Painting war: memory making and australia's official war art scheme, 1916 - 1922

Abstract

For almost a century the official collection of Great War art held at the Australian War Museum (later the Australian War Memorial) has played an important role in articulating and perpetuating memories of the conflict. Yet, there has been little analysis of how or by whom this collection was created. This thesis seeks to address this gap by exploring the processes by which over two thousand official sketches and paintings were commissioned and acquired from the scheme’s inception in London in 1916 through to its first exhibition in Melbourne in 1922, a period that was the most productive era in the history of the programme and during which the foundations for later commissioning of Australian paintings of the war were laid. By approaching this art scheme as a key commemorative practice of the Great War, 1 argue that amassing a collection of official art was a fluid and dynamic process that was driven by multiple actors. This thesis examines not only the role of official war artists but also the part played by the politicians, government officials and military personnel commissioning them. It examines these ‘agents of memory7’, focusing on those men who managed the art scheme, primarily, Henry Smart, Publicity Officer at the Australian High Commission in London, John Treloar, Officer in Charge of the Australian War Records Section and later Director of the Australian War Museum, and Charles Bean, Australia’s official war correspondent and historian. By exploring their selection and rejection of artists and subjects for official paintings, this thesis contends that these men influenced the character of the collection, thereby profoundly framing a memory of the Great War for Australia. By making comparisons with Canada’s war art programme, which also sought to differentiate the dominion’s wartime experience from other nations’ within the British Empire, I explore the points where the Australian scheme was distinctive and where it mirrored broader trends in the commemoration of the war in art. In doing so, I examine the priorities of Australian commemoration as Smart, Bean and Treloar privileged canvases that depicted the Australian troops’ efforts on the battlefield over other wartime activities, presenting a limited and narrow aspect of the nation’s wartime experience. Further, 1 explore the intervention of these men in how such images represented this experience, finding that they emphasised the eyewitness value of the art over its aesthetic merit. Drawing on original textual material and rich visual sources from the archives, this thesis examines the process of memory7 making under Australia’s first official war art scheme, exploring the genesis of an important and enduring commemorative practice.