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Topics

Military life

  • Summary
Women Putting Anti-Fouling Paint on the Bottom of a Motor Launch, Leith
© the artist's estate. Image credit: IWM (Imperial War Museums)

Women Putting Anti-Fouling Paint on the Bottom of a Motor Launch, Leith

Charles Pears (1873–1958)

IWM (Imperial War Museums)

Military life beyond active service is not common in painting. The principal exception is the work commissioned by the war artist schemes of the First and Second World Wars which recorded all aspects of wartime activity, the training and leisure activities of servicemen and women and, most movingly, life in prison camps and hospitals.


Soldiers and sailors have of course been part of society at all times: Dutch and Flemish artists depicted the ordinary life of soldiers, as in Teniers’ A Soldier Cleaning a Flintlock, and their nineteenth-century followers continued the tradition.

Read more
The glamour of historical uniforms attracted the popular nineteenth-century French artist Meissonier to specialise in scenes of sixteenth-century soldiers at play, like The Lost Game.

Artworks

  • A Soldier Cleaning a Flintlock in a Guardroom, Armour beside him and Soldiers beyond
    A Soldier Cleaning a Flintlock in a Guardroom, Armour beside him and Soldiers beyond David Teniers II (1610–1690)
    Chequers Court
  • Gloster Aircraft, Hawker Hurricane
    Gloster Aircraft, Hawker Hurricane C. E. P. Davis (active 1924–1989)
    Museum of Gloucester
  • The Lost Game
    The Lost Game Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier (1815–1891)
    The Wallace Collection
  • The Guard Room
    The Guard Room Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier (1815–1891)
    The Wallace Collection
  • Thought to be Captain Fortescue (1754–1842)
    Thought to be Captain Fortescue (1754–1842) unknown artist
    Stratford-upon-Avon Town Hall
  • Bonjour Field Marshal
    Bonjour Field Marshal Joyce W. Cairns (b.1947)
    Art & Heritage Collections, Robert Gordon University
  • The Tower of London
    The Tower of London Christopher Clark (1875–1942)
    National Railway Museum
  • 477 more

Stories

  • John Northcote Nash: painting the English countryside

    Andrew Lambirth

  • Women painting the First World War

    Alison Thomas

  • What! You can’t think of anything to draw..!
    Desmond Bettany: documenting life as a prisoner of war

    Keith Bettany

  • Old Mother Hubbard (may also be known as A Children’s Picture)
    Rediscovering Evelyn Dunbar's lost works at Pallant House Gallery

    Paul Liss

  • 2011, embroidery by three former soldier inmates of HM Prison Wandsworth
    Created in Conflict: British soldier art from the Crimean War to today

    Amy Orrock and Holly Furneaux

  • Women of Britain say –
    Not fighting the good fight: war memorials, disability and guilt

    Rob Crossan

  • The Conquerors
    Sandy Nairne on Eric Kennington's 'Gassed and Wounded'

    Sandy Nairne

  • Drawing in extremis: art by refugees who came to Britain

    Sarah MacDougall

  • Sonia Lawson and the freedom of abstraction

    Jonathan Hajdamach

  • Faces of the past: the unknown soldiers of Jim Slawson

    Gary Haines

  • The colour of war

    Marjorie H. Morgan

  • A quest to end war: the Paris Peace Conference 1919

    Gary Haines

  • Shell shock, gas attacks and art

    Andrew Shore

  • Lithographs from 'The Great War: Britain’s Efforts and Ideals'

    Andrew Shore

  • E. H. Shepard and the First World War

    James Campbell

  • Lady in the Park
    Commemorating the First World War in twenty-first-century sculpture

    Katey Goodwin

  • Art Detective uncovers tragic story of 'unknown soldier'

    Alice Read

  • Randolph Schwabe: scholarly artist, meticulous draughtsman and influential teacher

    Gill Clarke

  • The Neo-Romantic works of Alan Sorrell

    Sacha Llewellyn

  • Julian Gould's 'Self Portrait'

    Annwen Bates

Learning resources

  • BCN_NBC_04-007.jpg
    Video
    Walter Tull: a soldier's story
    • KS2 (ENG)
      KS2 (NI)
      CfE L2 (SCO)
      PS3 (WAL)
      KS3 (ENG)
      KS4 (ENG)
      CfE L3 (SCO)
      CfE L4 (SCO)
      KS3 (NI)
      KS4 (NI)
      KS3 (WAL)
      KS4 (WAL)
  • wlm-thumbnail-1.png
    3D object
    William Lamb's 'Minesweeper'
    • KS2 (ENG)
      KS2 (NI)
      CfE L2 (SCO)
      PS3 (WAL)
      KS3 (ENG)
      KS3 (NI)
      CfE L3 (SCO)
      CfE L4 (SCO)
      KS3 (WAL)
  • sculpture-in-focus-statuette-of-a-guardsman-1.jpg
    Video
    Sculpture in focus: 'Statuette of a Guardsman' by Sir Joseph Edgar Boehm
    • KS3 (ENG)
      CfE L3 (SCO)
      CfE L4 (SCO)
      KS3 (WAL)
      KS3 (NI)

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® is a registered trade mark of the Public Catalogue Foundation.
Art UK is the operating name of the Public Catalogue Foundation, a charity registered in England and Wales (1096185) and Scotland (SC048601).