Holding the Line - 5th Annual War Art Show

HOLDING THE LINE The Art of the War Years 1914-18 & 1939-45

5th Annual War Art Exhibition

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Art of the War Years Anniversaries come and go but our interest in war art isn’t hitched to date bandwagons.

Holding the Line, our annual war art show, which has been founded on the belief that twentieth century British war art is one of the highpoints of representational art and our national culture, has gone from strength to strength over the past five years and will hopefully continue to thrive well beyond the fandango associated with the Great War centenary.

If anything, our task of assembling an interesting specialist catalogue has been made more difficult by the ‘cash in now’ speculators and the sheeplike behaviour of journalists, who have risked turning the Great War commemorations into both a vulgar jamboree and a bore, with media coverage stretched to such ludicrous extremes as month-long First World War music seasons on Radio 3 to a feature article on the BBC entitled ‘Gardening in the Great War’.

Amid such saturation coverage, it is perhaps worth observing that the role of art - in contrast to, say, gardening - in both world wars is pivotal rather than peripheral. Our collective ability to remember the events of both world wars has been shaped and defined by the imagination, foresight and intelligence of those who commissioned and produced the extraordinary artistic output of 1914-18 & 1939-45. Paul Nash’s ‘Making a New World’, for instance, will define forever how we see the landscape of the Great War.

“British war art is one of the highpoints of representational art and our national culture” 2

The art brought into being by the schemes headed by Charles Masterman in 1914-18 and Kenneth Clark in 193945 represent some of the highpoints of twentieth century culture by great artists such as Nash and Eric Kennington but they also fostered a culture of creativity that filtered right down to art students, who volunteered in surprising numbers to produce work for the war effort, and even the service personnel themselves, some of whom produced astonishing works of art.

In the past five years, we have led the way in bringing to market some of the lost treasures of the Official War Art output: lost masterpieces such as Evelyn Dunbar’s ‘Land Girls learning to Stook’ & Eric Kennington’s ‘Resurgence’, works that would grace any national museum, but we have also brought to market a series of important but less heralded works such as ‘St Paul’s from the River’ by the fireman artist W.S.Haines – a deceptively tranquil title for one of the most viscerally powerful paintings of the Blitz – the only work by the artist to have appeared at auction since he himself was killed by a doodle bug at his easel.

This year, we have an exciting mix of important discoveries by established war artists from both wars, together with attic-fresh pictures of extraordinary quality and historical importance by artists outside the charmed circle of the War Artists Advisory Committee’s chosen few.

First World War discoveries are hard to come by - the art world has had a century to pore over and sift the material after all - but we have a choice collection this year, most notably the uncovering of a hitherto unknown work by John Hodgson Lobley, the Official War Artist of the Royal Medical Corps, whose work has come to greater prominence in recent years, as our perception of the war shifts towards a greater emphasis on the after-effects of war.

Lobley was clearly a deeply religious man - a number of the 37 works by him in the Imperial War Museum focus on the religious aspect of service life – and our watercolour, ‘A Mass at the Front’ shows a group of men, crouched or kneeling in a convenient fold of ground, where a priest is celebrating mass. The contrast between the

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portrayal of these hatless, disarmed men, supplicant in posture and the conventional image of the military: upright, indomitable and bayonets at the ready, could hardly be more marked. Lobley’s war work is exceptionally rare on the open market; almost everything he produced in the war is either in the Imperial War Museum or other military or medical institutions.

More hidden treasures have been unearthed from the Second World War, including two truly exceptional works recording events at D-Day and Dunkirk.

Most war art is produced well behind the lines by non-combatants so Lieutenant Derek Sangster’s first-hand account of battle stations below decks on D-Day is an incredibly rare and truly extraordinary painting. Sangster went on to study as a mature student at art school but during WWII, he was the ship’s entertainments officer.

Another first-hand account of an epoch-making event is James Dudley O’Donnell’s ‘Return from Dunkirk’ – a little gem of a painting, bristling with historical immediacy, from an almost entirely unheralded artist. O’Donnell’s work was widely admired at the time – including by the Imperial War Museum’s director, but was politely declined by the trustees of the museum in 1950, partly because it was by that time replete with the work of the Official War Artists but perhaps also because O’Donnell, a lance corporal in the unglamorous Royal Army Service Corps, was from the wrong side of the military tracks. He was as brave as he was talented; winning the Military Medal in Italy.

“Not all war art was imbued with such patriotism”

Edward Handley-Read straddled the gap between artist and soldier with considerable aplomb. When war broke out, he was a 44 year old illustrator who ought to have been settling down to a comfortable artistic middle age but duty impelled him to join up, which he did, joining the the ranks of the Artists’ Rifles. By the end of the war, Handley-Read had not only risen to the rank of Captain in the Machine Gun Corps, but had staged three one-man exhibitions of his war work (more than any other artist) at the prestigious Leicester Galleries in London and the Alpine Club.

The two powerful examples of Handley-Read’s work we have on show in this 4

catalogue show Ypres in the process of being razed to the ground, but with its medieval architecture sufficiently extant for the scene to assume an unnatural, almost Piranesian, grandeur and beauty.

They were purchased at the 1918 exhibition and have been in the same private collection for decades.

Last year’s exhibition of firemen art – pictures produced during the Blitz by professional artists working as auxiliary firemen – was a huge success. We sold every single item, including some outstanding work by leading practitioners such as Paul Dessau and Reginald Mills. This year, we’ve been lucky enough to acquire a superb fireman portrait by Mills, depicting a veteran auxiliary fireman standing indomitable amid the rubble and barrage balloons.

Not all war art was imbued with such patriotism. Leslie Wilson’s surreal, polemical pictures fall completely outside the normal parameters of war art. An eccentric outsider artist and political rebel, it is a testament to the relative liberality of wartime British life that he was able to continue producing his strange, virulently anti-capitalist output during the war. His ‘Allegory of War’, painted in 1943, must rank as one of the most unusual and arresting pictures of the war.

As well as one-offs like Leslie Wilson, we also have some enthralling groups of pictures, including what is effectively a diary in pictures by Henry Cotterill Deykin, a Slade-trained artist who joined his local regiment only to find himself engaged in the secret world of camouflage. We also have a stark and truly haunting collection of drawings by New Yorker Alfred Statler. Statler was a GI who had returned from the war in Europe, clearly traumatised, to his home in the Bronx to reflect on his wartime experiences, which meld, surreally, with his native New York backdrop to form a remarkable body of work.

Ample testimony, in fact, of the sheer variety, emotional profundity and lasting artistic value of war art, irrespective of anniversaries.

Andrew Sim 2014

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FOR THE FALLEN

An Artist on a Mission JOHN HODGSON LOBLEY (1878-1954) Lobley was an Official War Artist for the Royal Army Medical Corps during the Great War and produced some of the most moving images of WWI, such as his unforgettable oil painting of Somme casualties returning to Charing Cross Station. As befitting the nature of Lobley’s commission, the artist’s take on war was notably un-militaristic, with a focus not only on the after effects of war (his paintings of the Queen’s Hospital for Facial Injuries are profoundly affecting) but also on religious life within the services. This recently discovered watercolour shows an open-air Mass at the front, the kneeling of the assembled troops – all retaining their individuality thanks to Lobley’s deft control of the medium - in marked contrast to the horrors of going over the top. Lobley has 37 works in the Imperial War Museum Collection, the rest of his war output - some 91 works - having been distributed, according to a letter in the museum records “to various military hospitals and other army institutions throughout the country”.

These included the Wellcome Library, and the Royal Army Medical Corps.

Somme casualties returning to Charing Cross Station. John Hodgson Lobley Picture courtesy Imperial War Museum

A Mass at the Front CAT. 1 Watercolour, signed 6

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Searchlights - 1918

Robert Randoll (fl. 1864-1946) War Searchlights over London Bridge, 1918 CAT. 2 Pastel, signed and inscribed on original mount 8

Robert Randoll (fl. 1864-1946) War Searchlights over Westminster Bridge, 1918 CAT. 3 Pastel, signed and inscribed on original mount 9

EDWARD HANDLEY-READ R.B.A. (1870-1935)

Edward Handley-Read was a well-known illustrator, working for The Graphic and The Illustrated London News when war broke out.

Despite his age (44), he volunteered for the Artists’ Rifles and was sent to the Western Front, where he rose through the ranks to become a Qtr Master Sergeant Instructor in the Machine Gun Corps. He was then commissioned and by 1918, had risen to the rank of Captain. If anything, the war enhanced his reputation: he staged no less than three one-man exhibitions at the prestigious Leicester Galleries under the headline ‘The British Firing-Line in France and Flanders’.

Handley-Read’s training as an illustrator stood him in good stead for his work as a war artist: his quick, expressive sketches in charcoal and watercolour have an immediacy and truth that made them some of the most memorable images of the conflict.

Exhibited: The British Firing-Line in France and Flanders” Third series of water-colour drawings by Capt. Ed. Handley-Read (Machine Gun Corp.). Held under direction of Ernest Brown and Phillips at the Alpine Club Gallery, Conduit Street. June 1918.

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The Destruction of Ypres CAT. 4 Charcoal & watercolour, signed and inscribed 11

Interior of the ruined Cloth Hall, Ypres, 1917 CAT. 5 Charcoal & watercolour, signed and inscribed 12

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AMBULANCE MAN - 1917

BUOY STORE - BLACKWALL GRAHAM CLILVERD (1883-1959) In the Great War, Clilverd, a graduate of the Central School of Art, was commissioned as an officer in the London Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery but was eventually able to put his considerable drawing skills to good use in the Royal Engineers’ Camouflage Section. He was a first rate architectural draughtsman, who would later become widely known for his etchings of London and Italy, and his pictures have a modeller’s attention to detail. Depicted here is the Trinity House Buoy Store at Blackwall (opposite what is now the O2). What are shown are various types of navigational marker buoys, the different shapes (conical and spherical) having different meanings. The red painted buoys mark the port hand of a navigable channel and the green painted ones mark the starboard hand. The vessel in the background is a Trinity House lights and buoy tender.

JOHN BYAM SHAW R.I., R.W.S (1872-1919) WWI saw the first ever motorised ambulance for the transportation of the wounded, an initiative started by the Red Cross in 1914, in conjunction with the RAC. A tiny initial number - converted from RAC members’ private vehicles - grew into a fleet of over 3,000 by the end of the war, thanks largely to private appeals such as this one. Byam Shaw, as he was known, was a famous book illustrator, heavily influenced by the pre-Raphaelites, and founded his own art school.

CAT. 6 Charcoal on paper, signed, inscribed and dated 1917 14

Trinity House Buoy Store at Blackwall, London, c.1918 CAT. 7 Watercolour 15

DUNKIRK JAMES D. O’DONNELL (1914-75) James ‘Dudley’ O’Donnell was a south Londoner of Irish extraction who served in the Royal Army Service Corps in WWII, winning the Military Medal for gallantry in the Italian campaign. He was an extremely talented sketcher and obtained permission to make a record of his unit’s activities, which involved the supply and transport of everything that a fighting army needs: a vital but unglamorous role. O’Donnell’s little masterpiece ‘Dunkirk’, worked up from on-the-spot sketches, is a powerful and emotionally charged picture but also manages to convey a sense of the organised chaos of the situation - the almost unimaginable logistics involved in rescuing and catering for a battered and defeated army. O’Donnell exhibited the work at the Royal Institute of British Artists in 1943 and at local exhibitions in London after the war. In 1950 he submitted it for consideration to the Imperial War Museum.

After an initially positive response from the Museum’s director, Leslie Bradley, who said that he liked it very much and asked whether £20 might be an acceptable amount, it was rejected by a meeting of the museum’s trustees.

Oil on canvas, signed and dated 1942 16

Return from Dunkirk CAT. 8 Exhibited at the Royal Society of British Artists’ Exhibition 1943 17

D - D AY LIEUTENANT DEREK SANGSTER (1911-2001) Almost all war art is produced behind the lines by non-combatants, which is partly what makes this extraordinary picture so spine tingling. The other contributary factor is the date appended to the stretcher: 6th of June, 1944, a date to conjure with in European history to rank alongside 18th June 1815. D-Day. The ordnance being loaded into the guns by sailors in battle-ready ‘flash’ gear is intended for the German defensive wall at Merville as part of the vital bombardment prior to landing on Sword beach. The artist is Derek Sangster, a 25 year old Lieutenant, who was the ship’s entertainments officer. After the war, Sangster, who eventually reached the rank of Lieutenant Commander (as did his brother remarkably) attended art school and eventually became a journalist. HMS Arethusa’s role in the D-Day bombardments was recognised weeks later when it was accorded the honour of transporting King George VI to Normandy for a tour of inspection.

King George VI on board HMS Arethusa D-Day aboard HMS Arethusa CAT. 9 Oil on canvas, dated verso 6.6.44 18

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THOMAS HENNELL N.E.A.C., R.W.S. (1903-45) On 7 June 1944, one day after D-Day, Hennell was given a three month commission to cover the invasion, arriving in France just four days later, with the German front line still only three miles distant. Hennell’s watercolours of this period have a swift expressiveness about them, as this least military-minded of all war artists grappled with the unfamiliarity of an exceptionally busy not to say chaotic war zone.

Very few of Hennell’s Normandy pictures remain outside the museum system.

James D. O’Donnell - D.U.C.K.S on the beach CAT. 11 Pen, signed, inscribed and dated ‘44

Normandy Landings 1944 CAT. 10 Watercolour, inscribed (verso) ‘Beach obstacles, pillbox and beached transport. June 1944’ 20

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ANTHONY GROSS C.B.E., R.A. (1905-84) Anthony Gross - a breezy and engaging character who was popular with the War Artists Committee top brass - had a dashing and unusually varied career as a war artist in multiple theatres of war, from the Home Front to Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia, through to Burma and the D Day landings. He seems to have had the ability to go where others feared – or were prevented by red tape – to tread. A memo that survives in the Imperial War Museum archive on the subject of passes enabling artists to go about their work unmolested by the authorities expresses amazement about an exhibition of Gross’s at the Leicester Galleries that appeared to bypass the system altogether. When asked about this, Gross simply replied: “I wrote a letter to the Commanding Officer of Eastern Command and got a letter that stopped me being arrested by the police”. These two watercolours encapsulate the colourful variety of Gross’s Middle Eastern adventure: the first shows a convoy of medical vehicles dwarfed by the emptiness of the Western Desert at the time of El Alamein and the other a colourful and picturesque troop of Druze Cavalry, with whom Gross travelled across Syria and Kurdestan, parading in all their finery.

Ruweisat Ridge, El Alamein, July 1942 CAT. 12 Watercolour, inscribed and signed

British Druze Cavalry Regiment - ‘A Prize Squadron’ CAT. 13 Watercolour, signed and dated 1942 22

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BARRACK ROOM NOCTURNE Grace Ward was a graduate of the Regent Street Polytechnic (alumni of the period include Thomas Hennell, Mark Gertler and Anthony Caro) when she wrote to the W.A.A.C. (War Art Advisory Committee) asking permission to produce artwork for the war effort. She was granted permission to produce a record of the work of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (R.E.M.E) factory in Mill Hill, examples of which can be found in the REME Museum and the Imperial War Museum.

Barrack Room Nocturne CAT. 14 Oil on canvas, signed and dated 1943 24

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Heroes with Grimy Faces A Leading Auxiliary of the London Fire Service REGINALD MILLS (1896-1950) In what is surely one of the outstanding portraits produced by any of the fireman artists of WWII, Reginald Mills depicts one of the senior members of the Auxiliary Fire Service (A.F.S.), whose aura of indomitability embodies what Churchill was referring to in his description of the Blitz firemen as ‘heroes with grimy faces’. Amid the smouldering wreckage of a building, with barrage balloons overhead and the dust barely cleared, the unidentified subject fixes the observer with a look of implacable determination, the row of WWI medals on his AFS uniform speaking volumes about the kind of man assigned to the job in hand.

A Leading Auxiliary of the London Fire Service CAT. 15 Oil on canvas, signed and dated 1941 Exhibited Fireman Artists Exhibition at the Royal Academy 1941 26

C. Goff (fl. 1940s) A Stilled Life CAT. 16 Oil on canvas 27

HOME FRONT HILDA DAVIS N.S. (fl 1935-44) Davis studied under Iain MacNab at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in the 1930s but her work does not bear the severe modernist imprint of her alma mater at all. In this vivacious picture, teeming with exaggerated colour and cartoon-like detail, she celebrates the irrepressibility of a Cockney London that the Blitz has failed to expunge. Davis exhibited widely before and during the war, her work attracting the praise of influential critics such as Cora Gordon in The Studio.

Literature The Studio 129 (1945) 165-7

After the Blitz CAT. 17 Oil on canvas, signed and dated ‘42 28

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BLITZ - CHELSEA W. CULLUM (fl 1940-44)

BLITZ - WESTMINSTER FELIKS TOPOLSKI (1907-89)

Day raid at Queen Anne’s Gate CAT. 19 Pen & wash, signed, inscribed and dated

The Phoenix, Chelsea - wartime CAT. 18 Gouache, signed and dated ‘43 30

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JAMES D. O’DONNELL (1914-75)

Attr to JULES RENE HERVÉ (1887-1981) A rare depiction of Nazi-occupied wartime Paris, with bibliophilic life continuing as normal on the Left bank.

Artist’s House, Brockley CAT. 20 Graphite, signed and dated 32

Les Bouquinistes, Paris CAT. 21 Oil on board, dated 1943 verso 33

LESLIE WILSON (1898-1990) ALLEGORY OF WAR Leslie Wilson began his artistic life conventionally enough, studying under Henry Tonks at the Slade, where he met Stanley Spencer. But Wilson became increasingly gripped by what he saw as the iniquities of the world’s capitalistic system and his work became increasingly polemical and bizarre.

He worked as a commercial artist and printer but also began to make his own political pamphlets, which he distributed at Speakers’ Corner, a habit he continued throughout the war and until the 1980s. In ‘Allegory of War’ - surely one of the most unusual and surprising pictures to have been produced in WWII - Wilson contrasts the unnatural tophatted capitalist with his harvest of bombs with the honest, healthy endeavour of the constermonger.

Allegory of War Oil on canvas

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CAT. 22

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TRAUMATIC MEMORIES The tortured world of Alfred G. Statler Alfred Statler was a New Yorker from the Bronx, who volunteered for military service after Pearl Harbour, aged 28. A graduate of art school, Statler was a multitalented and energetic man, who would later achieve fame as a photographer of the art scene in 1950s and 60s New York, photographing everyone from Salvador Dali to Andy Warhol. Twenty years earlier, Statler had returned to his home in the Bronx and produced a powerful and harrowing series of drawings reflecting, both directly and indirectly, his experiences of the war in Europe.

Expressively drawn in pen and ink, with feverish, spidery workings in the margins, they have an expiatory quality: obviously horrific memory combining with post-war feelings of abandonment, despair and alienation to produce unforgettable images, such as ‘Abdominal’ – a depiction of a wheelchair bound veteran – his wounds depicted as a gaping hole. This suite of drawings were clearly put away as Statler’s career as a photographer developed; they deserve to be better known.

Abdominal CAT. 23 Pen and ink, dated April 46 36

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Bridge Blowing CAT. 24 Pen and ink, dated Jan 46 38

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Wreckage CAT. 25 Pen and ink

Prison camp CAT. 27 Pen and ink

From the depths CAT. 26 Pen and ink 40

Subway CAT. 28 Pen and ink 41

Albert Hill was the political cartoonist for the Guernsey Star until June 1940 when his island home was invaded by the Nazis.

Here are three of his surviving works.

King Gustav CAT. 30 Watercolour, signed and dated Dec 5 1939

Lifeboat drill CAT. 29 Pen and ink, extensively inscribed 42

Stalin in Finland - ‘What, more men!’ CAT. 31 Watercolour, signed and dated 1.1.40

HEIL Diddle, Diddle, the Cat (Hitler) and the Fiddle CAT. 32 Watercolour, 43

A Soldier’s Tale HENRY COTTERILL DEYKIN (1905-89)

From Art Class to Barrack Room For most of his working life, Henry Deykin led a quiet and withdrawn life as an art master at Warwick School (1936-65), having trained at Birmingham School of Art and the Slade, but for much of the war, he disappeared into the secretive world of the camouflage unit, where the skills of trained artists were used for the purposes of disguising military operations: everything from ship and aircaft baffles to the creation of elaborate ghost targets to deceive the enemy. Deykin initially joined his local regiment, the South Staffordshires, in a battalion that would later famously convert to the British Army’s 1st Airborne Division and become an elite force of paratroopers.

A slightly plaintive letter from Deykin to the War Artists Committee, dated Mar 1941 survives in the Imperial War Museum.

In it, he requests permission to expand his role as an artist within his battalion. He wrote: “I am making drawings of army life and am anxious to record other war subjects” adding “naturally time for drawing is small in a fighting unit but the longer days [letter is dated 30.3.41] would give me sufficient time to record some first-hand impressions”. Deykin’s days in a ‘fighting unit’ were in fact, numbered. At around this time, the South Staffs were being converted into an elite attack force of paratroopers – and art teachers in their late 30s did not fit the mould. Deykin was switched to the camouflage unit, whose operations were necessarily cloaked in secrecy.

Mess at Lichfield CAT. 33 Watercolour, inscribed & dated 3rd Dec 1940

The drawings that survive date mostly from his time in the Officer Cadet Training Unit and barracks in England between 1940 and ‘42. Precise and economical pen drawings, subtly coloured with crayon, accurately describe the life of an officer cadet and junior officer, a record that is then interrupted by Deykin’s diversion into the camouflage unit, until the end of the war, when the record resumes with an explosion of pastel colour over Belgium and rural Germany: Deykin’s delight at the end of the war is palpable.

Southend - stopped by police CAT. 34 Pencil sketch, inscribed & dated 14th June 1944 44

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Blenheim Barracks, Aldershot CAT. 35 Watercolour, inscribed & dated August 1940

Bruges CAT. 36 Inscribed & dated March 1945 46

59th Division Ordnance workshop CAT. 37 Pen and crayon, inscribed 59th Div Ordnance Workshops, dated 16 June 1942

Lindenscheid - Landscape CAT. 38 Pen and crayon, dated 3 Aug 1945 47

Altena CAT. 39 Pen and crayon, inscribed 5 Oct 45

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Barracks - Newcastle under Lyme CAT. 40 Pen and crayon, inscribed & dated 8 Nov 1941

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Raymond English CAT. 42 Pen and crayon, dated August 2nd 1941

Lindenscheid - bombed building CAT. 41 Pen and crayon, inscribed and dated ‘45 50

Officer Cadet Young CAT. 44 Pen, inscribed and dated Sept 1940

Captain David Baird CAT. 43 Pen and crayon, dated July 31 1941

Major Stuart Walter CAT. 45 Pen and crayon, dated August 3rd 1941 51

CAMOUFLAGE

CHARLES CUNDALL R.A., R.W.S. (1890-1971) Cundall produced some of the most dramatic and memorable set-pieces of the war, notably the famous panorama: ‘Withdrawal from Dunkirk’, which was actually cobbled together after the event following a request from the W.A.A.C and incurred criticism of some of its detail.

Perhaps Cundall had this in mind when he produced this detailed preparatory watercolour for another panorama: ‘Tobermory, from the Admiral’s flagship’, which shows the assembled fleet in their Hebridean safe haven.

Fleet at Tobermory, from the Admiral’s flagship CAT. 46 Watercolour - a full study for the work in the Imperial War Museum 52

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WARSHIPS ON THE TYNE HARRY HARVEY CLARKE (1869-1944)

THE LAST SHIP FRED TAYLOR R.I. (1875-1943) Fred Taylor’s was the pen that launched many of the famous ships of the 1920s and 30s, having become the best-known poster designer of the era. During the war, Taylor worked for most of the illustrated magazines as well as exhibiting oils and watercolours at the Royal Academy and Royal Watercolour Society. This memorable image portrays the last battleship to be launched during the Great War: HMS Wallace – a destroyer, which was built by Thornycroft & Co Ltd on the Itchen. She was launched 26 October 1918 – just too late for her to engage in the conflict.

Warships on the Tyne CAT. 47 Watercolour, signed and dated 1917 54

The Last Ship CAT. 48 Watercolour & pastel 55

ETHEL GABAIN (1883-1950)

Un Adolescent, 1917 CAT. 49 Etching, signed (edition of 24) 56

HERMANN TIEBERT (1895-1943)

Self portrait CAT. 50 Graphite, signed, inscribed and dated 1916 57

HECTOR CAFFIERI R.I., R.B.A. (1847-1932)

HENRY GIBBS MASSEY A.R.E. (1860-1934)

Despite his Italian name, Caffieri was born in Cheltenham and studied in London and Paris. He made his name as a landscape and sporting painter, although he worked as a war correspondent during the Russo-Turkish war in the 1870s. In his later life, he spent a lot of his time in Northern France producing images of fishermen and bucolic village life. It was here that he produced this image - one of the earliest to feature poppies as an emblem of remembrance – at the tomb of Napoleon at Wimereux.

Massey was the principal of Heatherley’s School of Art during the Great War. After the war, he and his artist wife, Gertrude, visited Northern France on a tour of the battlefield sites and made a number of studies of the newly constructed memorials. The graves were marked in those early days by simple wooden crosses, which were not replaced with more permanent markers until the 1930s.

CAT. 52

CAT. 53 Poppies at Wimereux Watercolour signed 56 58

CAT. 51

On loan to Guildford Cathedral

Le Dernier Appel - British Military Cemetery at Boulogne Sur Mer Watercolours, signed and dated verso 1921 57 59

Artists’ index John Byam Shaw

14

Harry Harvey Clarke

54

Hector Caffieri

Graham Clilverd W. Cullum

15 30

Charles Cundall

52-53

Henry Cotterill Deykin

44-51

Hilda Davis

Ethel Gabain C. Goff

28-29 56 27

Anthony Gross

22-23

Thomas Hennell

20-21

Edward Handley-Read Jule Rene Hervė Albert Hill

John Hodgson Lobley

10-13 33 43 7

Henry Gibbs Massey

59

James D. O’Donnell

16-17, 21, 23

Reginald Mills

Robert Randoll

Lieutenant Derek Sangster Alfred G. Statler Fred Taylor

Hermann Tiebert Feliks Topolski Grace Ward

Leslie Wilson

60

58

26

8-9

18-19 36-42 55 57 31 25

34-35

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HOLDING THE LINE...

...FIVE YEARS ON

Collectors’ Items & Museum Pieces

In the five years since ‘Holding the Line’ began we have led the way in re-discoveries of important items of war art, selling to museums and private collectors alike.

ERIC KENNINGTON ‘Resurgence’ PAUL NASH ‘Barrage Balloons’

REGINALD MILLS ‘Incendiary on Blackfriars Bridge’.

Our clients include: Imperial War Museum RAF Museum National Portrait Gallery V & A Museum of Childhood Wellcome Library Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York King’s College, Cambridge

EVELYN DUNBAR ‘Christmas Card (RAF Officer)’.

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EVELYN DUNBAR ‘Land Girls learning to Stook’.

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Acknowledgements Anne Douglas at Warwick School Dr Stephen & Rachel Elkington Bill Forster Patrick Frazer Imperial War Museum Dr Anthony Kelly Phil Lobley Russell Maclean John Noott Andrea Sangster Michael Sangster Richard Slocombe The Strickland family Staffordshire Regiment Museum Melanie Vandenbrouck

Photography Matthew Hollow

Design Ant Graphics Design Services

Contact: Andrew and Diane Sim Email: simfineart@btinternet.com Telephone: 07919 356150 64