G. J. Giddins Studio of Military Art

Great Britain has always been admired and envied for its long history of colourful traditions. It also has world renown for its long heroic military history. However Great Britain has suffered from a lack of great tradition in military art when compared to countries like Prussia, France and Russia. Few British artists ever recorded its military campaigns on canvas in a way which reflected the excellence achieved in other schools of painting. A few notable exceptions to the rule did arise in the persons of Lady Elizabeth Butler, Ernest Crofts, Robert Gibb, Robert Hillingford, William Wollen and Richard Woodville.

However impressive an array these names may seem to us today, in their time, military painting was dominated by continental giants of the art world such as the French artists Edouard Detaille, Jean Meissonier and Alphonsr de Neuville. Other French, German and Russian painters of great stature are too numerous to mention but their skill at capturing the heat of battle is legendary.

This is due in part to the fact that British conflicts abroad tended not to capture the imagination of the British public, whereas on the continent conflicts were fought literally on the doorstep very much in the public eye, where painters would witness the full horror of war first hand, often actually fighting side by side with the soldiers they would later commit to canvas.

The handful of British painters that gained some attention mainly covered conflicts such as the Napoleonic, Crimean through to the Boer war.

The most well known type of British military art was probably the illustrated newspapers of the Victorian and Edwardian periods.

The Great War, however, brought with it a completely new approach to military art, with artists such as John Nash and Harry Townsend who would concentrate more on portraying the stark brutality of an incident and less on artistic details.

Battle painting would never be the same again.

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