40 
LAND & WATER 
August 2, 1917 
philosophical terms this war is the assertion of reality as 
against " realism ' in all human relationships. 
Gaudier- Brzeska did not live to make his record of the 
war in pictures, though I remember a few drawings of his at 
the Goupil Gallery that by their extreme economy gave mo 
a more intense appreciation of the mechanical forces em- 
ployed in it than anything 1 have seen before or since ; but 
we are indebted to him for certain rer|iarks from the trenches 
so illuminating in themselves and so pertinent as revealing 
the attitude of the typical artist to war that I shall make no 
apology for quoting them here. 
I have been fighting for two months and I can now gauge 
the intensity of Life. . . . With all the destruction thai 
works round us nothing is changed, even superficially. Life 
is the sams strength, the m )\'ing agent that permits the 
small individual to assert himself. The bursting shells, the 
volleys, wire entanglements, projectors,- motors, the chaos 
of battle do not alter in the least the outlines of the hill we 
are besieging. A covey of partridges scuttle along before our 
\ery tiench. 
I have made an experiment. Two days ago I pinched 
from an enemy a Mauser rifle. Its heavy unwieldy shape 
swamped me with a powerful image of brutality. I was in 
doubt for a long time whether it pleased or displeased me. 
I found that I did not like it. I broke the butt ofit and with 
my knife 1 carved in it a design through whicli I tried to 
e.Kpress a gentler order of feeling, which 1 preferred. But I 
will emphasise that mv design got its effect (just as the gun 
had) from a very simple composition. of lines and planes. 
" I pinched 
from an enemy 
a Mauser ritle. 
. I found 
that I did not 
like it. . 
I broke the 
butt off. . ." 
This does not 
sound much 
like the effete 
young man 
that elderly 
A c a demicians 
and newspaper 
funny men 
would present 
to us as the ty- 
pical Vorticist 
In parenthesis 
he fights and 
dies for his 
country ; but 
his earnest at- 
tention is given 
to " a very 
simple compo- 
sition of lines 
and planes.' 
If we must 
have compari- 
sons that, 1 
think, puts 
very neatly the 
relative importance of art and war to the artist or indeed 
to anybody who believes that Life and not Death is the 
" moving agent." 
It is to Mr. C. R. W. Nevinson that we owe some of the 
most vivid realisations of the war in both its human and its 
mechanical aspects. For the work of so young a man his 
paintings have an extraordinary solidity of character. De- 
scribing pictures in words is not much to the point, and it is 
enough to say that this character is due mainly to " simple 
composition of hues and planes' " ; to the clinching-up of 
visual impressions by reality as conceived by the mind. Just 
because optical illusion is not aimed at the illusion of reality 
is achieved ; and you feel and hear the scenes depicted as 
well as see them, witness for instance the picture of aeroplanes 
reproduced on page . Not less admirable than the technical 
skill of the artist is his moral attitude. He neither glorifies 
nor belittles the facts of war. Only once did he fail ; and 
that was when in a painting of the child victim of a shell he 
was betrayed into sentimentality. Art knows nothing of 
accidents. 
With different means there is a like solidity in " The 
Kensingtons at Laventie, Winter 1914," by Mr. Eric H. 
Kennington. Long after the details of the picture are for- 
gotten the design lives in your mind ; which, in a picture so 
full of detail, is a triumph of art. The reality here is that of 
human character, so that every man in the picture becomes a 
personal acquaintance. You would know him out of uniform ; 
and thus, without comment, Mr. Kennington has emphasised 
Hi, courtety o/ Messrs. Ch<nio mid 
Fricourt Cemetery 
the truth that war is not in itself a great reality but an arbi- 
rary interruption. 
If the war had produced nothing but the work of .Mr. 
Nevinson and " The Kensingtons," it would have been firmly 
recorded in art, but —leaving out the mass of " official "' 
drawings and paintings — it has found interesting expression 
elsewhere. Though Mr. Paul Nash and Mr. Keith Henderson 
might not confess to any label it is obvious that their work 
is Post-impressionistic in the sense of sharing in the general 
reaction from optical realism. But the important thing 
is that, like Gaudier-Brzeska, they bring to the war a 
flefinitely artistic preoccupation which gives to their im- 
pressions both consistency and credibility. For, paradoxical 
as it may sound, you are never so likely to get the truth about 
anything as when the observer translates the facts into terms 
with winch he is familiar. The valuabie witness is the 
butcher, baker or candlestick-maker qua butcher, baker or 
candlestick-maker. Mr. Nash has always been remarkable 
for the singular matter-of-factness of his landscapes ; the 
imaginative matter-of-factness of the child to whom park- 
railings are something eternally new and strange. In a 
sense his drawings domesticate the war. They confirm your 
secret belief — shaken by picturesque correspondents — that 
trees in France are very like trees in England, and that both 
are much more extraordinary than your sophisticated vision 
allowed you to perceive. With a more deliberately decorative 
intention. Mr. Keith Henderson deals with coloured lights 
and explosions 
and I for one 
shall never 
have done 
thanking him 
for the note 
to one of 
his drawings. 
"The black 
stuff is shrap- 
nel. The pink 
clouds are sent 
up by crumps, 
as they explode 
among the re- 
mains of brick 
houses." Yes, 
it takes art to 
reduce the me- 
chanical facts 
of war to their 
proper propor- 
tion ; to show 
what a little 
thing is Krupps 
It is pre- 
cisely the lack 
of artistic 
matter-of-fact- 
ness that 
slightly preju- 
dices the work 
ofMr. E.Hand- 
„ . , . . ley - Read, for 
all Its obvious merits. You feel that he is interested in the 
war sentimentally rather than artistically. He is out to mourn 
over the ruined landscape. In a sense he flatters war. To 
look at his drawings is a little like listening to a man telline 
the tale impressively. 
But, when all has been said, these works and the manv 
good military portraits— notably those by Mr. Orpen— are 
reflections rather than expressions of the war in art 
The moral is that war, while claiming the artist as man 
must leave him free as artist or prejudice his value. " Art 
IS long," the deeper reactions of the human spirit take time 
to find artistic expression. If anything were needed to demon- 
strate this truth it can be found in the present exhibition of 
Britons Efforts and Ideals in the Great War" The 
superiority of the works illustrating the " efforts " to those 
attempting to express the " ideals " must be evident to 
everybody. Yet there is no reason to suppose that the 
Ideals were done with less , conviction. The well-known 
story of the housemaid who began to sweep under the mats 
as a result of religious conversion is true of every human 
ff7f/ ""^f^f'^y quickening influence; and it may be 
that the total effect of the war upon art will be only to riiake 
it more truly artistic, leaving subject and motive unaltered 
Art IS more true to life and more persistent than war. Kings 
and Kaisers can make and end war ; but not all the Kings 
and Kaisers can make or end art or control that free exerc se 
of the human spirit which makes art at once an expression 
and a criticism of hfe. ^ 
By Keith llender^oH 
