Oldal 182 [182]
CANADIAN LANDSCAPES/ PAYSAGES CANADIENS
Fund had been clear: to create a body of paintings that would celebrate the
contribution of Canada and Canadians to an Allied victory. Portraits of lead¬
ing military figures were not a problem - the artists were simply assigned
sitters — but when it came to depicting the Western Front, how the painters
would go about this was usually left up to them: they were to make sketches
ofwhat they saw, and then back in England or Canada to create finished paint¬
ings based on the sketches. But the Canadian War Records initiative in the
Second World War was much more organized and, not surprisingly as it was
run by a government department, more bureaucratic. The artists were given
“Operational Instructions,” instructing them to “prepare a plan to cover the
activity you are going to record, with a time-table covering a week in advance”
as well as possible steps in forming such a plan. Individual sections of the
instructions gave details on what they were to do once they were actually in
situ and working — for example, “After field sketches and notes have been
completed, lose no time in securing additional details of topography, uniform,
equipment, weapons and vehicles portrayed; and arrange for participants to
pose as models” (“Canada’s War Artists’ Perspectives”). The same was true of
subject matter: they should portray “significant events, scenes, phases and
episodes in the experience of the Canadian Armed Forces”. The stated “inten¬
tion” was that “your productions shall be worthy of Canada’s highest cultural
traditions, doing justice to History, and as works of art, worthy of exhibition
anywhere at any time” (“Doing Justice to History”). A lot of things for an art¬
ist to keep in mind when creating, many of them difficult to reconcile with
each other.
The artists in the World War II programme were closer to the reality of
war than those in the First World War. In the Great War, only A.Y. Jackson
had seen action while serving in the ranks. Most of the other artists were kept
far from the front lines, or only appeared on the battlefields long after actual
fighting was over, where the only evidence of war they saw was the devasted
countryside and ruined buildings. David Milne in fact arrived after the war
was over — as he later wrote, he was unable to tell whether he was “the last sol¬
dier or the first tourist” (Silcox 114). The policy in World War II was to bring
the artists as close to the men and women serving as possible: they should
share in the experience of “active operations” so as to “know and understand
the action, the circumstances, the environment, and the participants” (“Doing
Justice to History”). In fact some of the artists were on active service in one
of the three branches of the Canadian armed forces before being invited to
join the programme, while most of the others were, in today’s terminology,
“embedded” for shorter or longer periods in specific campaigns. For example,
Will Ogilvy experienced the Sicilian Campaign in 1943 alongside a Canadian
army unit; Charles Comfort and Lawren P. Harris shared the Canadian forces’
fiercely contested slog north in Italy in 1943-44; Alex Colville accompanied
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