dieser beitrag wurde verfasst in: englisch (eng/en)
künstler: Colin Unwin Gill
titel: Heavy Artillery
jahr: 1919
adresse: Imperial War Museum, London
+: Oil on canvas, 182,8x317,5 cm
«Heavy Artillery, 1919, was one of a series of paintings commissioned by the British War Memorials Committee as part of a scheme to build a Hall of Remembrance.
The picture, which has as its subject a view of a heavy artillery position, depicts the impact of industrialised warfare; the Imposing, camouflaged 9.2 Howitzers, the scattered sheets of corrugated iron, and the ruined village and bomb-damaged walls are set within a war-torn landscape, like the one Gill had witnessed on his return to the front at Mons in November 1918, hours after it had been retaken by the Allies at the end of hostilities: 'desolate and encumbered with the debris of battle'. The broken roadside Calvary, which has been overturned by a shell-explosion, is a metaphor for the fallen soldies, a theme explored by Wilfred Owen in his poem 'At a Calvary near the Ankre', 1918. When the painting was exhibited at an 'Exhibition of the Nation's War Pictures at Burlington House', (December 12, 1919February 7, 1920), the critic P. G. Konody described it as 'a Paolo Uccello with Howitzers' and 'a decorative scheme of massive design, elaborate but not confused, rich and sober at once in colour'. He found it fortunated that Gill, 'who has already gained the Prix de Rome, was given this great opportunity at the beginning of what promises to be a brilliant career'.» (Llewellyn, 2013, pp. 141–143)
