1914–1918
World War I
World War I (1914–1918) pulled in most of the world's great powers and was fought in muddy trenches from Belgium to Russia and across the seas. New weapons like machine guns, poison gas and airplanes made it deadlier than any earlier war. Around 20 million people died, and it was called 'the war to end all wars'.
Why artists painted it
Official war artists were sent to the front, and many returned with unforgettable pictures of soldiers, wrecked landscapes and the strange beauty of battlefields.
The Signing of Peace in the Hall of Mirrors, Versailles, 28 June 1919 · William Orpen, 1919
Gassed
John Singer Sargent · 1919
👁️ Painted at the time
Sargent painted blinded soldiers, with bandaged eyes, walking in a line toward a field hospital after a mustard gas attack.
The Signing of Peace in the Hall of Mirrors, Versailles, 28 June 1919
William Orpen · 1919
👁️ Painted at the time
Orpen painted the peace treaty that ended the war being signed in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles in 1919.
Anzac, the landing 1915
George Washington Lambert · 1921
👁️ Painted at the time
Australian and New Zealand troops scramble ashore at Gallipoli in April 1915.
Armistice Day, Toronto
George Agnew Reid · 1919
👁️ Painted at the time
A Canadian painter records the joyful crowds on November 11, 1918, when the guns finally stopped.
We Are Making a New World
Paul Nash · 1918
👁️ Painted at the time
A broken, twisted forest of shattered tree stumps stands in a landscape ripped by shell craters, under a bitter-sounding title.
The Menin Road
Paul Nash · 1919
👁️ Painted at the time
Paul Nash paints a wrecked, muddy landscape near Ypres in Belgium, with flooded craters and splintered trees.
Gas Attack, Liévin
A. Y. Jackson · 1918
👁️ Painted at the time
A.Y.
The Pimple, Evening
A. Y. Jackson · 1918
👁️ Painted at the time
A bare, shell-torn hill called the Pimple glows red in the evening light near Vimy Ridge, where Canadian troops had fought in 1917.
Canadian Gunners in the Mud
Alfred Bastien · 1917
👁️ Painted at the time
Canadian gunners push and pull an artillery piece through deep mud at Passchendaele in late 1917, one of the worst battles of the war.
A Cemetery on Vimy Ridge
Frederick Thwaites Bush · 1917
👁️ Painted at the time
A print of a cemetery on Vimy Ridge, the French hill where Canadian soldiers won a famous victory in April 1917.
War in the Air
C. R. W. Nevinson · 1918
👁️ Painted at the time
A single aeroplane sails among huge clouds in a dreamy, modern view of the war in the sky.
The Munitions Girls
Stanhope Forbes · 1918
👁️ Painted at the time
Women work in a roaring factory filling shells for the war effort in 1918.
Canteen at the Front
Henry Ossawa Tanner · 1918
👁️ Painted at the time
Soldiers gather in a candlelit American Red Cross canteen at the front in France.
A Battery Shelled
Wyndham Lewis · 1919
👁️ Painted at the time
Wyndham Lewis shows an artillery position under fire in sharp, blocky shapes, like a machine of broken glass.
Menin Gate at Midnight
Will Longstaff · 1927
👁️ Painted at the time
Ghostly soldiers rise out of the fields near the Menin Gate, the great memorial at Ypres to the missing of World War I.
A Grave and a Mine Crater at La Boisselle, August 1917
William Orpen · 1917
👁️ Painted at the time
A huge crater from a mine explosion and a lonely grave mark the old battlefield at La Boisselle, on the Somme.
Amiens, the Key of the West
Arthur Streeton · 1918
👁️ Painted at the time
The Australian war artist Arthur Streeton paints the soft green countryside around Amiens, the city that the Allies defended and then used for their big attack of August 1918.