To the Unknown British Soldier in France

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To the Unknown British Soldier in France (William Orpen)
To the Unknown British Soldier in France
William Orpen , 1928
Oil on canvas
154 × 129 cm
Imperial War Museum

To the Unknown British Soldier in France (To the Unknown British soldiers in France) is a painting by William Orpen (1878-1931) that the occasion of the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 after the end of World War I has made. The painting is now in the Imperial War Museum in London .

prehistory

William Orpen was a Irish painter of the Post-Impressionism , which was mainly in London stayed and worked there. In the age of Edward VII he was a sought-after and commercially successful portrait painter . In 1917 Orpen was one of the first artists to be sent by the British Ministry of Information as a martial artist to France on the Western Front in order to capture the local war in paintings.

Orpen was promoted to honorary major and had his own car, chauffeur, valet and private secretary. Orpen was aware of his privileged position over the common soldiers and found it difficult to produce anything. Several portraits of high-ranking British officers, including Commander-in-Chief Douglas Haig, date from this period . At a meeting he advised Orpen to paint the soldiers on the front who are sacrificing their lives for a good cause.

Orpen followed this advice and produced a range of works from sensitively observed realistic depictions to allegorical figures symbolizing suffering and sacrifice. A Tank shows a British tank negotiating a nearly vertical slope and stretching up in the process. In Blown Up you see a soldier whose uniform was blown away literally by a grenade explosion. The stylized figure recalls Christ as he emerged from his grave.

  • William Orpen (1903)

  • Field Marshal Douglas Haig (1917)

  • A tank (1917)

  • Blown Up (1917)

After the end of the war, Orpen was appointed the official portrait artist of the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 at the special request of British Prime Minister David Lloyd George . He was commissioned to make three paintings to depict special moments in the negotiations. Orpen was to receive a total of £ 3,000 for his work, now around £ 140,000.

First Orpen made the group portrait A Peace Conference at the Quai d'Orsay , in which the preliminary conference of the allied and associated victorious powers is shown. His second painting was The Signing of Peace in the Hall of Mirrors , the moment of the signing of the peace treaty by the German envoy in the Hall of Mirrors (Galerie des Glaces) of the Palace of Versailles holds.

Preliminary work

The painting was to be the third of Orpen's commissioned paintings for the peace conference. In a letter to his lover Evelyn Saint-George in 1921, Orpen sketched a draft of the painting. He intended to do a group portrait with high-ranking officers and politicians . The group was to gather in the Room of Peace (Salon de la Paix) in the Palace of Versailles. He listed some of the portrayals, including Field Marshal Douglas Haig , Field Marshal Edmund Allenby , Field Marshal Herbert Plumer , Field Marshal John French , General Henry Rawlinson , General Arthur Currie , Admiral David Beatty , Admiral Frederik Doveton Sturdee , Marshal Ferdinand Foch , Marshal Philippe Pétain , Georges Clemenceau and David Lloyd George .

From 1917 Orpen had made sketches and paintings in oil paint of the people to be portrayed , some of which have survived. According to Orpen, the total number of oil sketches was thirty. There also seem to be sketches of the overall composition. Several people can also be seen on the x-rays of the painting who have gathered against the background of the room.

  • General Arthur Currie (1919)

  • General Henry Rawlinson (1918)

  • Field Marshal Herbert Plumer (1918)

  • Admiral David Beatty (1919)

Makeovers

In 1921 Orpen began working on the painting. However, he was not happy with the subject and wrote to his lover: “You know I couldn't go on. It all seemed so unimportant somehow. Despite all these high-ranking men, I always thought of the soldiers who will stay in France forever. So I wiped out everything, the statesmen and commanders, and painted the picture as you can see it - the unknown soldier guarded by his comrades. "

To the Unknown British Soldier in France - 1921 version

Orpen had apparently made the radical decision to scrape everyone represented from the canvas and paint a picture without military leaders and politicians. Orpen positioned a coffin in the middle, which is covered by a flag. Two half-naked soldiers to one side and two putti above surrounded the coffin. The representation of the soldiers refers to Orpen's work Blown Up from 1917.

The reason for this change of heart were Orpen's experiences at the peace conference in Paris while he was making his first two pictures. His disillusionment with the war increased as he followed the course of the conferences. For him it was as if the men who had fought and lost their lives had been given up and forgotten by high politics.

  • Detail with soldiers and putti

  • Traces of overpainting

  • Outline of a figure painted over

This unusual second version was first shown in France in 1922 and proved popular. When the painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1923, it sparked some controversy. It was voted picture of the year by the public, but it was also heavily criticized because of the half-naked, unheroic soldier guards. The museum management decided not to buy the work because, from their point of view, it did not meet the requirements for “a suitable and lasting souvenir” . The painting will only be accepted if the figures are removed. Only later did Orpen decide to paint over the figures and putti.

Occasionally, 1927 is given as the time of the overpainting, but it seems that Orpen did not complete his revisions until 1928. There are clear traces of the overpainting on the painting. He donated this final version to the Imperial War Museum in 1928 in memory of Field Marshal Douglas Haig, "one of the best friends I have ever had."

The paintings

This last version from 1928 is probably the most successful in composition and mood. It shows the Room of Peace in the Palace of Versailles in all of its classical architectural splendor of shiny marble and gold leaf. In the middle of the lower edge of the picture is placed a coffin covered with the Union Jack , the flag of Great Britain. The arch of the passage to the adjoining Hall of Mirrors at Versailles arches above the coffin. A chandelier hangs from the ceiling directly above the coffin. The hall of mirrors itself is darkened. On the left edge you can see narrow strips of light, on the floor of the hall of mirrors weak light can be seen through the windows from the left. At the other end of the Hall of Mirrors, bright light falls through an archway from the Hall of War (Salon de la Guerre) opposite . This light directs the gaze to the coffin in the foreground.

  • Wall decoration

  • View of the archway

  • Coffin with helmet and flag

  • Vanishing point

Orpens composition uses from the Renaissance known central projection with a vanishing point. All lines emanating from the floor and from other architectural elements lead to the vanishing point in the center of the brightly shining archway. The red central vertical of the flag merges directly into the strip of the illuminated floor and finally leads to the vanishing point in the archway.

The British helmet placed at the top of the coffin directly relates to the sacrifice the unknown soldier made in his death. The magnificent classic wall decoration with helmets, shields and armor contrasts with the simplicity of the coffin, helmet and flag. Orpen's homage to the common soldier who stayed behind in France represents the loss and death of several million people.

More paintings from the series

William Orpen, as the official portrait artist of the Paris Peace Conference, made two more pictures:

literature

  • Charles L. Mee: 1919 Versailles: The End of the War to End All Wars. New Word City, Newbury 2014, ISBN 9781612307565 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Helena Stride: War peace. In: tes.com. April 15, 2005, accessed June 6, 2018 .
  2. ^ Jeanne Willette: Irish Artists of the Great War, Part Three. In: arthistoryunstuffed.com. April 29, 2016, accessed June 6, 2018 .
  3. ^ To the Unknown British Soldier in France. Imperial War Museum (IWM), accessed June 6, 2018 .

Web links

Commons : To the Unknown British Soldier in France  - Collection of images, videos and audio files