{"id":9667,"date":"2018-11-07T16:46:36","date_gmt":"2018-11-07T16:46:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.museums.cam.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=9667"},"modified":"2020-09-04T15:24:41","modified_gmt":"2020-09-04T14:24:41","slug":"the-first-world-war-in-print-propaganda-and-the-revival-of-artistic-lithography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.museums.cam.ac.uk\/blog\/2018\/11\/07\/the-first-world-war-in-print-propaganda-and-the-revival-of-artistic-lithography\/","title":{"rendered":"The First World War in Print: propaganda and the revival of \u2018artistic\u2019 lithography"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Remembrance Sunday 2018 it will be one hundred years since the signing of the Armistice agreement, at the 11th<\/sup> hour, on the 11th<\/sup> day, of the 11th<\/sup> month, which effectively brought an end to the First World War.<\/h2>\n

To mark the occasion, this blog explores the making and meaning of a portfolio of lithographic prints which were commissioned by the British Government\u2019s propaganda department in 1917. The prints were published by The Avenue Press. The set at the Fitzwilliam Museum, still in its original \u2018Avenue Press\u2019 mounts, was recently catalogued and researched. It was given to the Museum by the Ministry of Information in 1919.<\/p>\n

What are lithographic prints?<\/h3>\n

Lithography (from Ancient Greek; \u2018lithos<\/em>\u2019, \u2018stone\u2019 and \u2018graphein<\/em>\u2019, \u2018to write\u2019) is a printing\u00a0process first invented by German playwright, Aloys Senefelder in 1796, whose need to find a cheap method of printing his plays led to experimentation with a greasy, acid resistant ink and limestone and resulted in the discovery that he could produce prints from a flat surface. The technique is founded on the principle that water and oil don\u2019t mix. Greasy ink or crayon is applied to a semi-porous surface like stone, the blank parts of which are made receptive to water which will then reject the printing ink, whilst the areas drawn with the greasy ink or crayon will attract it.<\/p>\n

The \u2018Efforts\u2019 and \u2018Ideals\u2019 project of 1917<\/h3>\n

\u2018[A] first attempt by a number of British artists working in unison to put on record some aspects of the activities called forth by the Great War, and the Ideals by which those activities are inspired.\u2019<\/p>\n

– Foreword, exhibition catalogue, Fine Art Society, July 1917<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At the beginning of 1917, following three years of fighting with nearly half a million British men dead and no end in sight, it became crucial for the British government to maintain public support for the war in France.<\/p>\n

To this end, a new Department of Information (later renamed Ministry of Information) was created in February 1917 to centralise and intensify Britain\u2019s propaganda efforts.<\/p>\n

In charge of visual propaganda and war art was writer and Liberal MP, Charles Masterman, who received a proposal in early 1917 from the illustrator, Thomas Derrick, the lithographer, Francis Ernest Jackson and Campbell Dodgson, Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum.<\/p>\n

Their idea was that the Government should commission an ambitious print portfolio scheme involving twenty artists (this was later reduced to eighteen) who would produce sixty-six lithographs between them in limited editions of two hundred. The project, called The Great War: Britain\u2019s Efforts and Ideals<\/em>, which has since been described as the most ambitious print publication project of either world war, would herald the new and invigorated approach to visual propaganda from 1917.<\/p>\n

Commissioning the artists<\/h3>\n
\"\"
Francis Ernest Jackson, United Defence Against Aggression (England and France – 1914),\u00a0<\/em>one of the \u2018Ideals\u2019 from The Great War: Britain’s Efforts and Ideals <\/em>(1917)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ernest Jackson had been teaching lithography to artists since 1902 at various London County Council Art Schools and was already lithographic advisor to the Department of Information when \u2018Efforts\u2019 and \u2018Ideals\u2019 was proposed. He was tasked with approaching the artists, supplying them with materials and instructing those new to lithography. He provided proofs for the artists\u2019 inspection so that they could see what to add or alter and oversaw the final printing.\u00a0 Jackson produced one of the project\u2019s \u2018Ideals\u2019 (see above) which portrays England and France fighting off Imperial Germany.<\/p>\n

There were many well-known names on the list of artists commissioned to undertake the project.<\/p>\n

Older, established figures such as Augustus John, Frank Brangwyn, William Nicholson, William Rothenstein and George Clausen were joined by C.R.W. Nevinson and Eric Kennington, both younger artists, who had fought or worked on the front lines in France. They were included because it was felt that the stamp of authenticity offered by artists who had actually experienced the war first hand would contribute to the success of the project.<\/p>\n

Many of the artists employed on the scheme had already produced and exhibited or published work on the subject of the war or in support of the war effort, either in an official or unofficial capacity.<\/p>\n

Propaganda at home and abroad<\/h3>\n

The division of the portfolio into \u2018Efforts\u2019 and \u2018Ideals\u2019 worked as a two-pronged propaganda offensive aimed at audiences abroad as well as at home.<\/p>\n

The \u2018Ideals\u2019<\/h4>\n

A major objective of the Department of Information in early 1917 was to encourage the neutral U.S. to join in the fighting on the side of the British and French.<\/p>\n

The twelve, large, coloured lithographs of the \u2018Ideals\u2019, each designed by a different artist, presented the war in symbolic terms using allegory and historical reference. They addressed the question of why Britain was at war and what it aimed to achieve. The \u2018Ideals\u2019 also aimed to convey the justness and fair-mindedness of Britain\u2019s fight and to promote the idea especially attractive to a neutral audience – that Britain and its allies were on the winning side.<\/p>\n

The \u2018Efforts\u2019<\/h4>\n

The fifty-four prints relating to the \u2018Efforts\u2019 section of the portfolio were commissioned from nine artists on subjects allocated by Masterman at the Department of Information. Each artist was instructed to produce six drawings relating to their nominated theme and according to censorship guidelines. Many of the subject titles – \u2018Making Soldiers\u2019, \u2018Making Sailors\u2019, \u2018Making Guns\u2019, \u2018Building Ships\u2019, \u2018Building Aircraft\u2019 – presented the war as a creative rather than a destructive process.<\/p>\n

The \u2018Efforts\u2019 were all printed in monochrome. They were also smaller in size than the \u2018Ideals\u2019 and their comparative simplicity conveyed the sense that they were honest records of real war work. The \u2018Efforts\u2019 were directed at the people of Britain, from volunteers or conscripts into the army, to munitioneers and the builders of aircraft and ships. The images aimed to boost morale by demonstrating how important their contributions were.<\/p>\n

Taken as a whole the portfolio was designed to remind people of the aims and objectives of the war and emphasise the importance of patriotic duty.<\/p>\n

The prints were exhibited in public for the first time at the Fine Art Society in London in July 1917. Their portability in comparison with large oil paintings meant that they could also be more widely exhibited and distributed. They toured numerous venues around the UK and were additionally displayed abroad to allied audiences in Paris and in New York and Los Angeles in the U.S.<\/p>\n

\"\"
William Rothenstein,\u00a0The Triumph of Democracy,\u00a0<\/em>one of the \u2018Ideals\u2019 from\u00a0The Great War: Britain’s Efforts and Ideals\u00a0<\/em>(1917)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Pro-war propaganda presented Britain\u2019s cause as fair and just in contrast to the dictatorial and extremist behaviour of Germany and its allies. By sharing a vision of Britain as victorious over Germany (both countries represented by soldiers in uniform), Rothenstein reminds people of the values of British society and the importance of fighting for them. In this allegorical image where characters are used to represent abstract ideas, the German solider under arrest on the left represents \u2018Tyranny\u2019, the female figure in white at the centre is \u2018Democracy\u2019 and the child carried by the British soldier stands for \u2018Hope\u2019.<\/p>\n

Rothenstein contributed this \u2018Ideal\u2019 and six drawings for \u2018Efforts\u2019 on the subject of \u2018Work on the Land\u2019. He was appointed an official war artist in December 1917 on the strength of his work for \u2018Efforts\u2019 and \u2018Ideals\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"\"
William Nicholson,\u00a0The End of War,\u00a0<\/em>one of the \u2018Ideals\u2019 from\u00a0The Great War: Britain’s Efforts and Ideals\u00a0<\/em>(1917)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In Nicholson\u2019s image (above) the human cost is indicated in the bloody pool and handprint and the skull-like hammer which is used by the British soldier to bar the door leading to war. The message reinforces the idea that the sacrifice is justified if it means that war will end forever. The image was viewed in a positive light, with one critic stating: \u2018I fell to completest content in front of William Nicholson\u2019s \u2018End of War\u2019. Nothing could be better than the sentiment and its expression\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Edmund Dulac,\u00a0Poland: A Nation,\u00a0<\/em>one of the \u2018Ideals\u2019 from\u00a0The Great War: Britain’s Efforts and Ideals\u00a0<\/em>(1917)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In this striking image, a Polish Hussar stands over the corpse of a giant black eagle symbolising Imperial Germany. He wipes his bloody sword on the leopard skin worn across his body. A white eagle, the national symbol of Poland, spreads its wings behind him.<\/p>\n

The Winged Hussars were the elite cavalrymen of the Polish army from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Dulac\u2019s portrayal of the Hussar references national pride and a golden age of Polish military might. In fact, Poland was a borderless nation within Austria-Hungary during the First World War and was involved in the fighting on both sides along the Eastern front. The black, blasted tree trunk at the far right, by this time an iconic symbol of the war\u2019s destruction, is visually aligned with the blackness of the German imperial eagle. In Dulac\u2019s image, Poland and its army is positioned as firmly on the allied side.<\/p>\n

Edmund Dulac was known for the jewel-like watercolours influenced by oriental and near-eastern art which he created for deluxe edition illustrated books. He was already associated with the Department of Information when he was commissioned to work on \u2018Efforts\u2019 and \u2018Ideals\u2019 and had contributed illustrations to a number of \u2018gift\u2019 books sold to raise money for war charities.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Eric Kennington, Ready for Service<\/em> (from Making Soldiers<\/em>),\u00a0one of the \u2018Efforts\u2019 from\u00a0The Great War: Britain’s Efforts and Ideals\u00a0<\/em>(1917)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Eric Kennington had served as a private in the Thirteenth Battalion the London Regiment (The Kensingtons) in northern France until he was given an honourable medical discharge in June 1915. He had exhibited a painting of himself with his regiment and drawings of a visit to the Somme battlefield in 1916.<\/p>\n

At the Department of Information, Charles Masterman thought that he would therefore be best suited to the theme of \u2018Making Soldiers\u2019. Kennington\u2019s six drawings for the \u2018Efforts\u2019 depict the process of training undertaken by conscripts into the army. After only three months of intensive training these new soldiers were sent to the front to fight. Ready for Service<\/em> is the third number and shows a soldier in profile standing in the foreground, looking into the distance. He wears one of the sleeveless goatskins referred to as \u2018Woolly Bears\u2019 or \u2018Teddy Bears\u2019 which were issued to soldiers in France during the cold winters. Kennington\u2019s drawings seem to follow one soldier through the process, but avoid imprinting individual identity by employing oblique views, deep shadow and, in one image, gas masks.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Archibald Standish Hartrick, Dangerous Work: Packing T.N.T.\u00a0<\/em>(from\u00a0Women’s Work<\/em>),\u00a0one of the \u2018Efforts\u2019 from\u00a0The Great War: Britain’s Efforts and Ideals\u00a0<\/em>(1917)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This image of a woman packing the explosive T.N.T. is one of three of the six produced by Hartrick to focus on the work of female munitioneers. By 1917, almost 1 million women were working in the munitions industry to make the shells and bullets required to arm allied soldiers. The woman depicted was described as \u2018A Heroine of Munitions\u2019 in the Illustrated London News<\/em> during coverage of the first public exhibition of the lithographs in July 1917. This label would seem to be a particularly apt one for Hartrick\u2019s deliberately posed portrayal of the woman as a commanding figure, full of courage and confidence. The protective face mask appears more like a veil, adding even a thrill of the unknown to the depiction. Hartrick\u2019s propaganda images do not present the realities of working with T.N.T., which was incredibly dangerous and caused deaths from prolonged exposure. The sulphuric acid used to make the explosive stained anything it touched, including skin and hair. Hartrick himself commented in his autobiography on how one of the women he was drawing had been turned yellow from the chemicals, but this remains unacknowledged in the \u2018Efforts\u2019 posed, monochromatic portrayals.<\/p>\n

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C.R.W. Nevinson, Swooping down on a Taube,\u00a0<\/em>one of the \u2018Efforts\u2019 from\u00a0The Great War: Britain’s Efforts and Ideals\u00a0<\/em>(1917)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

C.R.W. Nevinson had exhibited many oil paintings and prints at London galleries which related to his experiences from 1914 as a volunteer ambulance driver and between 1915 and 1916, as a private in the Royal Army Medical Corps.<\/p>\n

Nevinson had already depicted allied and enemy planes in the skies over France and so for \u2018Efforts\u2019 and \u2018Ideals\u2019 he was tasked with recording the manufacture and deployment of aircraft. He visited factories in north London and Norfolk to make drawings and took the first of many flights in an aeroplane to create the two lithographs which represent the pilot\u2019s eye-view. Commenting later on his flying experiences he described how \u2018the whole newness of vision and the excitement of it, infected my work and gave it an enthusiasm which can be felt\u2019. In Swooping down on a Taube<\/em>, the final image of the six produced by Nevinson, an allied plane can be seen falling through a sky lit up by searchlights to destroy a Taube (meaning \u2018Dove\u2019 in German). The Taube was a German reconnaissance plane with curved wings like a bird (hence the name) which carried bombs that could be thrown from the cockpit. Nevinson\u2019s lithograph portrays the positive impact of British efforts rather than the negative effects of enemy action \u2013 i.e. the destruction caused by the Taube\u2019s bombs. The power of this image to stir and inspire led to the Taube caught in searchlights to be likened to \u2018Satan flying \u2026 from Paradise chased by the swords of the Seraphim\u2019.<\/p>\n

The \u2018Efforts\u2019 and \u2018Ideals\u2019 artists, lithography and the Senefelder Club<\/h3>\n

\u2018Artists have studied in the schools, bought their own presses, found new ways of working and the revival has come about, the tide has turned\u2019.<\/p>\n

Joseph Pennell, \u2018The Senefelder Club and the revival of artistic lithography\u2019, The Studio<\/em>, February 1914<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"
Archibald Standish Hartrick, In the Towns: A Bus Conductress<\/em> (from\u00a0Women’s Work<\/em>), one of the \u2018Efforts\u2019 from\u00a0The Great War: Britain’s Efforts and Ideals\u00a0<\/em>(1917)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The second decade of the twentieth century witnessed a new impetus for the printmaking technique of lithography in England. Francis Ernest Jackson, the technical advisor to the \u2018Efforts\u2019 and \u2018Ideals\u2019 series, was a major figure in its revival as a dynamic medium with innovative possibilities. Jackson, who had been apprenticed to a commercial lithographer and trained in Paris, was influenced by the earlier renewal of interest in lithography among artists in France and by Whistler\u2019s experiments with lithography in London.<\/p>\n

The rise of the artistic lithograph in England was marked by the establishment of the Senefelder Club in 1910. Jackson was a founder member, along with Archibald Standish Hartrick, another contributor to \u2018Efforts\u2019 and \u2018Ideals\u2019. The Club took its name from the eighteenth-century inventor of the technique and promoted lithography as worthy of artistic exploration and against the view of the lithograph as a cheap method of commercial reproduction. Other contributors to the \u2018Efforts\u2019 and \u2018Ideals\u2019 project, such as Charles Shannon, Charles Ricketts and Frank Brangwyn were members of the Club or regularly showed their work in its annual London exhibitions. Campbell Dodgson was an honorary member. C.R.W. Nevinson had been taught lithography by Jackson in 1912 and it was the lithographs which he displayed at the Senefelder Club early in 1917, seen by Campbell Dodgson, which led to his recommendation for \u2018Efforts\u2019 and \u2018Ideals\u2019.<\/p>\n

Transfer lithography<\/h4>\n

A particular technique employed by artist lithographers associated with the Senefelder Club was transfer lithography and the majority of the lithographs in the \u2018Efforts\u2019 and \u2018Ideals\u2019 portfolio were created in this way. In transfer lithography the design is drawn onto specially-prepared paper which is then transferred onto the lithographic stone and printed.<\/p>\n

The transfer method, which was widely used in commercial lithography, was reclaimed by artists during this period. A sheet of paper was more convenient to work on than a heavy slab of stone and enabled greater immediacy of expression and possibility for experimentation. The double reversal (paper onto stone and then back onto paper) also meant that the resulting lithograph was in the same direction as the original drawing.<\/p>\n

The coating on the transfer paper enabled artists to exploit subtractive techniques, such as scratching and scraping, to create broad or fine highlights which could lend texture to their compositions. Scratching to create points of light is seen to dramatic effect in a number of the monochromatic \u2018Efforts\u2019 lithographs, such as C.R.W. Nevinson\u2019s, Acetylene Welder<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"
C.R.W. Nevinson, Acetylene Welder<\/em>,\u00a0one of the \u2018Efforts\u2019 from\u00a0The Great War: Britain’s Efforts and Ideals\u00a0<\/em>(1917)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Colour<\/h4>\n

The coloured lithographs of the \u2018Ideals\u2019 are notable for their simplicity. Ernest Jackson was cautious about the use of colour and a reduced colour palette among artist lithographers working during this period was common. In colour lithography, a keystone is first created which holds the main drawing and outlines. Subsequent stones for each different colour have then to be created and inked up and then overprinted. The number of \u2018colour\u2019 stones created for the twelve \u2018Ideals\u2019 ranges from between two and five.<\/p>\n