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
Australian official war artists
Australian official war artists are those who have been expressly employed by either the Australian War Memorial (AWM) or the Army Military History Section. These artist soldiers depicted some aspect of war through art; this might be a pictorial record or it might commemorate how war shapes lives.
Australian official war artists, 1916–1918 by George Coates, 1920. Oil on canvas, 124.2 x 104.5 cm. The group portrait presents, left to right: front — George Bell; standing — John Longstaff, Charles Bryant, George Washington Lambert, A. Henry Fullwood, James Quinn, H. Septimus Power, Arthur Streeton; and seated back — Will Dyson, Fred Leist.
Artworks by Arthur Streeton and sculptures by Web Gilbert on display at the Australian War Memorial in 2012
Arthur Streeton: Amiens, the key of the west, oil-on-canvas, completed in 1919.
Captain Conway Bown, Australian Army Official War Artist, Iraq, 2006
