A peaceful look at sights for war eyes

Jonathan Black looks at how working-class artists depicted British Tommys

Sculptors face numerous problems when tackling the subject of war in peacetime. After the first world war, for example, they had to deal with the question of whether war memorials should commemorate the conflict as a triumph for British arms, or emphasise the horror of the modern battlefield so the public would hesitate before supporting involvement in war again.

Sculptors were also confused - especially those who had fought - as to whether their work should appeal to ex-servicemen trying to adjust to peace or to bereaved civilians.

Most observed visual conventions when depicting ordinary British soldiers wounded, dead or engaged in combat. The poor old Tommy was usually either a bit passive, or looking impossibly glamourous and noble.

When artists attempted to present a more supposedly truthful image of the British Tommy as a decent and often violent defender of the realm, as a tragic victim or a disciplined professional at ease with modern weapons, the reaction from municipal authorities and ex-servicemen groups was not always favourable.

Sculptors such as Philip Lindsay Clark, Eric Kennington and Charles Sargeant Jagger regarded the Tommy more as a Sean Bean than a Rupert Brooke-type character. Their Tommys looked as if they knew what to do with their weapons.

Some historians assume that masculinity changed quite dramatically through experience of the war. In exploring the work of these artists, it seems that, if anything, experience of war reflected quite traditional masculinity.

Our way of looking at the first world war experience is too class-specific; too much through the eyes of people such as Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen - people with a classical education, who became disillusioned. Many of the artists barely made it out of secondary school. They were more in tune with the average working-class Tommy and were inspired less by classical antiquity than by the barrack-room ballads of Rudyard Kipling.

Jonathan Black is a postgraduate student at University College London. The National Inventory of War Memorials, Imperial War Museum: http://www.iwm.org.uk/lambeth/niwm.htm.

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