Richard Jack: Development of a War Artist

By:

Richard Jack was a Royal Academy artist when the First World War broke out in the summer of 1914. While Jack began his interest in the military subject with paintings of soldiers on leave in London, he soon came to the attention of Max Aitken (later Lord Beaverbrook) who commissioned the artist to make a monumental battle picture of the Canadians at Ypres and a second commission followed on the Vimy Ridge attack of 9 April 1917. What was most interesting about these paintings was the government involvement in historical, military paintings. Unlike the British government commissions, which encouraged a modernist approach to war, the Canadians worked with the idea of collecting recognizable 'history' paintings and thus put into practice the formally trained Jack. This paper will investigate the application of the academic approach to modern battle pictures as seen in the Jack canvases for the Canadians.

Stream: Arts Theory and Criticism

Paper: A paper has not yet been submitted.

While I have been a longtime instructor in art history, I recently completed my PhD degree in that discipline with Professor Andrew Causey of the University of Manchester (2006). I currently lecture in verious fields of art history at Thompson Rivers University in the interior of British Columbia, Canada. My special interest is militray art and the relationship of government patronage to the war picture. My current manuscript of the Canadian War Memorials is currently under review by Canadian university press and my next major research effort will involve the distribution of reproductions from the Beaverbrook War Memorials to Canadian schools after 1920.