Art Pieces of World War One
John Nash, Over the Top (1918)
On the outbreak of World War One, Nash joined the First Artist Rifles, a volunteer regiment of the British Army. During trench warfare, Nash was one of eighty men ordered to cross No-Man's Land at Marcoing near Cambrai. Of these, only Nash and eleven other men returned. Afterwards Nash painted Over the Top in memory of the attack.
Eric Kennington, Gassed and Wounded (1917)
On the outbreak of the First World War, Kennington enlisted with the 13th London Regiment and fought on the Western Front but was badly wounded and and sent home. England's War Propaganda Bureau (WPB) concentrated on producing pamphlets and books on the war. However, the WPB realized that he needed pictures to help the war effort so they employed two army officers as photographers and were to be sent to the Western Front. In August, 1917, Kennington was employed by the War Propaganda Bureau to produce pictures of the Western Front.
George Leroux, Hell (1917)
On the outbreak of the First World War George Leroux joined the French Army and served on the Western Front in France and Belgium. He later recalled how on one mission he saw "a group of French soldiers taking shelter in a great shell-hole full of water". That evening he made sketches of what he had seen and later painted L'Enfer (Hell). One critic remarked that the Leroux had "produced a work which attempts to represent as accurately as possible the unrepresentable reality of war".
In 1918 Sargent was told to paint a large painting to symbolize the cooperation between British and American forces during World War One. While in France, Sargent visited a casualty clearing station at Le Bac-de-Sud. While at the casualty station, he witnessed a group of soldiers that had been blinded by mustard gas, one of the new weapons of war.
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