Name/Title
Somewhere in FranceEntry/Object ID
2024.12.10Description
Painting
This image depicts a World War I battle scene in France with a shell-blasted landscape of devastation, location unknown. The focus of the image is the rear of an "armoured' vehicle with British-Commonwealth soldiers in their soup bowl helmets, escaping down the external rear stairs to the ground. It appears that an artillery round has just exploded in front of the vehicle. Billowing smoke obscures the frontal view, and a wounded/dead soldier is lying face-down on the earth with his rifle beyond his outstretched arms. The painting is small in size and captures one minor but timeless moment from The Great War. The exact location is unknown and the soldiers unidentified.Artwork Details
Medium
Watercolour on paperSubject Place
Region
Western EuropeContinent
EuropeContext
The First World War was the first truly global-scale conflict initiated after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. From 1914 to 1918, fighting took place in different theatres across multiple continents on land, at sea and in the air. The combat was grueling, destruction was unprecedented and the number of deaths staggering – the combined worldwide military/civilian death toll was estimated at 24 million with many more wounded. Some 66,000 Canadians and Newfoundlanders sacrificed their lives, with some 172,000 wounded.
During the war, the Triple Entente Powers alliance (or Allies), led by France, Russia, the British Empire including Canada and later Italy (1915 on) and the U.S. (1917 on) defeated the Central Powers, led by the German, Austro-Hungarian, Bulgarian and Ottoman Empires. As the war progressed, each alliance gained and lost members. Russia withdrew from the war after its revolution, 1917-1922.
On the battlefields of northern Europe, the British Empire fought the enemy and the elements along a system of trenches that stretched over 600 km from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier with France. Known as the Western Front, the battle here "transformed the landscape of northern France and Belgium into a lunar mud-scape of shell craters, corpses, abandoned equipment and wire entanglements."* For most of the war, this front was locked in a brutal stalemate, where both sides tried new tactics and technologies including poison gas, flame throwers and tanks. However, an Allied breakthrough finally defeated the Germans in 1918 with terms of peace settled by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.
Ultimately, this war brought an end to a mostly stable world order that had dominated since the end of the Napoleonic Wars in the early 1800s. Four empires collapsed (Austro-Hungarian, German, Ottoman and Russian) and the aftermath led to the later outbreak of the Second World War (1939-45).
* See Web Links - U.K. National Army Museum
__________________________
Of note, metal helmets started to appear in early 1915 with the recognition that better head protection was needed to help reduce the number of head wounds due to shrapnel and shell fragments. The French were the first to develop a solution – steel skull caps to be worn underneath their military caps, soon replaced by the Adrian Helmet Model 1915. The British first produced their steel Brodie Helmets in early 1915, designed by John Leopold Brodie. The helmets were first issued to British troops in September 1915 at the rate of 50 per battalion. One million Brodie helmets were distributed in the summer of 1916. It was the first helmet given to all serving soldiers in the British and Commonwealth armies, regardless of rank.Made/Created
Artist Information
Attribution
Arthur H. Parker (1878-1944)Role
ArtistDate made
circa 1915Notes
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Born in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, England, son of the artist Henry Hillingford Parker (1858-1930), Arthur Henry Parker (RCA guest 1923) was a successful Canadian artist known mostly for his watercolour landscape work. He studied painting (landscape, seascape and figure) under Sir Alfred East RA, RBA (1844-1913), and others receiving diplomas in London, Paris, and other art schools in Newcastle and Hanley, England.
Parker exhibited paintings in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Bolton and other art centres in England. He also traveled and exhibited extensively in Europe, locations unknown. Parker served overseas in France in WWI from 1915 until 1918 and appears to have moved to Victoria before 1920 – first listed as an artist in Henderson’s Victoria Directory of that year and subsequent years 1922-25, 1927-32.
Parker was active in the arts community. He became a member of the Island Arts and Crafts Society, and had work in their 1912 (maybe 1922?) exhibition. His last work was shown with the group in 1925. He also exhibited work in the 1936, 1937, and 1941 Annual B.C. Artists Exhibitions at the Vancouver Art Gallery, and also had a solo exhibition at the gallery in 1936 showing watercolours of various Vancouver Island locations, the Rockies, England and one of Venice. He also appears to have exhibited at the Art Association of Montreal (later Montreal Museum of Fine Arts ) Spring Exhibition, date(s) unknown.Inscription/Signature/Marks
Type
LabelLocation
Verso frame, handwritten in pen on paper:
"Somewhere in France"
by Mr. Arthur H. Parker I
Cedar Hill
Victoria, B.C.
Returned after exhibition to
Mrs. Oliver Room 5 Winch Building [Vancouver?]Dimensions
Dimension Description
VisibleHeight
11.4 cmWidth
16.5 cmAcquisition
Acquisition Method
PurchaseDate
Sep 10, 2024Notes
Lunds Lot #13Copyright
Notes
Images are provided for research and reference use only. Permission to publish, copy, or otherwise use these images must be obtained from the copyright holder. It is the sole responsibility of the applicant to determine the copyright holder and to obtain permission(s) as needed.
!["In the Mud". Troops of the Canadian 16th Machine Gun Company hold the line in atrocious conditions on the Passchendaele front [also known as the Third Battle of Ypres] in Belgium, late October or early November, 1917: Canadian War Museum: George Metcalf Archival Collection
CWM 19930013-509](https://d8e7jbdw4fu0e.cloudfront.net/5457/0970c5f0-ca1e-11ef-813e-99e70a5aaff6-v1MpTId.lg@2x.jpg)
