Postcards From the Front: WWI Sketches of Percy Matthews

The last surviving veteran of World War I died this week at 110 years old. Out of the tens of millions who served, Florence Green was the very last, and her death marks the passing of one of the defining events of human history.

The human urge to create art somehow endures despite the most hellish conditions imaginable. In some cases it can be a desperate effort to record events as documentation, such as the scratched visions of concentration camp horror or the drawings of David Olère. In others there is a discernible effort to create something beautiful, perhaps in an attempt to transcend misery through art, or maybe it's just the fleeting relief fighting artists found while concentrating on the act of sketching.

Percy Matthews trained as an artist in England before serving on the Western Front during World War I as a Private in the Kentish Buffs, and later in Salonika (today called Thessalonika, Greece), as a Lieutenant in the Middlesex Regiment. The remarkable sketches reproduced here are from a collection of scenes and characters drawn from military and civilian life at that time. Percy's son Peter donated these sketches to the Imperial War Museum in 2007, almost one hundred years after they were first created.

 " You will be driven into the sea,

and you will not have time even to cry for mercy"

Greek Chief of General Staff

There's a deep humanity in the portrait drawings of Percy Matthews sketched during "that awful pause (between fighting) in which defenders and attackers are braced up to face the ordeal, with fear or desperation, with cool courage or with blazing ardour."

Dulce et Decorum Est, by Wilfred Owen, (1893-1918)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! -- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under I green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, --

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Harold Anderson (1894-1973), The Happy Greeting

Eye Deep in Hell: Trench Warfare in World War I by John Ellis is a terrifying read, full of crawling around in the fetid slurry of rotting corpses and mustard gas, and makes Anderson's painting (above) seem like a kind of manufactured lie on a par with Russian posters of happy, well-fed peasants while millions were starving to death in the Ukrainian 'bread basket' during WWII.

The truth is, Daddy was more likely to come home looking like the poor sod in this disturbing video of a shell shock victim from World War I than the saccharine chocolate box cover by Anderson. You can also watch War Neuroses, filmed in 1917 at Netley Hospital in its entirety here. It's disturbing viewing, and makes society's desire for shuttered normality during the 1930s and (later) 1950s completely understandable given what the world had just gone through.

Still from the Seale Hayne shell shock video

From the artistic fiction of fairies and butterflies drawn on postcards and sent back home to children missing their fathers, to the disturbing visions of Otto Dix, artists have been using art as a method of processing pain as long as there's been war.

There has been a huge effort recently to make freely accessible a vast collection of drawings, letters, documents and memorabilia from the hands of the people who were there. Here are some fantastic online resources whose breadth of content, excellent image databases, attractive presentation and ease of use will make you forget all about that boring To Do list you've been avoiding all day.

The Great War Archive

First World War Digital Poetry Archive

Europeana 1914-1918 (The World War I documents of everyday life)

World War I Document Archive

1418: Documenti e Immagini dela Grande Guerra

UK National Archives

Mission Possible: Italian Grand Tour

"Excuse me sir; which way is Leonardo's Statue of David?"

Your mission should you choose to accept it: Travel all around Europe and...eh, that's it. For two hundred years starting in 1660, the mission of young men of means was to tour the classic sites of the Old World and bring back what they learned, but sometimes they found a bit more than they bargained for.

My own European Grand Tour involved run-ins with the police of Denmark, Germany, Italy, Spain and Yugoslavia and had absolutely nothing to do with Art or Culture whatsoever, but that's a story I'm going to keep until we meet sometime for a beer.

Of course, for most people, carousing around and being waited on hand and foot seems like a luxury and, well, it is. The ability to breeze around Europe implies lots of free time and money. The traditional Italian Grand Tour was taken by pretty much everyone of means; aristocrats, intellectuals, the curious and bon vivants alike. Stendhal seemed to speak for a generation of over-indulged rich kids when in 1817 he wrote of his impending voyage: “Outbursts of joy, heart pounding. How crazy I still am at twenty-six! I’m going to see beautiful Italy!” I probably wouldn't have burst into flames like Stendahl, but I do know what he means. Viva Italia!

Antique map of Urbino, home of the famous Palazzo Ducale with it's remarkable intarsia studiolo

Grand Tourists passed through the Alpine wonderland of South Tyrol on their way to Italy

Hippolyte Taine wrote that "Venice is the pearl of Italy. I have seen nothing equal to it."

Grand Tourists were often drawn to Italy by Romantic notions of languorous evenings sketching under crumbling ruins. Pampered toffs from all over Northern Europe wore pot-pourri bags under their armpits and foreswore bathing for months on end to endure such physical hardships as dozing under trees and endless social engagements in Venice or Florence. Poor Rupert must be exhausted.

But while on one level it was all a "larf" to the English, they also took it all very seriously. Almost like doing military service. Young men [I'm not sure if any women were included in this rite of passage] galloped off as cultural spies to bring back all they could glean from the Old World to use as valuable fodder for Empire, King and Country.

Thomas Cole, 'The Course of Empire - Desolation', 1836

British historian E.P. Thompson explains that the Grand Tour of the 17th and 18th Century was a very serious matter: If the British were to maintain control of their Empire they must be seen to be at the forefront culturally, and that meant studying the classics at their source. According to Thompson, "ruling-class control in the 18th century was located primarily in a cultural hegemony, and only secondarily in an expression of economic or physical (military) power."

"The primary value of the Grand Tour lay in the exposure both to the cultural legacy of classical antiquity and the Renaissance, and to the aristocratic and fashionably polite society of the European continent. In addition, it provided the only opportunity to view specific works of art, and possibly the only chance to hear certain music. A grand tour could last from several months to several years" New York Times

Giuseppe Agostino Vasi illustrated St. Peter's Basilica in 1774

18th Century street scenes of Florence and Rome

Rome was, of course, the main destination. Sure there was always Florence, which according to Kenneth Clark, was a "city of hard heads, sharp wits, light feet, graceful movement", but it was still Rome with all it's bustling humanity, "a city that is like a huge compost heap of human hopes and ambitions, despoiled of its ornament, almost indecipherable, a wilderness of imperial splendor", that enticed countless young suitors from England's shores.

An Assassination at the Porto Del Popolo

No wonder it struck travelers from England as a bit of a shock when they arrived. Charles Dickens himself seems to have been not a little grossed out when he arrived "travel-stained and weary" at the Roman gate of Porta del Popolo in 1844 (his few lyrical descriptions of monuments notwithstanding). Perhaps he came like the rest; expecting to learn Empire from the best, only to find a dissipated soup of Old and New.

Dickens complained in Pictures from Italy that Rome is filled with "a multitude of chattering strangers" and "narrow streets choked by heaps of dunghill rubbish." At one point, he turned a corner and ran right into the Dead Cart, with the bodies of the poor on their way to an unofficious dumping outside the city walls.




He seemed underwhelmed by other tourist destinations too, saying of St.Peter's Basilica that he'd "been infinitely more affected in many English Cathedrals when the organ is playing." The Jewish Quarter he described with casual anti-semitism as a "miserable place reeking of bad odors, but where the people are industrious and money-getting." He even called Bernini's monuments "intolerable abortions"! Ouch.

Beautiful Albumen Silver print of a panorama of Rome, 1885

"Italy and in particular the State of the Church had come out of the Napoleonic wars very impoverished. Pope Gregory XVI, then aged 80, was afraid of novelties and considered the railway an invention of the Devil. According to the French poet Lamartine, Italy was the "Land of the Dead" and for the Austrian Chancellor Metternich it was "a mere geographic expression"."(source)

Dickens went to bed that night "with a very considerably quenched enthusiasm."

I traced the traditional Grand Tour route in red on this antique map of Europe.

Grand Tour William Thomas Beckford.jpgThe traditional Grand Tour route was to travel from London by boat through Holland and Germany down the Rhine to Mannheim. Then hop in a coach to Munich, before crossing the border to Austria. Typically they'd travel on horseback or by foot over the Brenner pass into Italy, and on to Venice. From Venice the itinerary was to trace a meandering path through Vicenza, Verona, Mantua, Reggio, Bologna, Florence, Siena and then onwards to Rome and Naples.

I don't know, it all sounds pretty good to me. I remember my days traveling around Europe with not a care in the World as being some of the best of my life. All these old prints are making me want to hit the road again. Who's with me?

The famous Bay of Naples, and Sorrento

 "How I long to return to Sorrento,

To the lonely sea and sky,

I left my vest and socks there,

I wonder if they're dry"

Spike Milligan

Albumen photo (circa 1820) of an incredibly animated street scene in Naples by Giacomo Brogi

Ruth Orkin's classic 'An American Girl in Italy' speaks volumes about being a stranger in a strange land.

Art Nouveau Book covers, by 'Decorative Designers'

I've been a book sniffer for a long time. There, I said it. I like to wear a trench-coat and sneak into the back of the used bookstore and stick my nose in dusty old books. New, old, it doesn't matter. I still remember the smell of my brand new school books from when I was a kid. Before we get started, the answer is no, they don't make them like they used to. There are many reasons for that, but here's the short version:

Until the 19th century, books were sold unbound or sewn into simple paper covers. A collector of books would commission the local bookbinder to come up with a binding for all the books of his library. By about the 1860s, soon after the American Civil War, cloth bindings became popular and began to feature gilt stamps, blind embossing and flamboyant custom designs. As binding technology advanced, so entered the Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements creating an artistic confluence that produced extraordinarily beautiful book covers in a short space of time. Then came paper dust-jackets which, alongside a change in public taste, caused the decline of these decorative cloth bindings. That was the end of that.

"Most significant in the last decade of the [Nineteenth] century, particularly in America, is the rise of the artist-designer. From the late 1880s until about the start of World War I, book covers reached new levels of sophistication through highly professional layouts and stylized pictorial representations.

"Architects, landscape painters, illustrators and graphic artists alike were drawn to book design. While some of these designers would be responsible for only a handful of covers, others were extremely prolific, producing hundreds and hundreds of covers. Consequently, decorated cases of this period display an astonishing diversity of design styles and reflect a wide range of influences, including the Arts and Crafts movement, Art Nouveau, Japanese prints and the so-called poster style of design." (source)

In stepped the Decorative Designers (or DD as the company was called), in 1895. It was founded by the husband and wife team of Henry and Lee Thayer, a talented and incredibly driven team of artist-designers with a real head for business. "The founder of the firm was Henry Thayer (1867–1940) who was trained as an architect (following the example of Stanford White, architect-book cover designer). Thayer was responsible for much of the lettering produced by the firm." Henry was the business guy, and did a lot of the lettering, but Emma Redington Lee (1874–1973) as she was actually named, was the real star in my opinion.

She started out as a mural artist, but upon co-founding DD with Henry, became a serious figure in publishing and design. Lee Thayer (as she was known) specialized in decoration, and designed most of the bindings including the beautiful decorative borders and designs, and also published over sixty mystery novels as well as many Children's books. She was responsible for designing a staggering amount of titles in a relatively short space of time. Anything up to 20,000 by some estimates. "During the heyday of decorated publishers' bindings no other American designer produced as many book covers as The Decorative Designers." (source)

The Decorative Designers monogram appeared on over 25,000 book covers, dust jackets, and text decorations. Still thirsty for more examples? I posted over one hundred here.

Henry Thayer and Emma Redington Lee Thayer were married in 1909 but later divorced in 1932, on the grounds of desertion. Who deserted whom, I don't know. I can guess, but I'd like to think Lee jumped into a 1920 Revere Tourer and sped off with her tennis instructor Rupert, silk scarf flying.

"Other graphic designers as talented and prolific as the Thayers worked for the company at various times, the most important being Jay Chambers, who was with The Decorative Designers from 1902 through 1916. The firm produced thousands of book covers at a rapid rate. The number of artists in the organization partly accounted for this. Another factor in the success of the “DD's” was its efficient and innovative method of operation. Labor was divided according to individual talents: Henry Thayer did lettering and handled business affairs, Lee Thayer specialized in conventionalized decorations, Jay Chambers excelled at figure design, and so on." (source)

Their designs were often initially sketched by hand, then transferred to brass plates and engraved by Rome K. Richardson and Adam Empie, both of whom occasionally designed covers individually using the monograms RR and a conjoined AE, respectively. Charles Buckles Falls (d.1960) and Jay Chambers (d. 1929) were in charge of drawing the figures featured in narrative designs. (source)

"After 1900, cover designs gradually became simpler. By 1910, the widespread use of decorated cloth on books was largely at an end. The illustrated paper book jacket, which had been in limited use for years, caught the public's fancy and proved to be an even cheaper advertising tool than decorated cloth cases. The golden age of publishers' bookbindings was over." (source)

It was a short but illustrious run. 

One of my faves, with no less than Maxfield Parrish illustrating

The distinctive double D logo that appeared on their designs

How to Draw the Acanthus: Drawing Shadows (Part IV)

Figure 1; Outline

George Smith, "Furniture Draughtsman to His Majesty", produced an incredible volume of Plates in 1826 "comprising instructions in the elementary principles of Ornamental Foliage enabling the student to draw with facility and correctness in this so generally useful branch of the Art."

Of course I had a camera hidden in a loaf of bread when I went to study these fabulous engravings. I guess I could have bought a copy online for $2,750, but I'm still holding out for a time-machine so I can buckle up my pantaloons and race down to Jones & Co. in London with a shiny new Guinea in my purse to purchase a copy of Mr. Smith's new and "elegantly colored" hand-engravings, fresh off the press.

I'm including here his engravings of the Acanthus as Part V in an ongoing series describing how to draw the Acanthus and other ornament. In this instance we'll take a brief look at how to lay in the shadows.

Fig. 1 shows the delineation of the outline of the Acanthus ornament. The design is taken from an example of the Corinthian Capital as existing in the arch of Titus, in Rome. Of note is the calligraphic quality of the line. Though it was copied from a stone carving, Smith has rendered his ornament with fluid, organic lines. I also love how carefully he delineated the flutings (a,b and c)and the principal fibres of the stem.

Figure 2; 1st Tint

Having prepared three tints necessary for painting the shadows, according to value, Figure 2 shows us how the first (or lightest value) of these shadow tints is laid in. Using a full brush, Smith washes the broad shade of the leaf from the turnover. Note how the same shade is used to also wash in the broad shadow cast outside the leaf.

Figure 3; 2nd Tint

Proceeding to his second shadow tint in Figure 3, Smith continues to lay on his shadows. We can see that he omits tinting the projecting parts such as the stems and fibres of the leaves under it's shadow, as marked in Figure 3 above as 1,2,3 and 4.

Figure 4; 3rd Tint

Smith reserves his darkest shadow value for the tight whorls of the leaf, and narrow areas where the fibrous stems are closest together. Use dark shadows sparingly, or your grisaille ornament painting will appear stiff and angular. Remember that we're painting foliage not stone, in this case.

Also notice that there is reflected light cast from the background onto the left side of the leaf. Smith omits painting his darkest shadow tint on these areas to render the effect of reflected light.

Figure 5; Constructing the Acanthus

Used in combination with this post showing painted examples of grisaille ornament from that era, you should be able to see clearly the steps involved in the painting of this type of ornament. Below is a beautiful example (from that post) of the technique described above, with the added inclusion of a painted highlight. You can clearly see the steps involved as described by Smith to create cast shadows and reflected light with no more than three or four shadow tints and a fifth highlight.