David Boyd-Haycock

On the 13 November 1917 the official war artist Lieutenant Paul Nash wrote an impassioned letter to his wife from the Western Front.

‘I am no longer an artist interested and curious,’ he informed her, ‘I am a messenger who will bring back word from men fighting to those who want the war to last for ever.

Feeble, inarticulate will be my message but it will have a bitter truth and may it burn their lousy souls.’ When his government sponsored drawings were exhibited in London the following year, the critic from The Times would write that they might be used ‘in the propaganda of a league of peace’.

In this lecture, Dr David Boyd Haycock will examine the aims and ambitions of the British war artists programme, and how its various participants responded to its demands.