Statesmen of World War I.

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Statesmen of World War I (James Guthrie)
Statesmen of World War I.
James Guthrie , 1930
Oil on canvas
396.2 x 335.3 cm
National Portrait Gallery, London

Statesmen of World War I (statesmen of the First World War) is a painting by James Guthrie (1859-1930) in 1930. It is now in the National Portrait Gallery in London . James Guthrie was a Scottish Late Impressionist painter and an important representative of the Glasgow Boys , a group of artists from the 19th and early 20th centuries. The original name for the painting was Some Statesmen of the Great War (Some statesmen of the Great War) .

prehistory

James Guthrie after 1900

Shortly after the end of the First World War , the South African financier Abraham Bailey (1864–1940) asked an art dealer how he could commission two life-size group portraits that would appreciate the great importance of the army and navy for victory in the world war. At the same time, Bailey wanted to illustrate how successful British policy was with regard to the Dominions . The art dealer turned to James Milner, director of the National Portrait Gallery in London. Milner and the Chairman of the Board of Trustees , Harold Arthur Lee-Dillon , recommended that a third painting be commissioned with eminent United Kingdom statesmen who had victoriously ended the war. Bailey agreed and offered to pay £ 5,000 (about £ 230,000 today) for each of the three paintings and to donate them to the National Portrait Gallery upon completion.

Although Bailey paid for the paintings himself, he left the museum's board of trustees to decide which people would be portrayed and which artists would do the work. Its only conditions were that statesmen of the British Dominions would also be shown and that the pictures would be completed as soon as possible, in order to reproduce them and market them in the British Empire . The most important British military and naval leaders were quickly selected, but the composition of statesmen caused problems. Initially, only statesmen who had served during the war were considered. Then the presentation was limited to the Prime Ministers of Australia , Canada , Newfoundland , New Zealand , South Africa and the United Kingdom as well as the British Foreign Ministers , Ministers of War and First Lords of the Admiralty . Although Edward Stanley, 17th Earl of Derby , was Secretary of War from 1916 to 1918, he was not included in the selection. Two leading politicians, George Nicoll Barnes and Andrew Bonar Law , were considered for their wartime membership in the coalition governments of Herbert Henry Asquith and David Lloyd George , bringing the total to sixteen at that time.

Two portraitists could soon be found for the first two paintings. John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) painted General Officers of World War I and Arthur Stockdale Cope (1857-1940) created Naval Officers of World War I . Both paintings are still part of the National Portrait Gallery's collection today. For the third painting, Bailey had initially wanted to win William Orpen , but Orpen refused the commission because he had already been hired as the official portrait artist for the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 . Orpen manufactured a. a. on the occasion of the Peace Treaty of Versailles the painting The Signing of Peace in the Hall of Mirrors, Versailles . Sargent then recommended the Scottish artist James Guthrie as a portraitist. The museum management made Guthrie an offer to do this, but Guthrie hesitated, just as Sargent had initially done. Guthrie was aware of the challenge of having to develop a coherent and convincing concept, as he did not want to deliver a group picture like that of a photographer. However, Sargent persevered and was finally able to change his colleague and friend's mind, so that Guthrie accepted the offer in early 1919. Guthrie suggested the introduction of another figure and proposed Ganga Singh , the Maharajah of Bikaner , as representative for British India . This proposal was accepted, bringing the final total number of statesmen to seventeen:

Preliminary work

Study of the overall composition

Guthrie initially spent around £ 1000 upgrading his studio to raise the ceiling height and get more even, diffused light. Then Guthrie wanted all people depicted with the exception of Herbert Kitchener each, which was 1,916 killed in the war, in individual studies portrayed. This turned out to be difficult because the individual meetings had to be coordinated with the politicians' schedules and some statesmen wanted to leave for Paris for the peace conference. These delays worried Bailey, who was pushing for completion as soon as possible. Since the artist had only two sessions of thirty minutes in total for each statesman, Guthrie made drawings on paper during the sessions , which he traced on canvas and developed in oil paint . Each politician was painted in the pose that he would take in the group picture. So Guthrie had to think about the individual poses and the groupings of the people beforehand. An oil sketch of the entire arrangement has been preserved. There are two studies by Edward Gray in different poses. By Herbert Henry Asquith a sketchy Headshot next to a drafted half figure has been preserved. Guthrie's Bust portrait of Louis Botha used Sargent as a model for his painting General Officers of World War I . The meetings finally dragged on until early summer 1921.

Guthrie endeavored to keep the studies together as a series, and for this purpose left them to his relatives, the Gardiners, who were able to win the Scottish National Portrait Gallery for the exhibition of the collection . Guthrie himself arranged the design and arrangement of the portrait sketches. After Guthrie's death in September 1930, the sketch collection was exhibited in Kirkcaldy , Dundee , Stirling , Aberdeen and Glasgow as a tribute to the artist . In 1934 the series was moved to the modernized National Gallery of Scotland , where it can still be seen today. The individual portraits of the study series are often rated as more impressive, convincing and interesting than the versions in the group picture.

Portrait studies of statesmen

completion

Guthrie fell ill in the early 1920s and the elaboration of the group portrait was delayed. In 1924 he began working on the large-format overall composition, which he had to interrupt again and again because of his serious illness. Guthrie gathered the statesmen around a rectangular table as if at a conference. He represented nine of the seventeen people standing and eight sitting. The fictional scene takes place in a high hall with Doric columns and a vault. From the right a slanting ray of sunlight falls like a spotlight on the figure of Winston Churchill . This emphasis on Churchill is almost prophetic for his future career, but is probably due to his positioning in the center of the picture, because Guthrie obviously did not want to over-emphasize any person in order to preserve the democratic character of the assembly. On the far right in the deep shadow, a little away from the group, is Herbert Kitchener. The placement and dimming could be related to the fact that Kitchener had passed away before the painting was made. Kitchener's left leg is standing on a tiger skin.

Detail with the goddess of victory

A winged sculpture can be seen in the background, which is based on the Nike of Samothrace from the Louvre in Paris . It is the central and dominant motif in the painting. The figure towers high above the group of statesmen, conveys a sense of action and triumph, and transforms the play into an allegory of imperial victory. To accommodate the statue behind the seventeen people, Guthrie expanded the intended elongated format upwards. This is why Guthrie's work is 3.96 m high and 3.55 m wide, in contrast to the paintings by Sargent and Cope in portrait format.

Guthrie probably copied the individual studies while drawing up the group portrait and repainted them in oil. This could be the cause of some of the execution weaknesses related to the oversizing of Winston Churchill's head and the relatively poor modeling of Arthur Balfour's face. Guthrie recognized these shortcomings and was so dissatisfied with his portrayal of Balfour that on the eve of the first public exhibition in Edinburgh he wanted to scratch out and redesign his whole face.

In the meantime, the National Portrait Gallery in London was being converted to house the three paintings. The ceiling of the main gallery was raised, a new lighting system with mirrors was installed, the walls were painted red and the floors were painted black. It was envisaged that the painting would be positioned with the statesmen in the center and flanked on either side by Sargent's generals and Cope's naval officers. Guthrie oversaw the remodeling and renovation of the main gallery for the final months of his life, but never saw the completion.

When the painting was completed in early 1930, it was transported to Edinburgh, where Guthrie spent three weeks fine-tuning it. In the spring of 1930, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery first exhibited the painting to the public. James Guthrie died in September 1930 after a long and serious illness. In October 1930 the picture was taken to London in the National Portrait Gallery, where it is now on permanent display together with the other two works in room 31 (Britain 1914–59).

The statesmen of the Great War

Detail with the depicted statesmen

The following are shown standing from left to right:

  1. Ganga Singh (1880–1943), Maharajah of Bikaner , was major general in the British-Indian Army and fought against the Ottoman Empire in Egypt and Palestine . He was the only colored member of the British War Cabinet (Imperial War Cabinet) and represented the Empire India in 1919 at the Paris Peace Conference.
  2. Louis Botha (1862-1919) was the first Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa from 1910 to 1919 . He supported Great Britain by sending troops to German South West Africa , later to East Africa and the Western Front . He was also involved in the negotiation of the Versailles Peace Treaty.
  3. George Nicoll Barnes (1859-1940) was a member of the Cabinet of the Lloyd George Government from 1916 to 1920 , first as Minister of Pensions, later as Minister without Portfolio. He took part in the Paris Peace Conference and was one of the signatories of the Versailles Peace Treaty.
  4. Robert Borden (1854–1937) was the eighth Prime Minister of Canada between 1911 and 1920 . Borden supported Great Britain in the First World War with massive troop deployments and was able to upgrade Canada's status within the British Commonwealth .
  5. Arthur James Balfour (1848-1930) was British Prime Minister from 1902 to 1905 , from 1915 to 1916 First Lord of the Admiralty (First Lord of the Admiralty) and from 1916 to 1919 Foreign Minister (Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs). He wrote the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which guaranteed the Jewish people in Palestine a national home. He was one of the signatories of the Versailles Peace Treaty.
  6. Eric Campbell Geddes (1875-1937) was First Lord of the Admiralty from 1917 to 1919 and was a member of David Lloyd George's War Cabinet. In 1919 he became a minister without portfolio before he took over the newly created office of Minister of Transport in the same year. In 1922 he left politics.
  7. Andrew Bonar Law (1858-1923) was from 1915 to 1916 Colonial Secretary (Secretary of State for the Colonies), 1916-1919 Chancellor of the Exchequer (Chancellor of the Exchequer), and from 1919 to 1921 Lord Privy Seal (Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal). He was a signatory to the Versailles Peace Treaty and was British Prime Minister from 1922 to 1923.
  8. Edward Morris, 1st Baron Morris (1859-1935), was Prime Minister of the Dominion Newfoundland from 1909 to 1917 , which was the equivalent of the Dominion Canada at the time . Under his leadership, Newfoundland supported Great Britain during World War I by sending ground troops.
  9. Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener (1850-1916), became Secretary of State for War in the cabinet of Asquith shortly after the start of the war and provided the so-called Kitchener's army with the famous slogan Lord Kitchener Wants You . He died in 1916 on board an armored cruiser that ran into a German sea mine.

Seated from left to right are shown:

  2. Joseph Cook (1860-1947) was Prime Minister of Australia from 1913 to 1914, opposition leader from 1914 to 1916 and Minister for the Navy from 1917 to 1920 under Prime Minister Hughes. For Australia, Cook attended the 1919 Paris Peace Conference.
  3. Billy Hughes (1862–1952) was Prime Minister of Australia from 1915 to 1923. He called on the National Conference (Imperial conference) in 1916 for closer cooperation in the British Empire and was involved after the war, to the negotiation of the Treaty of Versailles.
  4. David Lloyd George , 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor (1863-1945), was Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1908 to 1915, Minister of Munitions from 1915 to 1916 and was briefly Minister of War in 1916. He was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1916 to 1922 and was one of the signatories of the Versailles Peace Treaty.
  5. Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner (1854–1925), was Minister of War in the cabinet of Lloyd George from 1918 to 1919. In 1919 he became Secretary of State for the Colonies. In this capacity he took part in the Paris Peace Conference and was one of the signatories of the Versailles Peace Treaty.
  6. William Ferguson Massey (1856–1925) was Prime Minister of New Zealand from 1912 until his death in 1925 . In 1914 he was appointed to the British Privy Council . Under his leadership, New Zealand took part in the First World War alongside Great Britain.
  7. Winston Churchill (1874-1965) was First Lord of the Admiralty from 1911 to 1915. As the person responsible for the looming defeat in the Battle of Gallipoli , he had to resign in 1915. From 1917 to 1919 he was Minister of Munitions in Lloyd George's cabinet. He was British Prime Minister twice in the 1940s and 1950s.
  8. Edward Gray , 1st Viscount Gray of Fallodon (1862-1933), was Secretary of State from 1905 to 1916. In 1907 he expanded the Entente cordiale with France into the British-French-Russian Triple Entente . He made a decisive contribution to Italy's entry into the war on the side of the Allies in 1915.
  9. Herbert Henry Asquith , 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith (1852-1928), was British Prime Minister from 1908 to 1916. In the course of the war he was accused of various political and military defeats, including the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland and the failed Battle of the Somme . He resigned at the end of 1916. He was succeeded as Prime Minister David Lloyd George.

reception

Emery Walker : Some Statesmen of the Great War

The painting was generally well received. Some critics have described it as an outstanding achievement that does not have to fear comparison with Rembrandt or one of the Dutch masters. Some complained about the lack of proportion between some of the figures. Overall, the work was seen as the culmination of James Guthrie's career.

The group portrait was apparently reproduced and disseminated as requested by Abraham Bailey. A 46 cm high and 31 cm wide photo engraving is in the British Museum in London. The black and white illustration is labeled Some Statesmen of the Great War . The caption states Abe Bailey as the founder and James Guthrie as the artist.

More paintings from the series

Abraham Bailey had commissioned two other group portraits from the National Portrait Gallery:

literature

Web links

Commons : Statesmen of World War I  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files