BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Library of Congress -- Exhibit (Graphic Arts): World War I: American Artists View the Great War

DC -- Library of Congress -- Exhibit (Graphic Arts): World War I: American Artists View the Great War:

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Description of Pictures: World War I: American Artists View the Great War
May 7, 2016–May 6, 2017
Heeding the call from artist Charles Dana Gibson to “Draw ‘til it hurts,” hundreds of leading American artists galvanized public interest in the Great War (1914–1918). Although the United States participated as a direct combatant in World War I from 1917 to 1918, the riveting posters, cartoons, fine art prints, and drawings on display chronicle this massive international conflict from its onset through its aftermath.
There will be two completely different presentations of this exhibition at the Library of Congress. The first will be on view from May 7, 2016, through October 22, 2016, and the second presentation will be on view from October 31, 2016, through May 6, 2017. However, this online version of the exhibition reflects all of the art that appears in the Graphic Arts Gallery during the year.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. LOCWWI_160512_011.JPG: World War I: American Artists View the Great War Heeding the call from artist Charles Dana Gibson to "Draw 'til it hurts," hundreds of leading American artists galvanized public interest in the Great War (1914–1918). Although the United States participated as a direct combatant in World War I from 1917 to 1918, the riveting posters, cartoons, fine art prints, and drawings on display chronicle this massive international conflict from its onset through its aftermath. Gibson, a preeminent illustrator, led the federal government's Division of Pictorial Publicity, a unit of the Committee on Public Information. The Division focused on promoting recruitment, bond drives, home front service, troop support, and camp libraries. Many images advocated for American involvement in the war and others encouraged hatred of the German enemy. In less than two years, the Division's 300 artists produced more than 1,400 designs, including some 700 posters. The works chosen for this exhibition reflect the focus of wartime art on patriotic and propaganda messages -- by government-supported as well as independent and commercial artists. They include James Montgomery Flagg (best known for his portrayal of Uncle Sam), Wladyslaw Benda, George Bellows, Joseph Pennell, and William Allen Rogers. In contrast, such artists as Maurice Becker, Kerr Eby, and Samuel J. Woolf, drew on their personal experiences to depict military scenes on the front lines as well as the traumatic treatment of conscientious objectors. And finally, cartoonists offered both scathing criticism and gentle humor, as shown in Bud Fisher's comic strip Mutt and Jeff. Photography also provided essential communication during the First World War. The selected images detail the service of soldiers, nurses, journalists, and factory workers from the home front to the trenches. American Red Cross photographs by Lewis Hine and others employ artful documentation to capture the challenges of recovery and rebuilding in Europe after the devastation of war. All works in the exhibition are from the collections of the Prints and Photographs Division.
2. LOCWWI_160512_019.JPG: William Allen Rogers Comments on American Neutrality Responding to President Wilson's proclamation of strict neutrality on August 4, 1914, editorial cartoonist William Allen Rogers portrayed Uncle Sam trapped and unable to move by the chevaux de frise of bayonets. While Wilson believed his leadership called for neutrality during the Great War, his policies paralyzed government officials who needed to control shipping, troop movements, and the rescue of Americans from Europe. On July 28, 1914, days before this cartoon was published, the Austro-Hungarian government declared war on Serbia and the European continent quickly became embroiled in war.
3. LOCWWI_160512_034.JPG: James Montgomery Flagg's Call To Arms After two and a half years of neutrality, the United States entered World War I on April 6, 1917. James Montgomery Flagg, who created some of the war's most indelible images, sounded the alarm for all citizens in Wake Up, America! This personification of Liberty, shown sleeping, wears patriotic stars and stripes and a Phrygian cap -- a symbol of freedom since Roman times. She leans against a fluted column, another visual reference to Western classical antiquity and civilization, as sinister storm clouds gather in the background.
4. LOCWWI_160512_053.JPG: James Montgomery Flagg's Iconic Uncle Sam Drawing on the quintessential American symbol of Uncle Sam that first became popular in the mid-nineteenth century, James Montgomery Flagg introduced his iconic version of the elderly gentleman on the July 6, 1916, cover of Leslie's Illustrated Weekly Newspaper. Flagg used the image again on a 1917 I Want You for U.S. Army recruitment poster. It became one of the most famous posters ever printed, and Flagg's popular image was again employed for recruiting purposes during World War II. The Library preserves original, full-size posters from both world wars. This alternative version, aimed at potential U.S. Navy recruits, was designed for display on street cars, buses, and subway cars.
5. LOCWWI_160512_076.JPG: Charles Buckles Falls Promotes Literacy U.S. military officials, concerned by low literacy rates, even among native-born American soldiers, promoted reading and writing. The American Library Association maintained libraries for servicemen both at home and overseas through its Library War Service -- directed by Librarian of Congress Herbert Putnam. Artist Charles Buckles Falls, who signed this poster with only an "F," designed a number of World War I recruitment posters, as well as those encouraging Americans to donate books and soldiers to use camp libraries. Between 1917 and 1920, some seven to ten million books and magazines were distributed.
6. LOCWWI_160512_078.JPG: Eugenie De Land's Design for Liberty Bond Poster One of the few female artists designing posters during the war, Eugenie De Land drew this original watercolor design for her second Liberty Loan poster. Its message suggests that the viewer's actions determine whether the sun rises or sets as the evening sky transforms into an American flag over the Statue of Liberty. De Land studied under illustrator Howard Pyle at Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry before beginning her thirty-five-year career as an art teacher. She taught in Washington, D.C., at the Corcoran School of Art and McKinley High School before retiring in 1942.
7. LOCWWI_160512_098.JPG: Joseph Pennell's Machinery of War Joseph Pennell's wartime drawings and prints continued his lifelong fascination with industrial subjects -- a theme he called the "Wonder of Work." Pennell was granted special access to such sensitive sites as shipyards and munitions factories and the backs of his drawings often bear censor clearance stamps. As a Quaker who was opposed to war, Pennell's ambivalence comes through in his comment: ". . . it is the working of the great machinery in the great mills which I find so inspiring -- so impressive. . . . And if only the engines turned out were engines of peace -- how much better would the world be."
8. LOCWWI_160512_110.JPG: Edward Penfield's Doughboys in Action Setting the active, outlined soldiers against a colorfully streaked sky, Penfield glorifies the bravery and skill of the "doughboys" or infantrymen of the American Expeditionary Forces during World War I. By August 1918, when this cover design for Collier's magazine appeared, U.S. forces had already helped halt the German advance on Paris and other Allied actions had checked the German offensives by late June. Penfield, here employing his signature style inspired by Japanese prints and French poster design, influenced illustrators of his time and later through his poster and cover art.
9. LOCWWI_160512_122.JPG: Wladyslaw I. Benda's Poetic Illustration In this romanticized image of young men fighting their way through barbed wire, Benda illustrates the poem by Mary Carolyn Davies, "God, Be Good to Her!" Davies imagines a gallant young man thrilled by the adventure, the peasants' cheers, and experiencing the joy "of perilous, wondrous questing" while praying for his worried mother at home. American artist Wladyslaw Benda was born in Poznań, Poland, and studied in Krakow and Vienna before immigrating to the United States. Participating in the Division of Pictorial Publicity, Benda's art encouraged young men to enlist.
10. LOCWWI_160512_138.JPG: Kerr Eby's Shadow of War Born in Tokyo to Canadian missionary parents, Kerr Eby studied at Pratt Institute and the Art Students League in New York City before volunteering for the U.S. Army in 1917. He served with the 40th Engineers, Artillery Brigade, Camouflage Division in France where he saw battle action at Belleau Wood, Meuse-Argonne, Ch�teau-Thierry, and Saint-Mihiel. His warfront drawings became the basis for his prints -- a number of which appeared in his 1936 book War with the opening words: "I write in all humility of spirit, in the desperate hope that somehow it may be of use in the forlorn and seemingly hopeless fight against war."
11. LOCWWI_160512_149.JPG: Samuel Woolf's Eyewitness Drawing Samuel J. Woolf worked as a visual war correspondent at the front in Beaumont-Hamel, France, where he made compelling eye-witness drawings. In addition to working as an artist, he worked as a cook, drove an ambulance, and endured some of the same privations as soldiers and personally suffered the horror of a gas attack. This poignant drawing suggests how firsthand experience informed his art. Woolf studied with Kenyon Cox and George de Forest Brush at the Art Students League and National Academy of Design and had a long career with Time magazine.
12. LOCWWI_160512_160.JPG: Herbert Paus Goes Behind the Scenes With his heralded attention to detail, illustrator Herbert Paus captures his officers as if frozen in a moment behind the lines of battle. Shown variously resting, armed, peering at the viewer, talking on a telephone, and sitting before a telegraph machine -- his soldiers project both ease and military readiness. Paus trained as an artist in St. Paul, Minnesota, and while still a teenager moved to New York City in 1899 to further his artistic training. Already renowned by the time the U.S. entered World War I, Paus joined Charles Dana Gibson's Division of Pictorial Publicity.
13. LOCWWI_160512_173.JPG: John A. Marshall Photographs War at Night While serving as a sergeant in the Army's First Division, John A. Marshall captured the explosion of a phosphorous bomb illuminating the night sky and revealing a helmeted soldier in silhouette. Marshall photographed the First Corps School exercises in Gondrecourt, France, and later documented the American Expeditionary Forces. Having realized that his troops were woefully unprepared to fight at the front, General Pershing mandated training. Allied troops trained the First Division at Gondrecourt, France, before sending soldiers to the trenches.
14. LOCWWI_160512_181.JPG: Women's Branch of the Army's Industrial Service Section During World War I, millions of women contributed to the war effort, not only through volunteer service but by entering the labor force as nurses, agricultural laborers and factory workers. Here, a woman works in the converted Baldwin Locomotive property in Eddystone, Pennsylvania, on the Delaware River south of Philadelphia. After April 1918, 3,000 women participated in a work force of 15,000 to manufacture Enfield rifles for British and American troops. In the second photograph, a woman manufactures weapons for the Midvale Steel & Ordnance Company in the Nicetown neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The factory had a longstanding contract with the U.S. Navy, and by the end of the war, its workforce had increased to 7,300. Without sufficient men to maintain the war effort, women were needed and the U.S. government encouraged them to work.
15. LOCWWI_160512_190.JPG: Oscar Cesare Supports Women's Suffrage The women's suffrage movement was already firmly part of the nation's consciousness by 1917 when editorial cartoonist Oscar Cesare created this image of a nurse offering comfort to a fallen soldier. Between the Army, Navy, and the American Red Cross, more than 40,000 women served as nurses during World War I. Some of these nurses arrived ahead of American troops to establish expeditionary hospitals near the front. Having trained in Paris as an artist, Swedish-born cartoonist Oscar Cesare immigrated to the United States in 1903. He worked for the New York Evening Post during the war.
16. LOCWWI_160512_204.JPG: Bud Fisher Satirizes Knitting Projects and Comments on Freedom On a wager that he could not "stick it out," Bud Fisher trained as an American soldier during World War I. However, the Army prohibited him from producing his profitable comic strip, so he joined the Canadian forces. He served in London, working as a censor while continuing to draw his popular feature, Mutt and Jeff. Wanting to promote the war effort, Fisher had his characters enlist, although the comic strip rarely featured the war front. In the first cartoon shown, he focuses his wartime humor on a hapless knitter. In the second, during a humorous conversation about liberty bonds, Jeff tells Mutt that his divorce decree gave him freedom.
17. LOCWWI_160512_211.JPG: What's coming off? They're issuing a lot of mufflers and things that the ladies have been knitting for us. Come on and see what you draw.
18. LOCWWI_160512_215.JPG: Would you look at this muffler? What did you get? I dunno, but I think they're meant for a pair of socks. Here's a note in one of 'em.
19. LOCWWI_160512_219.JPG: "To some brave soldier" I wanted to do my bit, so these socks for you I've knit. I hope that they will fit. Amy Smith 23 Easy St.
20. LOCWWI_160512_229.JPG: That's right! Answer her, Jeff. We must show the girls that we appreciate their efforts in our behalf.
21. LOCWWI_160512_233.JPG: Miss Amy Smith: -- Dear Amy: -- Your pair of socks have made a hit. I'm using one for a vest and the other for a mitt, who in Sam Hill taught you to knit? Yours truly Jeff somewhere at sea
22. LOCWWI_160512_242.JPG: Wladyslaw Benda Encourages Home Front Knitting Wladyslaw Theodore Benda, a leading magazine illustrator, depicted this serene knitter who joins the ranks of the many beautiful women who populated his illustrative work. During World War I, many Americans on the home front did their part for the war effort by knitting. The American Red Cross coordinated much of this work, providing patterns and requesting sweaters, scarves, wristlets (fingerless gloves), and socks. Warm socks were especially important to the soldiers in the trenches. Benda, a naturalized American, was born in Poland in 1873.
23. LOCWWI_160512_259.JPG: George Bellows Imagines Edith Cavell's Final Moments During the spring and fall of 1918, Bellows responded to reported German atrocities in Belgium with a series of hard-hitting drawings, lithographs, and paintings. The protagonist of this dream-like image is British Red Cross nurse Edith Cavell who tended to both German and Allied wounded. For her role in helping some 200 Allied prisoners escape via neutral Holland, German authorities accused her of treason and shot her in 1915. Bellows portrays her as an angelic, martyr-like figure who appears to glow as she descends a staircase. At its base, her executioners wait in the shadows.
24. LOCWWI_160512_278.JPG: Charles Dana Gibson's Femme Fatale The portly gentleman is a caricatured portrayal of Kaiser William II, Emperor of Germany, in this imaginary tryst with a female friend labeled "War." He recoils at discovering his "lady fair" is the embodiment of Death, as she beckons him to approach in all her grotesque, bejeweled splendor. Not only did Gibson lead the Division of Pictorial Publicity from 1917–1918, for which he recruited the country's top illustrators to aid in building support for America's war effort, he also drew anti-German political cartoons for Life magazine.
25. LOCWWI_160512_298.JPG: C. F. Chambers Portrays Veteran Empowerment With the war's end, the American Red Cross continued to support returning veterans through programs that included psychiatric care and rehabilitation for disabled veterans. Despite a series of legislative acts that stipulated vocational training for honorably discharged veterans, bureaucratic difficulties hampered the provision of services. This optimistic poster accentuates empowerment, with a strong support system behind an amputee veteran standing poised to enter a bright future. The image's aesthetic language is also forward-looking with suggestions of modernist trends in art -- Art Deco, Cubist, and Provincetown white-line woodcut styles.
26. LOCWWI_160512_310.JPG: Maurice Becker, Conscientious Objector Documenting the treatment he felt firsthand as a conscientious objector imprisoned in Leavenworth, Kansas, during World War I, Becker worked through his trauma in a series of charcoal drawings after his release. Although more than 64,000 men initially registered as conscientious objectors, only 450 of the most recalcitrant -- both for religious and political reasons -- were incarcerated in the Fort Leavenworth U.S. Disciplinary Barracks. Some were not released until 1919 and 1920. Born in Russia, Becker immigrated to the United States as a child. He dedicated his career to fighting injustice.
27. LOCWWI_160512_321.JPG: Childe Hassam Celebrates Allies During World War I, New York's Fifth Avenue was temporarily rechristened the Avenue of the Allies. Hassam's lithograph, based on his painting, shows the thoroughfare festooned with flags for the Fourth Liberty Loan Drive. The artist created at least thirty flag paintings, which were often exhibited twenty-two at a time to represent the number of Allied countries. Created about one month before the war's end on November 11, 1918, this lithograph became the frontispiece for A. E. Gallatin's 1919 book, Art and the Great War, which observed: "Credit is due to the Library of Congress for their foresight in assembling a large representative collection of posters and cartoons on the war."
28. LOCWWI_160512_330.JPG: Lewis Hine Photographs African American Veteran Well-versed in depicting individuals and their challenging circumstances from his work documenting child workers for the National Child Labor Committee, Lewis Hine joined the American Red Cross in 1918 and then did freelance photography for the organization through the 1930s. The caption on the back of this photograph identifies its subject as an African American patient who chose wood carving as an occupational therapy activity at the United States Naval Hospital in Chelsea, Massachusetts. African Americans volunteered en force during World War I, with more than 350,000 serving in segregated units.
29. LOCWWI_160512_335.JPG: American Red Cross Documents the War's Aftermath YWCA volunteers established "hostess houses" to provide a haven for women and families both on American bases and abroad. This hostess house -- at what later became known as the Somme American Cemetery in Bony, France -- offered shelter to families visiting the graves of troops of the 27th and 30th Divisions who had been slaughtered when attacking the Hindenburg Line. Although many families insisted on repatriation of their dead, of the nearly 84,000 American soldiers who died overseas during World War I, more than 30,000 of the deceased were buried near where they had fallen.
30. LOCWWI_160512_339.JPG: American Red Cross Witnesses Civilian Relief Efforts Established by American women living abroad, the American Fund for French Wounded provided support to French soldiers, civilians, and refugees. The photograph's caption on the verso tells a fuller story: "Mrs. Taylor of the Civilian Relief Committee of the American Fund for the French Wounded distributing milk to the young and the old of repatriated village of [Bl�rancourt]. Milk was unknown to these unfortunate people for three years the Germans occupied their village."
31. LOCWWI_160512_352.JPG: American Red Cross Volunteers at Work At the beginning of the century, Edna M. Walker was an accomplished craftswoman, making Arts and Crafts furniture in the Byrdcliffe artist's colony in Woodstock, New York. During the war, she joined thousands of other American women who volunteered to work for the American Red Cross. The volunteers' energy played a role in the European recovery in the immediate aftermath of the war. Here, she stands with two orphaned children before the ruins of the �glise Notre-Dame d'Attigny, France.
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