Muirhead Bone

Muirhead Bone during the Battle of the Somme

Sir Muirhead Bone (born March 23, 1876 in Glasgow , † October 21, 1953 in Oxford ) was a Scottish etcher , watercolor painter , draftsman and war painter during the First and Second World Wars .

Life

Muirhead Bone was born on March 23, 1876 in Glasgow . He was one of eight children from the marriage of journalist and publisher David Drummond Bone (1841-1911) and his wife Elizabeth Millar Crawford (1847-1886). His siblings were u. a. the journalist James Bone (1872–1962), who published for the Manchester Guardian for years, and the sea captain Sir David Bone (1874–1959). Muirhead began an apprenticeship as an architect. Soon after, however, he devoted himself to the arts and began studying at the Glasgow School of Art . At the beginning of his artistic career, Bone specialized in prints. His first works made by printing were lithographs . On the other hand, he achieved greater fame through his etchings and drypoint etchings , which often depicted industrial or architectural objects such as Gothic cathedrals, urban construction and demolition systems or buildings in the Anglo-Norman style. In addition, Bone turned more often to the landscape subject.

In order to further develop his career as an artist, he moved to London in 1901 , where he soon became a member of the renowned New English Art Club . His circle of friends included u. a. Henry Tonks , Alphonse Legros, and William Strang . He held his first solo exhibition in 1902 at the Carfax Gallery, founded by William Rothenstein and John Fothergill in the central London district of St. James’s . He was also a member of the Glasgow Art Club , to whose exhibitions he also sent his works. In 1903 he married Gertrude Helena Dodd, sister of the equally famous etcher Francis Dodd . His wife later embarked on a career as a writer. The couple had two children: Stephen (1904–1958) and Gavin (1906–1943). Her older son Stephen later became a respected artist himself and also a war painter.

The Battle of the Somme (1918)

First World War

In 1916, AP Watt, a literary agent who worked for the British War Propaganda Bureau , contacted Bone about a commissioned work . On March 2 of the same year, a law on military service was passed in Great Britain , through which numerous men between the ages of 18 and 41 were called up for military service. Watt informed Bone that he could soon be forcibly recruited and therefore proposed him to the head of the war propaganda office, Charles Masterman , as a war painter. On the advice of William Rothenstein , Masterman Bone appointed Great Britain's first official war painter in May 1916.

Ready for Sea (1917)

The Town Hall, Péronne (1918)

Bone had campaigned for the creation of an official martial artist program early on. Although 38 years old at the beginning of the war, Bone was spared conscription to the military thanks to his appointment as a war painter. In June 1916 he was also awarded the honorary rank of lieutenant and he was ordered to work in France , for which he was awarded a pay of 500 pounds (around £ 42,000 in today's value). He reached France on August 16, 1916 during the Battle of the Somme .

He was active as a war painter v. a. on the Western Front and in the Royal Navy . By October 1916, he had produced around 150 drawings from the war before he returned to Great Britain and devoted himself to other motifs, such as the depiction of shipyards and battleships . In 1917 he was employed again as a war painter in France, this time focusing in particular on cities and villages marked by war.

Two volumes of his war drawings, The Western Front and With the Grand Fleet , were published during the war. Bone was also an active member of the British War Memorials Committee and influenced the selection of the artists commissioned by the committee. He also advised the committee in the planning of a memorial hall ( Hall of Remembrance ), which should serve for documentation and as a memorial for the First World War.

Interwar period

After 1918, Bone returned to the kind of art that he took on before the war. He was an important patron of the British artist Wyndham Lewis and the Irishman William Orpen , who were themselves active as war painters. He made some trips abroad, including a. to Italy , France and the Netherlands , which increasingly influenced his artistic work. During a boat trip across the Atlantic he painted three portraits of the Polish - British writer Joseph Conrad .

In the interwar period he presented his works at numerous exhibitions in well-known galleries, including a. in London and New York . In 1937, Bone was knighted for his services as an artist . He was also a curator and committee member of various museums such as the Tate Gallery , the National Gallery and the Imperial War Museum .

Second World War

In 1940, at the old age of 64, Bone was recently appointed as a war painter, this time as a member of the War Artists' Advisory Committee (WAAC). This was founded by the British Ministry of Information with the aim of producing a comprehensive artistic and documentary report on the history of Great Britain during the Second World War. Bone was also awarded the rank of major in the Royal Marines , whereby his work during the Second World War concentrated mainly on the mapping of naval officers, coastal facilities and evacuated troops. He made u. a. Drawings of parades by the sailors of the HMS Ajax and the HMS Exeter , the two British cruisers that attacked the German armored ship Admiral Graf Spee on December 13, 1939 during the battle in front of the Río de la Plata . He also drew some of the last British troops evacuated from Dunkirk by the Royal Navy during Operation Dynamo .

The Return from Dunkirk (1940)

Due to the death of his son Gavin in 1943, who died of tuberculosis , Bone decided not to pursue his activity as a war painter any longer. However, he remained loyal to the WAAC as an active member until the end of the war. The vacant post as a war painter in the navy was subsequently taken over by Bone's older son Stephen.

death

Muirhead Bone died in Oxford on October 21, 1953 at the age of 77. His final resting place is in the churchyard next to St. Mary's Church in the small town of Whitegate, Cheshire .

Work style

Bone's works can largely be assigned to the style of realism . He had a physical peculiarity that made it possible for him to produce depictions of war that were remarkably true to reality: Bone's eyesight, who was shortsighted in one eye and farsighted in the other, is said to have been a decisive factor in his particularly realistic images. He also benefited from his brief training as an architect in depicting devastated cities and buildings.

As a martial artist, Bone always carried a handy sketchbook with him in order to capture images as detailed as possible in real time. As a result, he hardly had to make any corrections or whitewashes afterwards. Accordingly, he worked with maniacal tools such as pens , pencils , chalk , charcoal or watercolors . Bone preferred to produce a drawing in just one on-site session to reduce the need for subsequent touch-ups from memory. For this reason, Bones depictions of war are rather small in format. Large-scale paintings, on the other hand, were often made in studios on the basis of previously made sketches. The authenticity lost in this way contrasted with Bone's approach of going to work on the spot, and again underscored his artistic skill. This, as well as the fact that Bone had to continue his work under sometimes particularly adverse conditions, earned him the reputation of an outstanding martial artist.

Propaganda and reception

The aim of the British War Propaganda Bureau was to educate neutral nations like the US about what happened during World War I and to convince them of the need to stand by Britain and its allies. Due to the limited variety of available photographic work, the office decided to initiate a martial artist program that was to focus on illustrated propaganda . The British population grew tired of the heroic depictions of their soldiers in war photographs. In order to convince the public of the authenticity of the images published on the instructions of the propaganda bureau, it was decided that the illustrated propaganda should be provided by well-trained artists such as Bone.

Bone was considered an exceptional eraser in the UK. He was considered extremely skillful, talented and an excellent observer. These qualities made him a sought-after martial artist for Charles Masterman . The former was very keen on credibility and authenticity. Masterman didn't want the population to think that the War Propaganda Bureau was trying to trick them into believing untruths. This is detrimental to the agency's credibility and integrity. He said, "We have decided [...] to present facts and general arguments based on these facts" (Malvern 2004: 17, transl.). Bone's graphic realism was ideal for this endeavor.

Bone received clear instructions from the war propaganda office as to which subjects to depict. 200 of his drawings were published for sale in late 1916. Each copy also contained an explanatory essay and helpful captions. The British headquarters at the front, to which Bone had gone after completing his pictures of the Battle of the Somme , initially took little pleasure in his work and found it rather weak and bland.

Bone's pictures from World War I were published in 1917 by Country Life , a reputable British magazine, in a collection called The Western Front . 12,000 copies of the publication were earmarked for sale, another 12,000 were used for propaganda purposes, and 6,000 were sent to America. The proceeds flowed u. a. in financing the war. The Western Front was also translated into French and 300 issues were sent to France, along with 500 English-language copies. There were also picture boards and postcards with the motifs for sale. Bone's realistic representations have sparked much discussion among the population. When his pictures were presented to the public, they received mixed reviews. Wilfred Owen presented them as unrealistic and criticized: "These 'Somme pictures' are the laughing stock of the army" (Owen / Bell 1967: 429, transl.). The well-known art critic Frank Rutter, on the other hand, praised Bone's accuracy in depicting objects of war. Bone's works of art were shown in an exhibition at the Colnaghi Gallery in London in 1917, which was not particularly successful. Despite the unsuccessful exhibition, the editions of the Western Front did not sell badly, so Bones' popularity increased during the First World War and he enjoyed widespread acceptance by art critics in the UK and abroad. Unlike other contemporary artists, Bone became comparatively wealthy during the war. Its success encouraged the British War Propaganda Bureau to hire more official martial artists, including a. Paul Nash , Wyndham Lewis, and Stanley Spencer .

Works (selection)

• Snowy Morning, Queen Margaret's College, Glasgow (1900–1901)
• Somerset House (1905)
• Ballantrae School House (1905-1907)
• Study for 'The Great Gantry, Charing Cross Station' (1906)
• Demolition of St. James's Hall (Exterior) (1907)
• The British Museum Reading Room, May 1907 (1907)
• In The War Zone (1916)
• A Ruined Village in France: Bécordel-Bécourt (1916)
• A View in Flanders behind the Lines, Showing Locre and the Tops of Dug-Outs on the Scherpenber (1916)
• On the Somme near Mametz (1916)
• Waiting for the Wounded at a Collecting Station in the Field on the Somme at Montauban (1916)
• Heavy Artillery Officers' Mess, Vlamertinghe Chateau, August 1916 (1916)
• A French Chateau Occupied by the 3rd Coldstream Guards, October 1916 (1916)
• A Church in the Citadel at Arras (1916)
• Building Ships: A Shipyard (1917)
• Building Ships: A Shipyard Seen from a Big Crane (1917)
• Building Ships: A Fitting Out Basin (1917)
• Building Ships: Ready for Sea (1917)
• Building Ships: On the Stocks (1917)
• Building Ships: A Workshop (1917)
• Ruins of the Church at Péronne, April 1917 (1917)
• A Soldiers' Cemetery at Lihons, May 1917 (1917)
• Ready for Sea (1917)
• Church at Bapâume (1917)
• To Officers Billet at GHQ, June 1917 (1917)
• From the Bridge of a Battleship (1917)
• From the After Deck of a Battleship (HMS Tiger from HMS Repulse) (1917)
• The Town Hall, Péronne (1918)
• The Battle of the Somme (1918)
• The Mountain Background, Gerona (1926)
• The Return from Dunkirk (1940)
• Torpedoed Oil Tanker (1940)

literature

• Malvern, Sue (2004): Modern Art, Britain and the Great War: Witnessing, Testimony and Remembrance . New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Owen, Harold / Bell, John (eds.) (1967): Wilfred Owen: Collected Letters . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Web links

Commons : Muirhead Bone  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Sir Muirhead Bone | British artist . In: Encyclopedia Britannica . ( britannica.com [accessed February 7, 2018]).
2. ^ Bone, Sir Muirhead (1876–1953), printmaker and drafttsman | Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . doi : 10.1093 / ref: odnb / 9780198614128.001.0001 / odnb-9780198614128-e-31957 ( oxforddnb.com [accessed March 10, 2018]).
3. ↑ James Bone - Person - National Portrait Gallery. Accessed March 10, 2018 . 
4. ^ Administrator: Sea captain and novelist. Retrieved March 10, 2018 (UK English). 
5. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Muirhead Bone. In: scotlandswar.co.uk. Retrieved February 7, 2018 . 
6. ^ Suffolk Painters. Retrieved March 10, 2018 (American English). 
7. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Sir Muirhead Bone, War Artist and Etcher . In: Diverse Narratives of WWI . March 5, 2015 ( diversenarratives.com [accessed February 7, 2018]).
8. ^ Carfax Gallery. In: 19thc-artworldwide.org. Retrieved February 7, 2018 . 
9. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Sir Muirhead Bone: a great recorder of war. In: The Gazette. Retrieved February 7, 2018 . 
10. ^ Conscription: the First World War. In: parliament.uk. Retrieved February 7, 2018 . 
11. ↑ ^{a b c} Sir Muirhead Bone: Official War Artist, Part One | Art History Unstuffed. Retrieved February 17, 2018 (American English). 
12. ^ "The Battle of the Somme - Muirhead Bone". (No longer available online.) In: Imperial War Museum. Archived from the original on February 22, 2015 ; accessed on February 6, 2018 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
13. ↑ £ 500 in 1916 → 2018 | UK inflation calculator. Retrieved February 7, 2018 . 
14. ↑ Drawing of the Battle of the Somme by Muirhead Bone. Retrieved February 7, 2018 . 
15. ↑ Paul Harris, Julian Halsby: The Dictionary of Scottish Painters 1600 to the Present . Canongate, 1990.
16. ↑ Sir Muirhead Bone | Joseph Conrad Listening to Music | The Met. Retrieved February 7, 2018 . 
17. ↑ Official War Artist | Artist biographies. Retrieved February 7, 2018 . 
18. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Sir Muirhead Bone: First Official War Artist - History of government. Retrieved February 12, 2018 . 
19. ↑ Master of drypoint | NZZ . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . June 18, 2005, ISSN  0376-6829 ( nzz.ch [accessed February 17, 2018]).
20. ^ ^{A b} Paul Gough: A Terrible Beauty: British Artists in the First World War . Sansom, Bristol 2010, pp. 8 .
21. ↑ Tate: Artist: Sir Muirhead Bone. In: Tate. Retrieved February 7, 2018 (UK English).