Walter Jack Duncan

Walter Jack Duncan (born January 1, 1881 in Indianapolis , Indiana , † April 11, 1941) was a war painter during the First World War for the United States Army .

Life

Duncan came from a prominent theater family. His grandfather, John Jack Duncan, was a renowned Shakespeare actor, and his mother, Rosalie Jack, was a member of the Reed family.

When he finished high school, Duncan and his school friend, Robert Cortes Holliday, who wanted to achieve some fame as a writer and artist, moved to New York . There they began a four-year study at the Art Students League , America's best art school at the turn of the 20th century. They shared the proverbial attic room during their studies. The boys became students of John H. Twachtman , "a rugged little man with a Mephistophelian manner," as it was said, and whom his fellow artists described as the greatest of American landscape artists. Duncan stayed in the Art Students League from 1899 to 1902. The institution then had four hundred students and the best art teachers in the country. Some of the prominent men serving as instructors at the time were Kenyon Cox , William Merritt Chase , Thomas Eakins, and Edwin H. Blashfield . His students who gained prominence included Howard Pyle , George Inness , Rufus Fairchild Zogbaum , Thore de Thulstrup, and Charles Dana Gibson . For a short time Frederic Remington studied there too.

Like many aspiring illustrators, the turn of the century was a moderately good time for Duncan to start his career. After three years in the league, Duncan began his long career as a magazine illustrator with Century Magazine in 1903. Some of his other magazine credits have been Scribner's Magazine , McClure's Magazine, and Harper's Magazine . His various illustration assignments before the war had given him the opportunity to travel abroad to Canada and England . He also spent time in the Kentucky forests and attracted Daniel Boone's offspring to their natural habitat.

He has established himself as an illustrator for magazines and books, especially in pen drawing. One reviewer wrote: “Duncan, with his mastery of the line and fertile imagination, visualized as if they were part of his own experience Morley's town squares and train stations, docks and country lanes, his wistful dogs, his fishermen, and all of the society his Rifled pages. ”He used this talent to create military drawings as a war painter.

Duncan was selected for the official war art program and entered early spring 1918 as Army Captain of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in France. Most of his work featured men in the rear areas supplying the army. Like William James Aylwards, much of Duncan's war effort focused on the AEF's support activities. Duncan stayed in Europe after the armistice , first with occupation troops in Germany, then in a Paris studio. He returned to the United States in June 1919 and started working again for magazines and illustration books, and also taught at the Art Students League.

During his career he became associated with a number of writers who worked closely with them to illustrate their books. After the war, he illustrated a number of Christopher Morley's books, including Plum Pudding and Pipefuls.

Work as a war painter

Much of his work during the war reflects the influence of his studies under a landscape artist. Duncan's favorite medium was pen and ink, and he was particularly fond of illustration for books.

The eight artists, including Captain Duncan, were sent out to record the war and received little military training. They went overseas with easels and sketch pads, pencils and pastels. They shared cars to go to the front lines, where they hoped to see the moments when ordinary soldiers became heroes and when the Germans surrendered to the Americans. Not only would her sketches record history, but they would also provide fuel for the propaganda fire at home, images that would instill patriotism and support for the war. The inexperienced American soldiers were packed into troop trucks for the journey from the east coast to Europe. After Duncan crossed the Atlantic like the rest of the army, he was familiar with the crowded conditions on the ship. He recorded the moments of the arrival of the American soldiers in France in his sketch “Newcomers who dress in Brest”. In the drawing it is clear that the ship was crammed full. As they stepped onto French soil, the soldiers were greeted by a cadre of officers and sergeants whose job it was to sort them into manageable units and see that they were marched to their first quarters (billets) in the Old World.

Cold Nights Coming On

When they weren't in the trenches , the sticks of the dough pieces often lay in barns or fields and sometimes in the bombed-out remains of towns and farmhouses. As the summer ended, Captain Duncan found a group of soldiers in the remains of a former farmhouse. They found firewood and lit a fire near the remains of a fireplace. A horse, still saddled, stands patiently on the left, waiting for its next assignment. Duncan captured the scene in his "Cold Nights Coming On".

Duncan paid tribute to Louis Raemaeker's contributions by including him in his sketch of a blacksmith and wagon repair shop. Most people today do not know about Louis Raemaekers, but he was a celebrity in the First World War . He was a political cartoonist in Holland when the war began, depicting the Germans as barbarians and the Kaiser as in league with the devil. For Raemaekers, dead or alive, the German government offered a reward of 12,000 guilders. The cartoonist fled to England in 1916, where he continued to draw anti-German caricatures. Raemaeker's cartoons were even published in America to persuade the nation to wage war. Captain Duncan went on to draw and submit his art monthly to Army Headquarters. Like most artists, he stayed in France after the war. He used the time to refine his sketches and returned to the locations of several battles to fill in the details that had prevented him from taking in due to the movements and pressures of war.

Works

Newly Arrived Soldiers Debarking at Brest

The new troops have arrived in Europe fresh and optimistic about their role in the war. Some were undoubtedly afraid, but the general attitude of Americans was "can-do". The next eighteen to twenty-four months would dampen their enthusiasm and eliminate their innocence. By the end of the war, more than 80,000 lost their lives on French soil.

A Quiet Game in Essey

In "A Quiet Game in Essey" Duncan sketched war-weary soldiers who amused themselves with card games . Gone is the naivety of the dough boys, overtaken by the reality of war. The soldiers remained determined and confident of the American ability to defeat the enemy.

German Prisoners Under Guard on their Way to Work

Buildings that were still in ruins were confiscated to club troops. Eventually, Duncan found, the Allies used them to house German prisoners. In this sketch, "German Prisoners Under Guard", the prisoners seem to be casually walking through a village full of enemy civilians. The American guard doesn't seem too concerned that the prisoners might try to escape. Even the villagers watching the little parade of men through the street seem to have little interest.

A Quiet Game in Essey
Newly Arrived Soldiers Debarking
German Prisoners Under Guard on their Way to Work

More works by Walter Jack Duncan

year	plant
May 1918	French auto Trucks and Ambulances Parked in the Place Garriere, Neufchateau, Awaiting a Call from the Front.
May 1918	Blacksmith and Wagon Repair Shop on the road to Boucq, Meurthe et Moselle.
June 1918	A Battery of French 75's Shelling the Germans
July 1918	Baldwin Locomotives Unloaded as Shipped
September 1918	Barber shop and first aid station of the Red Cross at Essey

literature

Ellen Baier: Home Front Heroes. A Biographical Dictionary of Americans During Wartime. (Ed .: Benjamin F. Shearer) Greenwood Press, London 2007, Volume 1, ISBN 9780313334207 , p. 250
Alfred E. Cornebise: Art From the Trenches. America's Uniformed Artists in World War I. A&M University Press, Texas 2014, ISBN 9781623492021

Web links

National Museum of American History: Walter Jack Duncan (1881–1941) Retrieved January 27, 2018
Unwritten Record Blog: World War I Combat Artists - Walter Duncan , accessed January 27, 2018.

Individual evidence

↑ Alfred E. Cornebise: Art from the trenches. America's uniformed artists in World War I . College Station, ISBN 978-1-62349-202-1 .
^ ^A ^b ^c Benjamin F. Shearer: Home front heroes. A biographical dictionary of Americans during wartime . Greenwood Press, Westport, Conn. 2007, ISBN 978-0-313-33422-1 .
^ Walter Jack Duncan (1881-1941). Retrieved February 27, 2018 .
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f World War I Combat Artists - Walter Duncan . In: The Unwritten Record . January 5, 2015 ( archives.gov [accessed February 27, 2018]).

personal data
SURNAME	Duncan, Walter Jack
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American painter, illustrator, and war painter
DATE OF BIRTH	January 1, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH	Indianapolis , Indiana
DATE OF DEATH	April 11, 1941
Place of death	New York , New York

[1] Alfred E. Cornebise: Art from the trenches. America's uniformed artists in World War I . College Station, ISBN 978-1-62349-202-1 .

[Shearer-2] A ^b ^c Benjamin F. Shearer: Home front heroes. A biographical dictionary of Americans during wartime . Greenwood Press, Westport, Conn. 2007, ISBN 978-0-313-33422-1 .

[3] Walter Jack Duncan (1881-1941). Retrieved February 27, 2018 .

[World_War_I_Combat_Artists-4] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f World War I Combat Artists - Walter Duncan . In: The Unwritten Record . January 5, 2015 ( archives.gov [accessed February 27, 2018]).