Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection Update

One of the interests of the Military Collection are Panoramas and besides acquiring the Garibaldi Panorama as a gift in 2005, the collection owns numerous small panoramas on paper. A recent addition is the humorous Ye Berlyn Tapestrie. Modeled after the famous Bayeux Tapestry which records the events leading up to the Norman Invasion of England and the culminating Battle of Hastings in October, 1066, this latest panorama was made in London in 1915 at the height of World War One. Printed by Edward Evans Ltd in ‘Ye Studio Offices’, it was the work of the well known illustrator, John Hassall (1868-1948).

This is a red and black printed panorama measuring 135 x 4,625 mm, consisting of five sheets conjoined. These are folded into decorated printed paper wrapper covers 140 x 172 mm. In all, there are thirty scenes in this leporello style of binding.

The dealer’s catalog describes this as a ‘comic panorama drawn in the manner of the Bayeux Tapestry, depicting the Kaiser making preparations for the Great War, the invasion of Belgium and North France, the deliberate destruction of churches and hospitals, the arrival of the British forces, the digging of trenches, the sinking of neutral shipping, the use of submarines, balloons, and aeroplanes, and the liberal awarding of iron crosses. Every stereotypical anti-German sentiment [is] included’. Other images include the bombardment of Reims Cathedral, poison gas and the chemists experimenting to create it, as well as a sinking ship which can be interpreted as the Lusitania on May 7, 1915.

Jens Meinrenken, a German researcher,  suggests that the colors used in the printing parody the German Empire and its symbols, ‘especially the characteristic spiked helmets, the Imperial Eagle and the Iron Cross’. The artist represents the German soldiers as ‘doltish, gluttonous, inhumane and uncivilised’, reaffirming the popular image then circulating  of the alleged atrocities committed by them in Belgium in August and September 1914.

Source: Jens Meinrenken, ‘The Deadly Face of War – John Hassall’s Ye Berlyn Tapestrie‘; paper presented at the Imperial War Museum conference, August 2011, Comics & Conflicts. Stories of War in Comics, Graphic Novels & Manga.

The Military Collection has recently acquired another original drawing created for a 19th century British illustrated newspaper. In this case, it is a wash and water-color drawing by Walter Paget (1863-1935) depicting men of the Royal West Kent Regiment recovering the body of a wounded officer on the North-West Frontier in 1897. The drawing mounted on board measures 17 x 26 cm.

Paget worked as an in-house illustrator for The Graphic in its office located at 190 Strand in London,  and his image was published on page 4 of the issue for Saturday, October 30, 1897. This appeared in a short supplement devoted to the fighting on the Indian Frontier.  The text below the printed picture stated that, ‘During General Jeffrey’s action, on September 30, the Mahmuds at one time attacked the centre so vigorously that the men of the Royal West Kent came to close quarters, and had difficulty for a few minutes in recovering the body of a wounded officer. By a staunch stand it was eventually recovered’. The 2nd Brigade of the Malakhand Field Force had been dispatched to the Swat Valley in present-day Pakistan in August 1897 to restore order, and Jeffreys was subsequently given the task of subduing the local Mahmud tribe, which forms the subject of this image.

We are also told that Paget’s drawing was based on a sketch by Lionel James (1871-1955). James was the Reuter’s Special Correspondent with the field force and published an account of the campaign in The Indian Frontier War being an account of the Mohmund and Tirah Expeditions 1897 (New York, Scribners’s Sons, 1898). Another account provides further details of the incident depicted. According to A Frontier Campaign, an attack was made on the fortified villages of Agrah and Gat. The West Kent Regiment came down from a spur on the left burning the village of Agrah on their way, and proceeded to drive the enemy out of several strong positions above the village of Gat. The narrative continues: ‘It was here that half the company of the West Kent, on reaching a sungar [a fortified position], were suddenly charged by a lot of Ghazis, and in the melee which ensued, many of the West Kents were killed and wounded, their officer, 2nd Lieutenant Browne Clayton, being one of the first to be cut down, his body being almost at once recovered by a gallant dash under Major Western’, who is represented in the drawing by the officer in the center firing his revolver.

Such dramatic images were familiar to late 19th century educated Britons who subscribed to the weekly illustrated newspapers such as The Graphic and the Illustrated London News, and during this period they were fed a steady diet of pictures chronicling the military campaigns across the empire especially in the Indian subcontinent and southern Africa.

Another original drawing in the Military Collection depicting an event from the same campaign was painted by one of Walter Paget’s brothers, Henry Marriot Paget.

The 12 water-color panels depicting Admiral Matthew Perry’s expedition to Japan in the early 1850′s – the so-called ‘Perry Scroll’ – are well-known and have been a source of interest and intrigue for numerous scholars and students. It was also one of the first items from Special Collections at Brown University Library to be digitized.

http://library.brown.edu/cds/perry/

Acquired in 1965 by Anne S.K. Brown from a book dealer in Los Angeles, the creator of the panels was described as ‘a consummate early painter who had not only seen the sights depicted, but also had the ability to translate them into effective paintings of remarkable interest’. It was also suggested that the work ‘clearly follows the artistic tradition of Shiba Kokan (1747-1818), the pioneer of Western-style art in Japan, and are doubtless the work of one of his disciples’. But who was the artist? The answer has eluded scholars ever since it arrived at Brown University Library. Recently however, a lead has emerged that might possibly solve the mystery.

In 2012, Dan Free, a researcher of early railroads, presented several lectures in Japan, and included a scan of one of the Brown panels (top) showing Perry’s gift of a miniature train.  While there, Free visited the Railway Museum in Omiya and was both surprised and delighted to see a photographic enlargement of an original ink (sumi-e) sketch (bottom) for the very same image on display at an exhibition marking the 140th anniversary of the first railway in the country.

One interesting feature about the sketch is that the artist had signed it and added the names of some of the people shown in the image.  The name of the artist was Sasaki Reisuke (of Ise) and the samurai/daimyo passenger seen riding on the miniature passenger car was identified as Kawada Yanosuke. This fact alone suggests that the ink sketch is not a copy of the water-color but rather a preliminary sketch.

Further research will need to be undertaken before we can categorically confirm that the artist of the 12 panels was indeed Sasaki Reisuke but this is certainly an important and exciting development.

In August, 1994, the Military Collection received a donation of approximately 40 pencil sketches drawn during World War Two. The donor, Walter Chapman, served with the U.S. Army during the war and sketched scenes stateside, in convoy, and in England before being transferred to the Public Relations and Historical Section of the 84th Infantry Division in 1944 to produce drawings and photographs of the battle for Germany. He also contributed artwork to the divisional newspaper and Stars and Stripes.

Recently, the final group of his sketches were scanned and published in the digital archive and this coincides with the 100th birthday of Mr. Chapman who still lives in Ohio.

http://blog.blurb.com/index.php/2012/04/27/blurb-book-marks-wwii-illustrators-100th-birthday/

http://www.toledoblade.com/Our-Town-Business/2012/04/20/Sylvania-to-Throw-a-Centennial-Gala-100th-Birthday-Party-for-Walter-Chapman.html

To celebrate this milestone,  a book of his war art entitled The WWII Art of Walter H. Chapman has been compiled by Mark Miller, the son of one of Walter’s wartime companions and fellow photographer, Maurice Miller.

The Military Collection would like to wish Walter a very happy 100th birthday!

Among the items acquired by the Military Collection over the past several months, is a rather interesting hand-colored lithograph published in Mannheim, Germany by Korwan in 1841 after a drawing by R. Sabatky. Entitled Der Deutsche Michel bis zum Jahre 1841, it depicts a sleeping Michel wearing a patchwork shirt with the names of various German states such as Saxony, Baden and Bavaria. His mouth is fastened by a padlock. To his right is the Austrian Chancellor Metternich who is drawing blood from Michel’s arm, the blood turning to gold in the bowl. A bulldog, representing John Bull of England, removes a money purse from his pocket, while a French soldier cuts off his sleeve. Michel’s head is being caressed by a Russian cossack. Above the group is a vignette representing soldiers drilling and marching, a man holding a violin and raising a glass to toast (“Es lebe de Rhein”), a battlefield scene with a man standing with one leg on another man (“Es lebe der deutsche Kraft”), and a large cannon with gun crew. In the clouds, Napoleon can be seen with a spyglass.

Michel is a symbolic and emblematic figure in German nationalism. As he sleeps, other European powers are taking advantage of him by exploiting his lands and wealth. The padlock represents the Karlsbad Decrees, designed by Metternich, which introduced strict censorship on the German states represented on his shirt. The trade imbalance between the states and England is represented by the bulldog, while France’s territorial claims on parts of the Rhineland is denoted by the soldier cutting the sleeve. Other known variations of the print include representations of the Pope and German soldiers parading.

According to Rudolf Wagner, the purpose of the image “was to prompt Michel’s awakening…by shaming German compatriots into waking up to a nationalist commitment.”

See:  http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/ojs/index.php/transcultural/article/view/7315/2916

The war between France and Prussia in 1870-71 attracted considerable attention from the world’s press and numerous journalists flocked to France to cover the fighting and the subsequent events in and around Paris culminating in the Commune. The Illustrated London News dispatched two artists, William Simpson (1823-1899) and Robert Thomas Landells (1833-1877), and their numerous sketches were sent back to London and engraved in the weekly issues of the paper. Some of  Landells’ sketches were flown out of the besieged city by balloon post.

The Military Collection has recently acquired several original sketches by Landells depicting events in the war. These complement other sketches by the artist of the campaign in addition to pictures drawn by him at the conclusion of the Crimean War in 1856.

Several years ago, the collection also acquired a letter by Landells to Simpson from the headquarters of the Crown Prince of Prussia, at Versailles written on November 4, 1870, which provides a brief insight into the life of a ‘special’ artist on campaign. He described his quarters as being satisfactory but that the march up “was pretty rough” and suggests to Simpson that he, too, should try to get similar accommodations as “you will find the Saxons and the Prussian Guard Regiments charming people.” Landells goes on to state that “the lines around Paris are too extended for one artist” but that “we are all getting awfully tired & bored with the whole affair.” The artist describes the work as “risky” and “one does not get sufficient material for the trouble.”

The sketches are paired with the corresponding engraving as published in the Illustrated London News.

In 1918, the noted American artist, George Bellows (1882-1925) created a series of 5 oil paintings and 20 lithographic prints titled the WAR chronicling the activities of the German army in Belgium during August 1914. In particular he focused on some of the alleged atrocities committed by German soldiers against civilians and described in the Bryce report.

The Military Collection has been acquiring the lithographs from the War series, the most recent acquisition being Village Massacre, otherwise known as Massacre at Dinant.  Bellows drew his inspiration from an article published in Everybody’s Magazine in February 1918 by Brand Whitlock, titled “Belgium: The Crowning Crime”; Bellows may also have read an abridged version of the Bryce report that had appeared in the New York Times on May 13, 1915.

Unlike the other prints in the series, Village Massacre which also appeared as an oil painting, focused on a particular event. On August 23, 1914, German troops entered Dinant, a town of 7,000 inhabitants in the province of Namur, Belgium, situated at a strategic crossing point of the River Meuse. Throughout the invasion, the Germans claimed that they were continuously fired upon by francs-tireurs or armed civilians so they considered any retribution towards those suspected of such acts as fully justified. Although they were constantly under fire from French troops across the Meuse, the Germans believed that civilians were partly responsible and took extreme measures. One of the first atrocities involved the arrest of 43 men who were summarily executed. Another group of civilians hid in the cellars of a woollen factory but were forced to give themselves up; the women and children were taken away and 31 workers shot. In another incident around 5.30 pm, 27 men found in a bar were executed by firing squad. In all, 312 inhabitants were killed by the Germans on the 23rd.

In the scene, Bellows depicts a group of men, women, children and nuns standing in an open space while the rifles of the Germans can be seen off to the left; the officer’s sword has dropped for the command to open fire. It is possible that the artist chose the moment in front of the Tschoffen house where 137 civilians were massacred although according to eye-witnesses, women and children were removed before the firing started. It is not clear why Bellows chose to depict the atrocities in Belgium four years after the fact, but in a preface to an exhibition of some of the lithographs in November 1918, he wrote: “In presenting these pictures of the tragedies of war, I wish to disclaim any intention of attacking a race or a people. Guilt is personal, not racial. Against that guilty clique and all its tools, who let loose upon innocence every diabolical device and insane instinct, my hatred goes forth, together with my profound reverence for the victims.”

Sources:
George Bellows and the War Series of 1918. New York: Hirschl & Adler Galleries, 1983.
With my profound reverence for the Victims. New Paltz: Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, 2001.
John Horne and Alan Kramer. German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.