Painting war: memory making and australia's official war art scheme, 1916 - 1922
Date
2015
Authors
Hutchison, Margaret
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Publisher
Canberra, ACT : The Australian National University
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.
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Thesis (PhD)
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DOI
10.25911/5d5145b412935
Restricted until
2033-12-30