Académie Colarossi, 102 Académie Delécluze, 102 Académie Julian, 100, 102 Age, 144 agents of memory, 5–9 Airy, Anna, 75 Albert, Battle of, 89 alterations, 163 Amiens, Battle of, 91, 94, 96, 114, 123 Anderson, Benedict, 9 Anderson, General, 28 Anderson, William Wallace, 125 animal painting, 78, 128 Anzac Book, The, 7, 24, 38–9, 50, 54, 70–2 Anzac Bulletin, 23, 50 Anzac Cove, 2–3, 7, 115, 170 Anzac Day, 1916, Figure 2 in Australia, 20–1 in London, 18–20 Anzac Day, 1922, 172 Anzac myth, 6–7 architecture, 149–53 Art Gallery of New South Wales, 100 Art Society of New South Wales, 100 Arts Club, London, 63 Ashplant, Timothy, 9–10 Ashton, Julian, 72, 100–1 Assmann, Aleida, 124 Atwood, Clare, 75 Australian Flying Corps (AFC), 8, 124, 156, 171 Australian Government, 28–9, 45, 64, 118–19, 168 Australian High Commission, London, 5, 22, 28, 32, 39–40, 46, 60, 67, 154 See also National War Records Office (NWRO)

Australian Historical Mission, 1919, 134–41, 164–6, Figure 42 Australian Imperial Force units 1st Anzac Corps, 92 1st Division, 8, 89, 114, 127 2nd Division, 1, 24, 90–1, 114 3rd Australian Division, 89 3rd Brigade, 164–5 3rd Light Horse Brigade, 133 4th Australian Light Horse Regiment, 90 4th Battalion, 160 4th Division, 1, 89, 91 5th Australian Division, 21 5th Division, 89, 91, 107, 114 5th Infantry Brigade, 114 6th Infantry Brigade, 38 7th Light Horse, 138 9th Battalion, 25, 166 10th Light Horse, 136 11th Battalion, 135 12th Australian Light Horse Regiment, 90 14th Reserve Battalion, 69 23rd Battalion, 125 29th Battalion, 158 45th Infantry Battalion, 1 50th Battalion, 67 53rd Battalion, 123 Australian Journalists’ Association, 7 Australian Labor Party, 148 Australian Navy, 67, 78, 115–16, 124, 156, 170, 173, 177 Australian official war art scheme, 4, 15, 81 aims, 57–63 Canadian influence, 25–30, 112 dual structure, 45–8, 50–7, 153–5

259

260

INDEX

Australian official war art scheme (cont.) establishment, 45–8 implementation, 49–78 origins, 16–48 proposals, 38–40 See also Australian War Records Section (AWRS); National War Records Office (NWRO) Australian war experience, 173 v imperial experience, 5–6, 19, 24, 29, 57 war at home, 14, 61–3, 75, 110, 141, 177 Australian War Memorial, 4, 14, 72, 76, 87, 178 Australian War Memorial Act 1925, 145 Australian War Museum (AWM), 2, 5, 9, 13, 75, 110, 125–6, 142–7, 159, Figure 46, Figure 59, Figure 60 1922 exhibition, 165–6, 169–73 accommodation for art collection, 147–9 and Charles Bean, 7 opening, 3, 149, 153, 169–73 opposition, 143–5 origins, 22–5 plans to exhibit war paintings, 149–53 proposals, 30–2 Australian War Museum Art Committee (AWMAC), 50, 153–5, 160–9, 179 Australian War Museum Committee (AWMC), 31, 116, 120, 126–9, 131, 140, 145, 147–9, 153, 156, 172 Australian War Records Section (AWRS), 45–8, 124, 147, 154, 160, Figure 41 artists at the front, 89, 94, 112 artists’ instructions, 84, 86–8, 128 commemorative memorial pictures, 114, 118, 120, 123 establishment, 9, 46–8 model scheme, 124 and NWRO, 50–7 selection of artists, 58, 70–3 and Treloar, 55–7

Baby 700, Battle for, 126–7, 130 Baldwin, H.F., 106 Baldwin, Herbert, 51 Balfour, Lieutenant John, 135, 165 Ballment, Sergeant A.H., 73 Barker, David, 39, 71 Barraud, Cyril, 69 Bastein, Alfred, 69 battlefield painting, 38–40, 44, 58–61, 102–6, 110, 125, 149, 158 artists at war, 88–100 painting during the war, 80–108 painting on the battlefield, 95–7 transport, 93–5 travelling to the front, 92–5 Baxter, David, 104 Bazley, Staff Sergeant Arthur, 135 Bean, Charles, 70, 86, 112, 137–41, 166–8, Figure 4, Figure 46 AIF representative, 52 alterations, 126–8, 164 as art adviser, 54–5 as artist, 55 Australian Historical Mission, 3, 134–41, 165–6 AWM art committee, 154–6 AWM opening, 169–73 AWM plans, 142–7, 149–50 AWM proposals, 30–2 AWM role, 7, 125 composite images, 42–3, 46 composition memorial pictures, 112–15, 118–20 eyewitnesses, 58–60, 88, 91, 116 at the front, 94–5, 98 gap filling, 122–4 and Lambert, 3, 165–6 lists, 126–8, 158 model scheme, 124–6 national myths, 6–8 official histories, 2, 7, 36, 55, 59, 121, 134–5, 154–5 plans for display of art collection, 149–50 post-war commissioning, 128–33 retrospective painting, 133–7 role in war art scheme, 5, 14, 57–63, 120–8 selection of artists, 58, 65, 70

INDEX

Silver Lining – Sunset Over Imbros as Seen from Anzac 1915, The, Figure 6 visual records, 43 war art proposals, 38–40, 47 war records collection scheme, 21–2, 24, 28, 41 Beatty, John, 96 Beaubien, C.P., 146 Beaverbrook, Lord, 29, 37, 44, 51, 62, 83, 93, 112, 146, 148, 151–2, Figure 5 and CWMF, 52, 57–8, 69 and CWRO, 13, 25–30 on eyewitnesses, 58 influence on Australia, 27 and Konody, 52, 68–70 and photographs, 41–3 selection of CWMF artists, 69–70, 76, 82 Beersheba, Battle of, 85, 90, 114, 172 Bell, George, 64–5, 82, 91, 100, 102, 122, 133, 155, 170, 172, Figure 8 Bennett, Tony, 170 Bennett, Arnold, 63 Benson, George, 71–2, 86, 100, 128, 158 Anzac Looking South, Figure 41 Bethlem Hospital, 171 Birdwood, Major General William, 19, 22, 36, 46, 51, 54, 135 Blashki, Myer, 64 Boer War, 8, 52, 102 Bomberg, David, 76 Sappers at Work: A Canadian Tunnelling Company, Figure 14 Study for ‘Sappers at Work: A Canadian Tunnelling Company, Hill 60, St Eloi’, Figure 13 Bone, Muirhead, 33, 36, 40, 85, 159 Boote, Henry, 60 Borden, Robert, 26–7, 29, 37, 62, 111, 247 Box, Alan, 47 Boyd, Penleigh, 60–1 Bragg, Private B., 72 Brangwyn, Frank, 53, 71 Bridges, General William, 115, 126, 157, Figure 50 Bridle, Augustus, 80 British Army, 34

261

British Cemetery Pozières, 2 British Empire dominion imaginings, 11–15 imperial v Australian war experience, 5–6, 19, 24, 29, 57 imperial v national collections, 28–30 British Government, 28–9, 33, 70, 84 British War Memorials Committee (BWMC), 12, 63–4, 75, 80, 82, 85, 93, 110, 113, 133, 150, 159 British War Office, see War Office British-American Peace Centenary Committee, 20 British-Australasian, 20, 35, 108 Brown, Eric, 110 Bryant, Charles, 65, 67, 78, 83, 89–92, 95, 101–2, 107, 113, 115, 126, 128, 155, 158, 171, Figure 8 Brymner, William, 80 Buchanan, Lieutenant H.S., 135 Bullecourt, 89, 126 Bulletin, 33, 71 Burgess, Arthur, 65, 67, 78, 107, 128, 171 HMAS Australia at the Surrender of the German Fleet in the Firth of Forth, Figure 36 Burlington House, 107, 111, 116, 161 Cameron, David, 69 camouflage artists, 47, 84, 89 Campbell, C., 72 Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF), 12, 25 Canadian Flying Corps, 85 Canadian Government, 29, 37, 146, 148, 152 Canadian Memorial Gallery, Figure 47, Figure 48, Figure 49 Canadian National War Memorial, 153 Canadian War Memorials Fund (CWMF), 52, 62, 111–12, 148 commemorative pictures, 113, 146 establishment, 37 exhibition, 161 female artists, 75

262

INDEX

Canadian War Memorials Fund (CWMF) (cont.) proposed memorial gallery, 150–3 selection of artists, 52, 57, 65, 68–70, 76, 80, 82–3, 85, 93, 111 style and genre, 44–5, 58–9, 104, 110–13 Canadian War Museum (CWM), 146–7 Canadian War Records Office (CWRO), 26–8, 70, 146 Carlyle, Florence, 75 Chapman, Major Duncan K., 1–4, 24 Chelsea Arts Club, 63, 65–7, 77 Choquette, 146 Churcher, Betty, 5 cinematography, see film Coates, George, 64–5, 70, 100, 131–2, 163, 167–8, Figure 8 Casualty Clearing Station, Figure 58 First Australian Wounded at Gallipoli Arriving at Wandsworth Hospital, London, Figure 57 General William Bridges and His Staff Watching the Manoeuvres of the 1st Australian Division in the Desert in Egypt, March 1915, Figure 55 Colles, Ted, 39 Collins, Robert Muirhead, 54 Collis, Frederick, 39, 71 Colquhoun, Alexander, 171 commemoration, 5–8, 10, 17, 20, 49 Commission on War Records and War Trophies, 29 Committee of Imperial Defence, 27 Commonwealth Art Advisory Board, 35, 53, 61, 66, 119, 168 composite images, 42–3 composition memorial pictures, 118–28, 149, 155, 171 alterations, 126–8 Australian Historial Mission, 134–41 commissioning, 126–8 identifying the gaps, 122–4 model scheme, 124–6 retrospective painting, 133–7 speaking for AIF, 120

Condé, Anne-Marie, 5 Confino, Alon, 10 Conway, Sir Martin, 28 Conyers, Matron Evelyn, 156 Cook, Tim, 27 Cormon, Fernand, 102 Cornish School of Landscape, Figure and Sea Painting, 102 Cossington-Smith, Grace, 75 Reinforcements: Troops Marching, Figure 12 The Sock Knitter, Figure 11 Coulthart, Ross, 7 Cox, Herbert, 89 Creswell, Admiral Sir William, 116 Crozier, Frank, 38–9, 70–2, 81, 88, 100, 107, 115, 128, 156, 167, 170, Figure 41 The Beach at Anzac, Figure 35 The Search for Identity Discs, Figure 18 Crystal Palace, 171 Cubism, 76 Cutlack, Fred, 93 Daily Herald, 33 Daplyn, Alfred, 64, 108 Davidson, Bessie, 74 Dawson, Graham, 9–10 Death of Woolf, The (West), 44 Department of Defence, 8, 25, 30, 41, 46, 54, 68, 131, 135, 154 See also Australian War Records Section (AWRS) Department for Home and Territories, 154 Dernancourt, Battle of, 126 Derrick, Thomas, 85 diaries, 21, 27–8, 55 Digger Trench Art, 170 dioramas, 124–6 Dixon, Robert, 42 Dodds, Colonel Thomas, 120 dominion museums, 29–30 Doughty, Arthur, 26, 29, 146 Douglas, Lieutenant W., 52 dual nationalism, 18–19, 25, 30 Duncan, Carol, 169 Dyson, Edward, 94 Dyson, Ruby, 33, 74

INDEX

Dyson, Will, 58, 66, 70, 84, 124, 127, Figure 8, Figure 19 cartoons, 19, 33–6, 103 Coming Out on the Somme, Figure 29 Dead Beat, the Tunnel, Hill 60, Figure 27 exhibitions, 20, 106–7, 150, 170 at the front, 51, 59, 88–9, 91, 93, 95, 98–100 selection of artists, 71–3 Small Talk, Figure 62 Stepping Stones to Higher Things, Figure 3 terms and conditions, 82–3, 113 war art proposal, 16–17, 32–8, 46, 57, 67 and War Office, 35–8 Wine of Victory (wounded German prisoners near Ypres), Figure 28 École des Beaux-Arts, 102 Eksteins, Modris, 11 Étaples Army Base Camp, 75 Exhibition Building, Melbourne, 3, 32, 149, 153, Figure 59, Figure 60 See also Australian War Museum (AWM) expatriate artists, 3, 39–40, 63–8, 77 eyewitnesses, 6, 14, 58–61, 84, 88, 97–100, 110, 114, 162 Fildes, Sir Luke, 53, 121, 130, 132, 154, 168, 175 film, 23, 35, 41, 43–5, 162 First World War Galleries, 4, 178 Fisher, Andrew, 8 Anzac Day, 1916, 18–20 and NWRO, 22–4, 28, 30–1, 41, 43–6, 50–1 proposed art committee, 52–5 and war art proposals, 16, 32, 34–40, 46, 51, 64 Fisher, Margaret, 107 Flitch, John Crawford, 41 Folingsby, George, 100 Fosbery, Ernest, 69 France, 12 Frings, Edward Franz Hubert, 72 Fromelles, Battle of, 21, 158 Fry, Gavin, 5 Fry, Roger, 77, 80

263

Fullwood, Henry, 64–5, 87, 90, 101–2, 114–15, 123, 129, 133–4, 155, Figure 8 Attack on Péronne, Figure 39 Fussell, Paul, 11 Futurism, 76, 80 Gallipoli campaign, 1–4, 8, 18, 20–1, 33, 86–8, 110, 115–16, 123, 129, 168, 170–1 Australian Historical Mission, 3, 134–41 gap filling, 109–41 Gellibrand, Brigadier General John, 38–40 gender bias, 73–6 genre, see style and genre George V, King, 19, 35 German Navy, 115, 127 Germany, 11 Gibson, Frank, 52 Gilbert, Charles Web, 125 Glossop, Commodore John, 156 Glynn, Patrick McMahon, 116 Grafton Galleries, 77, 102, 106–7 Graham, J.L., 69 Gray, Anne, 5 Griffiths, Brigadier General Thomas, 46, 51 Griffiths, Tom, 9, 31 Gruner, Elioth, 68 Gullett, Henry, 94, 142, 149, 154, 156–9, 173 Gurdon, Nora, 74 Halifax harbour, 62 Hall, Bernard, 72, 100, 154, 156, 160 Hamel, Battle of, 122 Hamilton, General Sir Ian, 19, 32 Harmsworth, Harold, 37 Hart, Sergeant Cecil, 71 Hassall, John, 102 Heidelberg School, Melbourne, 11, 34, 63, 101 Heyes, Tasman, 154 Heysen, Nora, 74 Higonnet, Margaret, 73 Hill, Adrian, 104 Hindenburg Line, Battle of the, 123 Historic Memorials Committee, 4, 35, 53, 60, 68, 81

264

INDEX

Historic Memorials of Representative Men, 35 Historical Mission on Gallipoli, 133 historical societies, 31 history and memory, 9–10 HMAS Australia, 116 Hobbs, Major General Talbot, 107 Hobsbawm, Eric, 9 Holden, Charles, 150 Holliday, Robert Cortes, 41 honorary commissions, 3, 7, 37–8, 51, 81, 84, 120 Hotel Cecil, 19 Hughes, Sir Samuel, 26, 37 Hughes, W.M. (Billy), 17–19, 28, 35–6, 39, 52–3, 143 Hurley, Frank, 42, 46, 106 Hynes, Samuel, 11 Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire, 146 Imperial War Graves Commission, 23 Imperial War Museum, 28–30, 75, 113, 143, 145, 152, 171 Impressionism, 11, 77, 101, 177 Inglis, Ken, 117, 143 Jack, Richard, 37, 76, 161 The Second Battle of Ypres, 22 April to 25 May 1915, Figure 53 Jacka, Captain Albert, 128–9 Jackson, A.Y., 69, 104 A Copse, Evening, Figure 31 John, Augustus, 69 Julian Ashton Art School, 101 Kemp, Sir Albert, 26 Kennington, Eric, 96 Kenworthy, Lieutenant-Commander Joseph, 145 Kerr-Lawson, James, 69 King, William Lyon Mackenzie, 152 Kitchener, Lord, 19 Knight, Laura, 75, 82 Konody, Paul, 44–5, 52, 58, 62, 65, 68, 76, 82–3, 85, 111, 146, 148, 150–2, 177 Kultur Cartoons, 33, 103

Lambert, Amy, 95 Lambert, George, 64, 70, 133, 136, 164–6, Figure 8, Figure 21 Achi Baba, from Tommy’s Trench, Helles, Figure 45 Also Ran, Figure 23 Anzac, the Landing 1915, 3–4, 164, 170–2, Figure 1 Australian Historical Mission, 16–48, 136 Charge of the Light Horse at Beersheba, 85, 114, 172 at the front, 90–2, 95–7 Magdhaba, Figure 33 Nek, Walker’s Ridge, Site of the Charge of the Light Horse, The, Figure 44 Study of Camel Head, Figure 22 Study for ‘Anzac, the Landing 1915’, Figure 56 Study for Dead Trooper and Detail of Turkish Trench, Gallipoli (Pro patria), Figure 43 style, 101–2, 106 terms and conditions, 65, 82–3, 96, 107, 113, 119, 127, 129 Wadi Bed Between El Arish and Magdhaba, Figure 34 landscape art, 78, 90, 97–8, 105, 110–11, 129, 139, 165 Laurens, Jean-Paul, 102 Lavery, John, 85 Leicester Galleries, 106–7 Leist, Fred, 64, 66, 72, 78, 81, 83, 86, 88–9, 101–2, 107, 113–14, 121, 123, 129, 133, 136, 170, Figure 8 Australian Infantry Attack in Polygon Wood, Figure 37 Lewis, Percy Wyndham, 69, 77, 80, 95, 104 Leyshon-White, Cyril, 39, 72 Lindsay, Daryl, 72 Lindsay, Norman, 57, 68, 124 Lion, Flora, 75 Lister, William, 101 Lloyd Jones, Charles, 80, 116–18 local histories, 24 local memorial committees, 144 London School of Art, 100 Lone Hand, 33 Lone Pine, Battle of, 126, 136, 160

INDEX

Longstaff, John, 64–6, 72, 78, 85–6, 89–90, 100, 102, 115, 127, 129, 131, 157, Figure 8 Longstaff, Will, 72, 84, 87, 101, 123, 132, 170 8th August, 1918, Figure 61 Night Attack by 13th Brigade on Villers-Bretonneux, Figure 40 Study of Dismembered Leg, Figure 15 Loring, Francis, 75 Lyceum Club, 60 Macandie, George, 68 MacDonald, Staff Sergeant James Stuart, 72 MacFall, Haldane, 74 Macintyre, Stuart, 31 Mackennal, Bertram, 39–40, 64, 66 Magdhaba, Battle of, 126 March Brothers of Kent, 153 Maryborough, Qld, 1–2, 4, 258 Massy Greene, Walter, 67 Masterman, Charles, 33, 40 May, Henrietta Mabel, 75 McCubbin, Louis, 72–3, 86–7, 100, 123, 125 McInnes, William, 157 McMullin, Ross, 5, 34 Meaney, Neville, 23 medical services, 28, 71–2, 124, 167–8, 171 Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, 19 Meeson, Dora, 64, 163, 167 General William Bridges and His Staff Watching the Manoeuvres of the 1st Australian Division in the Desert in Egypt, March 1915, Figure 55 Meighen, Arthur, 111, 148 memory, 6–8, 27, 140, 144 agents of, 5–9 collective, 9, 25, 103 and commemoration, 6 and history, 9–10 politics of, 10 sites of, 4, 126 memory-making, 63, 79, 86, 107, 109, 124, 126, 168, 174–6, 179 Mena Desert, 127 Menin Road, Battle of, 86, 89 Messines, Battle of, 89, 94, 126, 158

265

Middle East, 2, 90, 123 Miles, Private, 158 Mission des Beaux-Arts, 12 modernism, 11, 41–2, 76–7, 79, 104, 111–12, 159, 161, 177 Monash, General John, 115, 172 Mond, Sir Alfred, 143 Monkhouse, Victoria, 75 Mont Saint-Quentin, Battle of, 91, 94, 114, 116, 123, 126, 170 Moore-Jones, Horace, 168 Munro Ferguson, Sir Ronald, 20 Murdoch, Keith, 7, 18–19 Murdoch, Major, 158 Murray, Lieutenant Colonel Henry, 128–9 Myers, J.L., 145 Myers, Thomas, 145 Nash, Paul, 77, 88, 104, 161 Void, Figure 32 National Gallery of Canada, 69, 148 National Gallery of Victoria, 72, 81, 103, 154, 157 National Gallery School, 72, 100, 102 national myths, 4, 6–7 National War Museum, 28, 32 National War Records Office, (NWRO), 22–3, 28, 30, 86, 124, 147, 153–5, Figure 8 appointment of artists, 63–9, 88, 90, 112, 123 and AWRS, 45–8, 50, 52, 55 commemorative memorial pictures, 114, 118, 120, 126 Smart and art section, 50–4, 66–7 National War Records Office Art Committee, 52–4, 56, 71, 84, 121, 127, 131, 134, 155 Nek, The, Battle of, 133, 136–7, 139 Nevinson, C.W.R., 41, 58, 85, 88, 96 Paths of Glory, Figure 17 New Guinea, 158 New South Wales Academy of Art, 100 New South Wales Government, 149 New South Wales Public Works Department, 117 New South Wales Society of Artists, 102

266

INDEX

New Zealand, 12 New Zealand High Commission, 18 Nicholas, Hilda Rix, 74–5 A Mother of France, Figure 10 Major George Matson Nicholas, Figure 64 non-commissioned works, 166–9

Public Archives of Canada, 26

O’Connor, Kathleen, 74 Orpen, William, 68, 82 outside commissions, 82 Overseas Military Forces of Canada, 37

Rae, Isobel (Iso), 74–5 Cinema Queue, Figure 9 Ranger, Terence, 9 realist tradition, 11 records of war, 151, 162, 171 Australian war museum proposals, 30–2 Canadian influence, 25–30 and Charles Bean, 54–5 collecting, 22–5 commemorative impluse, 17 Dyson’s proposal, 32–8, 51, 57–8 imperial v national collections, 28–30 visual records, 40–5 Rees, Peter, 7 Reid, George, 22, 51 reproductions, 172 retrospective painting, 133–7 returned veterans, 159, 165 Rickards, Edward Alfred, 150, Figure 47, Figure 48, Figure 49 Roberts, Tom, 35, 64, 101 Robertson, Captain I.G., 52 Rodway, Florence, 74, 157, 167 Major General Sir William Bridges, Figure 50 Rogers, Lieutenant G. Hunter, 135 Romani, Battle of, 126 Roper, Michael, 9–10 Ross, Robert, 110, 114, 133, 150 Rothermere, Lord, 13, 37, 52, 146, 148 Royal Academy, 37, 53, 77, 101–2, 111, 159 Royal British Colonial Society of Artists, 108 Royal Canadian Academy, 80 Royal Institute of Oil Painters, 53 Royal Society of Portrait Painters, 102 Royal United Services Institution, 125 Royall, Sergeant Harry, 160 Ruskin, John, 44 Russell, Gyrth, 69

pacifism, 146 painting permanency and prestige, 43–5 v photography and film, 40–5 Paterson, Hugh, 66 Patterson, Private, 72 Peace and War exhibition, 1918, 107, 116 Pearce, George, 7, 20, 24, 30–2, 34, 36, 39, 67, 118 Percival, Cecil Humphrey, 72 Perley, Sir George, 26, 37, 69 permanency, 43–5 photography, 35, 40–6, 133 plein-air method, 100–2 politics of representation, 12–13 Polygon Wood, Battle of, 89, 114, 121 Pope’s Hill, 127 portraiture, 78, 90, 115, 129, 157, 159 Post-Impressionism, 75, 77 Post-Impressionist Exhibition, 77 Power, Septimus, 64, 66, 72, 78, 81–3, 88–9, 102, 107, 114, 121, 127–8, 133, 164, 170–1, Figure 8 Bringing Up the Guns, Figure 54 First Australian Division Artillery going into the 3rd Battle of Ypres, Figure 63 Poynton, Alexander, 143 Pozières, Battle of, 1, 21–2, 24, 38, 89, 126–7 preservation movement, 31 Preston, Margaret, 74 Preziosi, Donald, 153 Prime Minister’s Department, 46, 53, 61, 155 Proctor, Thea, 74

Queensland Government, 25 Quinn, James, 69–70, 78, 85, 90, 100, 102, 107, 115, 127, 129, 131, Figure 8, Figure 20 Quinn’s Post, 127

INDEX

Ryan, Marian, 81 Ryrie, Major General Sir Granville, 156 Samuel, Raphael, 24 Savoy Hotel, 20 Scott, James, 67, 72–3, 86–7, 95, 102, 123–4, 128 Enemy Machine-Gun Position, Figure 16 Shute, Carmel, 74 Silas, Ellis, 32, 126, 129, 160 Roll Call, Figure 38 Slade School of Art, 76 Slater, William, 107 slouch hat, 3, 164 Smart, Henry, 13–14, 27, 46, 55, 59, 71, 107, 121, 135, 155, Figure 4 appointment of artists, 63–9, 74, 77–8, 84, 113, 155, 168 artists at the front, 88, 93–4, 105, 115 commemorative memorial pictures, 119–22, 130 NWRO responsibilties, 8, 50–2 retrospective painting, 133 Smith, Bernard, 63 Smith, Captain Ross, 156 Society of Artists, 100 Society of Australian Artists, 66, 108 Some Modern War Pictures exhibition, 1914, 103 Southland (ship), 127, 155 Speck, Catherine, 5, 104 Spence, Percy, 64–5 Spencer, Walter Baldwin, 39–40, 53, 60, 64, 66, 70 Stanley, Arthur, 20 state governments, 24–5, 148 Stevens, Bertram, 68, 117 Stevens, Dorothy, 75 Storey, John, 148 Streeton, Arthur, 67, 74, 80, 91, 102, 170, Figure 8 at the front, 91–8 commissions, 114, 123, 128, 155 critical of art scheme, 53, 65, 70, 81, 155, 158, 175 Somme from Above Corbie, The, Figure 25 Somme Near Corbie, The, Figure 24

267

Somme Valley Near Corbie, The, Figure 26 style, 77, 96, 100, 105–6 war art proposal, 39–40, 117 style and genre, 12–13, 76–9, 100–6, 110, 125, 159 See also composition memorial pictures Sutherland, Mr, 31 Swynnerton, Annie, 75 Sydney Art School, 100 Sydney Morning Herald, 59 Talmage, Algernon, 52, 71, 121–2, 130, 132, 154, 175 Tate Gallery, 150 Tayler, A. Chevallier, 103 Thompson, Elizabeth (Lady Butler), The 28th Regiment at Quatre Bras, 103, Figure 30 Thomson, Alistair, 162 traditional art, 77, 79, 100–6, 159 Trahair, William, 61 Traill, Jessie, 74 transport, 93–5 shipping of paintings, 155 Treloar, John, 5, 13, 55, 59, 70, 75, 113, 121, 125, 152–3, 166–7, Figure 7 appointment of artists, 71–3, 81, 112, 119, 121 artists at the front, 86–7 AWM art committee, 154–5 AWM collecting policies, 155–60, 168 AWM exhibition, 107, 149–50 and AWRS, 46, 51, 55–7 editing the collection, 162–6 opening of AWM, 169–73 plans for war museum, 142, 144 on visual records, 41, 43–4 and war art scheme, 8, 14 Trumble, Thomas, 30, 41, 45 Ucello, Paulo, 114 uniforms, 81, 164 Ure Smith, Sydney, 61, 71, 117 Velázquez, Diego, 114 Victoria Cross (VC), 128–9 Victorian Government, 148

268

INDEX

vignetting, 104 Villers-Bretonneux, Battle of, 97, 127, 132, 134, 162 violence, 87 visual records, 40–5 von Ranke, Leopold, 42 von Richthofen, Baron, 87, 124 Walker, Edmund, 69, 83 Wandsworth Hospital, 64, 105, 131, 167 war at home, 14, 28, 61–3, 110, 141, 177 War Office, 26, 28–9, 34, 36–40, 47, 51, 65, 67, 131 war painting defined, 12–13 war records, see records of war war veterans, 162, 164, 167 Watkins, Harold, 52 Watt, William, 68, 118 Weedon, Sir Harry, 31 Wells, H.G., 33 Wenham, R., 72 West, Benjamin, 44 Western Front, 90, 94, 103, 110–11, 114, 116, 127, 170, 173, 177, 179

Wheeler, Charles, 67, 130, 158 Battle of Fromelles, Figure 52 Battle of Messines, Figure 51 White Australia policy, 105 White, Brigadier General Sir Brudenell, 21, 24, 28, 30, 32, 45, 51, 56, 70, 115, 124–5, 135 Wilkins, Hubert, 93, 106, 133, 162, Figure 42 Wilkinson, Norman, 85 Williams, John Frank, 77 Winter, Jay, 9, 22, 44, 112 witnesses, see eyewitnesses women, 73–6, 167 Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, 74 Women’s Royal Air Force, 74 Women’s Royal Naval Service, 74 Woodsworth, J.S., 147 Woodsworth, Lucy, 146 Woodville, R. Caton, 103 Wyle, Florence, 75 Yockney, Alfred, 85 Ypres, Battle of, 26, 89, 99, 114, 121, 126, 161, 171, 207, 251

Figure 1 George Lambert, Anzac, the Landing 1915, 1920–22, oil on canvas, 199.8 x 370.2 cm Source: AWM ART02873

Figure 2 Australian and New Zealand troops in the Anzac Day parade march along Whitehall to Westminster Abbey, London, 25 April 1916 Source: AWM P04497.004

Figure 3 Will Dyson, Stepping Stones to Higher Things, c. 1915–16, charcoal, brush and black ink, pencil, white goauche on paper, 47.6 x 33.6 cm Source: AWM ART02265

Figure 4 Henry Smart and Charles Bean in a sandbagged dugout at Montauban on their visit to the front, December 1916 Source: AWM E00064

Figure 5 Lord Beaverbrook c. 1914–18. Beaverbrook was a prominent media magnate and the brains behind the Canadian War Memorials Fund Source: Beaverbrook Collection of War Art, Canadian War Museum

Figure 6 Charles Bean, The Silver Lining – Sunset Over Imbros as Seen from Anzac 1915, 1915 Source: AWM ART00044

Figure 7 Lieutenant John Treloar, c. March 1916. Treloar became the officerin-charge of the Australian War Records Section, and after the war he was appointed Director of the Australian War Museum. Source: AWM DAAV00012

Figure 8 George Coates painted this group portrait of the civilian artists employed by the High Commission’s National War Records Office. The image was originally owned by Cyril Steele but was later acquired by the Australian War Memorial. Standing (left to right): John Longstaff, Charles Bryant, George Lambert, Henry Fullwood, James Quinn, Septimus Power, Arthur Streeton. Sitting at the back (left to right): Will Dyson, Fred Leist and, sitting in the front, George Bell. George Coates, Australian Official War Artists 1916–1918, 1920, oil on canvas, 126 cm x 104.5 cm. Source: AWM ART15334

Figure 9 Iso Rae, Cinema Queue, 1916, pastel, gouache on grey paper, 47.8 x 60.6 cm Source: AWM ART19600

Figure 10 Hilda Rix Nicholas, A Mother of France, 1914, oil on canvas, 88.5 cm x 76.5 cm x 10.5 cm Source: AWM ART03281

Figure 11 Grace Cossington-Smith, The Sock Knitter, 1915, oil on canvas, 61.8 x 51.2 x 1.7 cm Source: Art Gallery of New South Wales

Figure 12 Grace Cossington-Smith, Reinforcements: Troops Marching, c. 1917, oil on paper on hardboard, 23.7 x 21.5 cm Source: Art Gallery of New South Wales

Figure 13 David Bomberg, Study for ‘Sappers at Work: A Canadian Tunnelling Company, Hill 60, St Eloi’, c.1918–19, oil on canvas, 304.2 x 243.8 cm Source: Tate Gallery, T00319

Figure 14 David Bomberg, Sappers at Work: A Canadian Tunnelling Company, 1919, oil on canvas, 304.8 x 243.8 cm Source: Transfer from the Canadian War Memorials, 1921. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Photo: NGC.

Figure 15 Will Longstaff, Study of Dismembered Leg (detail), c. 1918 Source: AWM ART19796.021

Figure 16 James Scott, Enemy Machine-Gun Position, 1918, watercolour over pencil on paper, 40.3 x 55.7 cm Source: AWM ART03379

Figure 17 C.R.W. Nevinson, Paths of Glory, 1917, oil on canvas, 45.7 x 61 cm Source: © Imperial War Museum (Art. IWM ART 518)

Figure 18 Frank Crozier, The Search for Identity Discs, c. 1917–18, oil on canvas, 71.5 x 91.8 cm Source: AWM ART00221

Figure 19 Will Dyson sketching close to the German lines on the Western Front, 29 May 1918 Source: AWM E02439

Figure 20 James Quinn working among the debris of war on Mont St Quentin, France, 7 September 1918 Source: AWM E03326

Figure 21 George Lambert sketching in the field, Palestine, c. 1918 Source: AWM B03210

Figure 22 George Lambert, Study of Camel Head, 1918, pencil on paper Source: AWM ART11394.009

Figure 23 George Lambert, Also Ran, 1918, pencil and brown ink on paper Source: AWM ART11394.006

Figure 24 Arthur Streeton, The Somme Near Corbie, July 1918, pencil, brush and wash on paper, 25.3 x 73.2 cm Source: AWM ART12627

Figure 25 Arthur Streeton, The Somme from Above Corbie, 1918, watercolour with pencil on paper, 24.6 x 55.5 cm Source: AWM ART12652

Figure 26 Arthur Streeton, The Somme Valley Near Corbie, 1919, oil on canvas, 153 x 245.5 cm Source: AWM ART03497

Figure 27 Will Dyson, Dead Beat, the Tunnel, Hill 60, 1917, brush and ink, charcoal on paper, 49 x 43.8 cm Source: AWM ART02210

Figure 28 Will Dyson, Wine of Victory (wounded German prisoners near Ypres), c. 1918, lithograph on paper mounted on card, 60.2 x 70.8 cm Source: AWM ART02293.002

Figure 29 Will Dyson, Coming Out on the Somme, 1916, charcoal, pencil, brush and wash on paper, 56 x 47.2 cm Source: AWM ART02276

Figure 30 Elizabeth Thompson (Lady Butler), The 28th Regiment at Quatre Bras, 1875, oil on canvas, 97.2 x 216.2 cm. Source: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Purchased 1884

Figure 31 A.Y. Jackson, A Copse, Evening, c. 1918, oil on canvas, 86.9 x 112.2 cm Source: Beaverbrook Collection of War Art, Canadian War Museum, CWM 19710261-0186

Figure 32 Paul Nash, Void, 1918, oil on canvas, 71.4 x 91.7 cm Source: Transfer from the Canadian War Memorials, 1921. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Photo: NGC

Figure 33 George Lambert, Magdhaba, March 1918, oil on canvas, 51.2 x 61.8 cm Source: AWM ART09844

Figure 34 George Lambert, Wadi Bed Between El Arish and Magdhaba, March 1918, oil on maple wood panel, 19 x 24 cm Source: AWM ART02679

Figure 35 Frank Crozier, The Beach at Anzac, England, 1919, oil on canvas, 123.4 x 184.6 cm Source: AWM ART02161

Figure 36 Arthur Burgess, HMAS Australia at the Surrender of the German Fleet in the Firth of Forth, 1919–20, oil on linen, 137.5 x 230 cm Source: AWM ART00192

Figure 37 Fred Leist, Australian Infantry Attack in Polygon Wood, England, 1919, oil on canvas, 122.5 x 245 cm Source: AWM ART02927

Figure 38 Ellis Silas, Roll Call, England, 1920, oil on canvas, 131.8 x 183.5 cm Source: AWM ART02436

Figure 39 Henry Fullwood, Attack on Péronne, 1919, oil on canvas, 138.2 x 244.5 cm Source: AWM ART02503

Figure 40 Will Longstaff, Night Attack by 13th Brigade on Villers-Bretonneux, 1919, oil on canvas, 107.5 x 183.9 cm Source: AWM ART03028

Figure 41 Australian War Records Section artists working in their studio in St John’s Wood, London, 1919. Lieutenant George Benson (left) is painting his panoramic view of Gallipoli, Anzac Looking South, while Lieutenant Frank Crozier (upstairs) is working on an image of the Somme’s war-ravaged landscape. On the right is Captain Will Longstaff’s unfinished painting, 8th August, 1918. Source: AWM D00630

Figure 42 Members of the Australian Historical Mission on Hill 60, Gallipoli, photographed by Hubert Wilkins, 22 February 1922 Source: AWM G01904

Figure 43 George Lambert, Study for Dead Trooper and Detail of Turkish Trench, Gallipoli (Pro patria), 24 February and 3–4 March 1919, oil on canvas, 35.7 x 45.8 cm Source: AWM ART02857

Figure 44 George Lambert, The Nek, Walker’s Ridge, Site of the Charge of the Light Horse, 17 February 1919, oil and pencil on wood panel, 33.2 x 44.7 cm Source: AWM ART02856

Figure 45 George Lambert, Achi Baba, from Tommy’s Trench, Helles, Turkey, 8 March 1919, oil with pencil on wood, 20.6 x 29.7 cm Source: AWM ART02849

Figure 46 Bean’s sketch for the layout of the Australian War Museum, c. 1920 Source: AWM AWM124 3/6

Figure 47 Rickards’ sketch for the exterior design of the proposed Canadian Memorial Gallery Source: The Housing of the Canadian War Memorials, Canadian War Memorials Committee, 1919, p. 7. Canadian War Museum; Hartland Molson Library, Rare UB 395 C2 C38

Figure 48 Rickards’ sketch for the interior layout of the proposed Canadian Memorial Gallery Source: The Housing of the Canadian War Memorials, Canadian War Memorials Committee, 1919, p. 17. Canadian War Museum; Hartland Molson Library, Rare UB 395 C2 C38

Figure 49 Rickards’ floor plan for the proposed Canadian Memorial Gallery Source: The Housing of the Canadian War Memorials, Canadian War Memorials Committee, 1919, p. 9. Canadian War Museum; Hartland Molson Library, Rare UB 395 C2 C38

Figure 50 Posthumous portrait of Major-General Sir William Bridges painted by Florence Rodway, who was the first female artist to be commissioned by the Australian War Museum Art Committee. Florence Rodway, Major General Sir William Bridges, 1920, 75.8 x 63.5 cm Source: AWM ART03355

Figure 51 Charles Wheeler, Battle of Messines, 1923, oil on canvas, 137 x 229 cm Source: AWM ART03557

Figure 52 Charles Wheeler, Battle of Fromelles, 1922–25, oil on canvas, 133 x 224.5 cm Source: AWM ART07981

Figure 53 Richard Jack, The Second Battle of Ypres, 22 April to 25 May 1915, 1917, oil on canvas, 371.5 x 589 cm Source: CWM 19710261–0161, Beaverbrook Collection of War Art, Canadian War Museum

Figure 54 Septimus Power, Bringing Up the Guns, 1921, oil on canvas, 147 x 233 cm Source: AWM ART03334

Figure 55 George Coates and Dora Meeson, General William Bridges and His Staff Watching the Manoeuvres of the 1st Australian Division in the Desert in Egypt, March 1915, 1922–26, oil on canvas, 116.9 x 160.3 cm Source: AWM ART09425

Figure 56 George Lambert, Study for ‘Anzac, the Landing 1915’, 1920, pencil on paper, 22.4 x 18.2 cm Source: AWM ART11391.021

Figure 57 George Coates, First Australian Wounded at Gallipoli Arriving at Wandsworth Hospital, London, Britain, 1921, oil on canvas, 154.5 x 128 cm Source: AWM ART00200

Figure 58 George Coates, Casualty Clearing Station, Britain, 1920, oil on canvas, 141.8 x 212.4 cm Source: AWM ART00198

Figure 59 Interior of the Australian War Museum, Exhibition Building, Melbourne, c. 25 April 1922 Source: AWM J00290

Figure 60 Exhibit of trophies and paintings in the Australian War Museum, Exhibition Building, Melbourne, c. 25 April 1922 Source: AWM J00302

Figure 61 Will Longstaff, 8th August, 1918, 1918–19, oil on canvas, 123 x 292 cm Source: AWM ART03022

Figure 62 Will Dyson, Small Talk, 1920, oil on board, 46 x 62 cm Source: AWM ART02430

Figure 63 Septimus Power, First Australian Division Artillery going into the 3rd Battle of Ypres, 1919, oil on canvas, 121.7 x 245 cm Source: AWM ART03330

Figure 64 Hilda Rix Nicholas, Major George Matson Nicholas, 1916, charcoal and pastel over pencil on paper, 56 x 38 cm Source: AWM ART96807