John Godfrey Bernard Worsley was a British artist and illustrator best known for his naval battle scenes and portraits of high-ranking officers and political figures. One of the very few active service artists of the Second World War, Worsley was the only person to render contemporary sea-warfare in situ, and the only official war artist captured by the Germans. Detained in the infamous prisoner-of-war camp Marlag O, Worsley documented prison life with supplies provided by the Red Cross, his expertise employed in the forging of identity papers, and an ingenious escape attempt requiring the construction of a mannequin named Albert R.N.
"Rum Issue": sketch by John Worsley
A war artist is an artist either commissioned by a government or publication, or self-motivated, to document first-hand experience of war in any form of illustrative or depictive record. War artists explore the visual and sensory dimensions of war, often absent in written histories or other accounts of warfare.
Spring in the Trenches, Ridge Wood, 1917 by Paul Nash. Nash was a war artist in both World War I and World War II
A war artist in German-occupied France in 1941
Australians and New Zealanders at Klerksdorp 24 March 1901 by Charles Hammond
The Fall of Nelson, Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805 by Denis Dighton, c. 1825