French Artists In World War I

Artists on the Battle Lines, From France (Where Else?)

By DAVID W. DUNLAPAUG. 16, 2017

Continue reading the main storyShare This Page

• Share
• Tweet
• Pin
• Email
• More
• Save

Photo

Gaston Balande (bearded) and another artist near the front. The original caption noted that they were “working behind a screen which protects the road on which they are sitting from observation by the enemy.”CreditPictorial Press/The New York Times Mid-Week Pictorial, Aug. 16, 1917

The New York Times Mid-Week Pictorial exemplified how powerful a tool the camera had become in telling the story of war. But technical limitations still left a lot to be desired. There were many French artists who believed they had a role to play in conveying the war’s terrors in ways that photographers could not.

Photo

CreditCentral News/The New York Times Mid-Week Pictorial, Aug. 16, 1917

Among the most vivid examples is Félix Vallotton’s unsettling oil painting, “Verdun (Interpretive War Painting, Projections in Black, Blue and Red Colors, Devastated Lands, Gas Clouds),” of 1917. Vallotton was among a group of established artists who were accredited by the French Army to work near the battlefront.

“Some of the foremost artists of the day are employed by the government to make pictures of scenes and episodes for which the camera is unsuited,” the Mid-Week Pictorial said 100 years ago.

Although the caption in the magazine identified neither artist, the website Bon Sens et Déraison says that Gaston Balande is the man in the background.

The cover image was of a battery of five 14-inch guns that seemed almost to jump off the page. “To defend the freedom of the seas,” the headline said.

Another photo with a nearly three-dimensional quality showed the ruined village of Craonnelle through the window of a mansion that had been wrecked during fighting along the Chemin des Dames ridge.

Photo

The ruins of the French village of Craonnelle. CreditThe New York Times Mid-Week Pictorial, Aug. 16, 1917

Times Insider is offering glimpses of some of the most memorable wartime illustrations that appeared in The New York Times Mid-Week Pictorial, on the 100th anniversary of each issue:

• A graphic look inside a German bomber (Aug. 9)• Raw recruits muster at Gettysburg (Aug. 2)• A hellish battle scene captured by the camera (July 26)• Feeding troops with a cumbersome kitchen (July 19)• A phony battleship lures real sailors (July 12)• Carrier pigeons in military duty (July 5)• Fijians join the fight (June 28)• A “dead town” in northern France (June 21)• Immigrants among draft registrants (June 14)• Terror on the high seas (June 7)• General Pershing shows some vanity (May 31)• The face of chemical warfare (May 24)• Germans lose Cameroon (May 17)