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Recent war artists

25 June 2007 by Janda Gooding. No comments
George Lambert: Gallipoli and Palestine Landscapes, Exhibition

In early 2007 the Australian War Memorial appointed Charles Green and Lyndell Brown as official artists to Iraq and Afghanistan. Charles and Lyndell are based in Melbourne and work collaboratively on the same paintings.  Their experiences as official artists travelling with the Australian Defence Forces bear some similarity to those of George Lambert ninety years ago – having to work quickly and pack up at a moment’s notice when the Forces need to move. They will be in Canberra to talk at the symposium this Friday 29 June about their time in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is also a great interview with them podcast on Radio National as well as a feature on George Lambert as a war artist. Follow this link:

www.abc.net.au/rn/artworks/stories/2007/1959332.htm

ANZAC Cove

10 May 2007 by Janda Gooding. 2 Comments
George Lambert: Gallipoli and Palestine Landscapes, Battlefield Tours, Exhibition, Gallipoli Mission, Janda's Blog about Gallipoli, Landscape, Landscapes of war

On their first day in the ‘Old ANZAC area’*, Lambert and Hubert Wilkins (the official photographer of the Australian Historical Mission) were taken down to ANZAC Cove by Charles Bean. Bean was keen to introduce them to the area and show them the dugout that he had occupied during 1915. The following day, 16 February 1919 Lambert made another visit to the beach and then again the next day. As a group they retraced the steps of Hedley Vicars Howe who as a Private had landed with 11 Battalion on the morning of 25 April 1915. Howe’s account of the landing and climbing up Plugge’s Plateau would also largely inform the narrative that runs through Lambert’s large commissioned work ANZAC, the landing 1915. (a separate post to follow)

Lambert held off painting an ANZAC Cove subject until towards the end of his stay on Gallipoli with the Australian Historical Mission. On 5 March he made a painting of the beach with the hills of Suvla in the distance and wrote: “In the afternoon I did a picture, not a sketch, of ANZAC Cove, chiefly palette-knife, and quite like it”. This work – unusual for Lambert in that as he observes he used a palette knife – is quickly sketched in with only the barest indication of the complex topography of the slopes leading up from the beach. But, his painting also shows the debris of war still littered across the beach including the ruins of a water-condensing plant.

Hubert Wilkins also took a photograph of the scene from the beach level and this more clearly shows the remnants of the terraces and rubbish along the water line. Wilkins’ and Lambert’s images are both classically composed with the sweeping curve of the bay, but each conveys a different sort of information. Wilkins’ photo indicates the stucture of the altered landscape and gives an immense amount of information – Lambert gives us an impression of the confused and still raw landscape of war.

In 2007 the scene has changed dramatically. The beach is shallower due to the build up required to support the road and possibly the natural shifting processes of coastlines has contributed to this erosion. Ari Burnu headland is clothed in green scrub and any terrace contours are invisible in the dense vegetation. However, as you come around the road past Hell Spit and see ANZAC Cove for the first time, it is still instantly recognisable by the curve of the beach and distinctive profile of the headland.

* Charles Bean used the term ‘Old ANZAC area’ in his book Gallipoli Mission to denote all the ground held by the ANZAC forces from April 1915 until the second major thrust in August 1915.

the verso of the story

30 April 2007 by Janda Gooding. 1 Comment
George Lambert: Gallipoli and Palestine Landscapes, Conservation, Exhibition

With all the work the conservation team – David, Ilaria, Sharon, Gajendra and Sophie - have done on the Lamberts for the exhibition, lots of new things have emerged - and the backs of the images are a goldmine for information. We’ve uncovered other paintings, unfinished sketches and interesting old labels. All of this adds to our understanding of George Lambert and how he worked.

The ‘Double trouble’ post revealed the story of uncovering the back of one painting to find another – The top of the Taurus Ranges. On the back of The Nek, Walker’s Ridge, site of the charge of the light horse is a study of a horse and pack mule in Rest Gully at Gallipoli (now framed so that is visible). During his stay at Gallipoli in 1919, Lambert was assisted by soldiers assigned to help him. On this occasion he was accompanied by someone he termed a ‘Dinkum’ Aussie’ who carried the painting gear, and odd bits of salvage on a pack-mule. Lambert rode what he described as “a very ugly plug, a small draught horse which, though unspeakably plain, is useful and has a fondness for the mule. The mule breaks away every fifteen minutes or so when we camp for painting and the Dinkum shows the stuff he is made of by sliding down the side of the precipice and catching her, tethering her by some special stunt … then he climbs laboriously back to me and by the time he reaches my summit she is off again; quite a good circus for a grey day … one afternoon I varied the programme by doing a sketch of the little gully, called Rest Gully, where the 5th Field Ambulance, from Sydney, and commanded by Dr. Roth, was camped during the occupation. With the horse and mule in the foreground it made a decent sketch”. (1) 

On the verso of Jebel Saba, near Nalin is Walad Camp follower, an oil sketch of an Arab boy. It’s a fairly simple study with lots of the background quickly dashed in. There is one brief reference to this work in a list of paintings consigned by Lambert from Palestine to London in May 1918 where he says that on the back of Jebel Saba, near Nalin “there is a study of a Walad Camp Follower.” ‘Walad’ is Arabic for ‘boy’ and a short entry in the publication Australia in Palestine noted: “You occasionally find Arab boys travelling with the Light Horse, keen little beggars who act as cooks’ offsiders and batmen’s batmen, and officers smile and sympathetically shut their eyes to it.” (2) We don’t know as yet where Lambert painted this portrait and can’t assume that just because it’s on the back of the Nalin work that it was painted around there. All the backs of the Lambert oil on cardboard and wood panel sketches were sealed with varnish or shellac to prevent the wood from warping or splitting. This is what causes the dark and light bands across the image of the boy (above).

1. Thirty Years of an Artist’s Life, by Amy Lambert, Sydney 1938, pp. 104-05.

2. Australia in Palestine, Sydney 1919, p.118.

Looking towards Gallipoli

19 April 2007 by Janda Gooding. No comments
George Lambert: Gallipoli and Palestine Landscapes, Battlefield Tours, Exhibition, Janda's Blog about Gallipoli

Cannakale is a small town on the Asiatic side of the Dardanelles. From the waterfront you look across to the Gallipoli peninsula with some of the familiar landmarks visible in the distance – Kilid Bahr, Chunuk Bair and Mal Tepe. As we walked along the waterfront we searched for the spot where Lambert may have painted Dardanelles from Chanak, effects of blizzard on Gallipoli (ART02833).

Lambert wrote of his 7 day stay here: “Snow blizzards ice and general discomfort. No coal or wood and a damp gloomy fifth rate house called the Lion Hotel, may I live to forget it.” Frustrating as it may have been, the unexpected stay gave him time to paint this sparkling view across the rough seas to the snow shrouded slopes of Chunuk Bair.

The scene is very much the same today; the Narrows is a bustling waterway wth ships on their way to and from Istanbul and the Black Sea. In this fine spring weather the waterfront promenade was crowded with people ambling along, young kids coming out of school or Uni and others just sitting in sunny spots sipping some hot drink or other.

Already, from comparing the physical landscape with Lambert’s paintings, I am learning how he ‘framed’ his views, the choices he made about what to paint and then what he might have left out or put in.

Unfortunately, the picturesque wooden jetty is no longer here!

Inside the fort

19 April 2007 by Janda Gooding. No comments
George Lambert: Gallipoli and Palestine Landscapes, Battlefield Tours, Exhibition, Janda's Blog about Gallipoli

In late 2006 I was fortunate to receive a Gordon Darling Travel Grant to do field work at Gallipoli. The purpose of the grant is to examine the landscape of Gallipoli in relation to paintings and photographs of Gallipoli in the Memorial’s collection. I joined the Memorial’s Battlefield tour that left Australia 13 April. After 4 days in Istanbul we have arrived in Cannakale [Chanak] a small town on the Asiatic side of the Dardanelles that looks across the Narrows to the Gallipoli peninsula. For a more detailed account of the battlefield group’s progress and some fantastic photos of what we are doing, check out my colleague John Lafferty’s blog.

Today we visited the ruins of Troy and the Dardanelles battery positions before heading back to Cannakale for an afternoon discussing the importance of this place to the Gallipoli campaign. George Lambert spent some time in Cannakale on his way to Gallipoli with the Australian Historical Mission in early 1919. Stranded for 7 days by rough seas and blizzards, Lambert spent his time painting and looking across the Narrows to Gallipoli. I know how he felt; we have been circling around, getting ever closer to our destination for the last few days!

While here, I wanted to locate the sites of a couple of Lambert’s paintings and in particular Inside the fort, Chanak (ART02832). This afternoon we visited the Cimenlik Castle fort built by Sultan Mehmet the second [the Conqueror] in 1461-1462. The fort now houses the Cannakale Military Museum.

When Lambert painted this, evidence of the fierce Allied bombardment of Cannakale was still very raw. The central feature of his painting is the Fatih Mosque of Sultan Mehmet II, with the badly damaged minaret rising from the battlements. The building on the right [the castle keep] has been completely restored but the damage line [so evident in Lambert's painting] is still visible in the stonework. The minaret has also been rebuilt and looks oddly new and somewhat incongruous amongst the stone battlements.

Lambert’s painting must have been quickly sketched in on a cold and bleak day but captures superbly the tone and atmosphere of the fort complex. John Lafferty has taken this great photo from a similar vantage point to Lambert’s painting to show how it was this afternoon!

The magic of purple pencil

17 April 2007 by gajraw. 1 Comment
George Lambert: Gallipoli and Palestine Landscapes, Conservation, Exhibition

Before the invention of the photocopier, people had to rely on all sorts of different techniques to make copies of correspondence and text. In the 1780s there was letterpress copying where a dampened sheet of thin tissue paper was laid against the inked side of an original document and then put in a press. The two sheets were pressed together producing a mirror image of the original text on the tissue. Due to the tissue’s semi-transparency, when it was held up to light the mirror image text could easily be read through from its back. The inks used in this process were made from oak galls (gallotannates) and logwood.  The most commonly used wet ink copy paper was high-quality Japanese tissue. The disadvantage with ink press was that the tissue paper had to be thoroughly wet to get the mirror image and only a few copies could be made. This made it a costly and complicated process.

Copying pencils were invented in the 1870’s and within a decade had overtaken the wet ink press method of letterpress copying. The younger generation might not know the magic of the colourful purple pencils. They were the predecessor to the ball point pen. Similar in appearance to graphite pencils, copying pencils contained a dye which turned purple when moistened. They were marketed as a product which could not be erased because the main component of the pencil was an aniline dye which produced a purple colour when dissolved in water or alcohol. The other components of the copying pencil were clay (kaoline) and graphite. Other colours used were red, black, green and combinations of dyes. The aniline dye in the copy pencil produced stronger copies and more copies. Another advantage was that the aniline dye was not affected by exposure to the air (as was the ink) and therefore copies did not have to be produced instantly.

The copying pencil rose to prominence during the First World War as it could not be smeared or erased easily. Archival records of the time show that Great Britain bought thousands of copying pencils per week to supply to British and Allied officers. These pencils were much more convenient to use in the field than were pen and ink.

George Lambert used copying pencil in some of his drawings including the work (left) Last Brigade Headquarters in the north: leading to Brigade Headquarters, with artist’s notes (loose sheet from the`Brown book’ ART11393.344). He was possibly issued some pencils by the War Records Section when he was commissioned and he also could have picked them up when travelling with the troops. Sometimes Lambert’s drawings were done completely with copying pencils and sometimes with a mixture of copying and graphite pencils. At the Memorial there are a few examples of these works. In preparing drawings for the George Lambert exhibition, we carefully surveyed all the drawings to make sure which ones might have copy pencil in them. Copy pencil drawings are easily identified under the microscope by their purplish tone, however identifying combination drawings can be problematic. To avoid dissolving the copy pencil component of a combination drawing, professional conservators conduct thorough solubility tests for every colour before washing and cleaning these delicate items.

Gajendra Rawat, Paper Conservator

Further reading:
1. Dube, Liz (1998). The Copying Pencil: Composition, History, and Conservation Implications.  AIC, The Book and Paper Group Annual, Vol 17, 1998.

Open at last

30 March 2007 by Janda Gooding. 1 Comment
George Lambert: Gallipoli and Palestine Landscapes, Exhibition

At last, after several years of research and preparation the George Lambert: Gallipoli and Palestine landscapes exhibition has opened at the Australian War Memorial. The last few weeks have been pretty intense with the building of the exhibition space, the final design elements being resolved and the installation and lighting of all the works of art, labels and exhibition panels.

No exhibition can open without a team of people all working together to bring it to fruition. But now it is completed, it is a great feeling to able to present the exhibition to our visitors. A longer post will follow soon, but here are a few photos of the exhibition.

Childhood memories

26 March 2007 by Janda Gooding. No comments
George Lambert: Gallipoli and Palestine Landscapes, Exhibition

We are grateful to David Cox, a grand nephew of George Lambert’s who has contributed the following post. David’s grandmother was Sarah (“Sadie”) Anne Cox, nee Lambert, George’s elder sister.     

Although often thought of as a quintessentially Australian artist, in his pre-teen years George Lambert had experienced only the cultures and languages of Russia, Germany and Britain. George Lambert was the youngest child and only boy in a family of four children. His American father (George Washington Lambert) died before George was born in 1873 in St Petersburg, Russia. George’s English grandfather Thomas Firth, who was at the time chief of the Alexandrovsky Railway Workshops in St Petersburg, assumed the role of breadwinner and helped his widowed daughter Annie care for the young Lambert family. In 1876 they moved from Russia to Esslingen, Germany, where Thomas Firth superintended the construction of locomotives and carriages for the Russian railways.

George’s sister “Sadie” talked about their childhood to her daughter Ida Cox who made notes in the 1940s:

“The Germans in those days were the greatest toy makers in the World, and beautiful toys the little Lamberts had in Esslingen.

Mrs. Lambert was a wonderful Mother and companion to her children. She sewed beautiful dolls’ clothes for the girls’ dolls by hand, the neatness and minuteness of the stitching being marvellous to see. She told them stories, just as she did in later years to her grandchildren – most wonderful stories, which it was a delight to hear. She taught them to read and write in English as well as German, though at that time they spoke German naturally, and English was a foreign language to them. She taught them Music and other lessons too.

The family travelled to Munich and to Cologne; at Munich they visited the Art Gallery. George was then a small boy of four or five, and little did his mother dream that one day a picture painted by him would hang in similar galleries all over the world !”

Hence young George spent much of his formative childhood in Germany, living there for the next five years. Then in 1881 the family moved to Yeovil, Somerset, England, where grandfather Thomas Firth’s second wife had relatives. Sadie recalled:

“When first the young Lamberts went to school in England they were laughed at for their foreign accent and for the German words they occasionally substituted for English, but they soon exhibited much brilliance. George won the [Science and Art Department] (South Kensington) Prize for drawing at the age of [thirteen], and it was not long before Sadie was top of her class.

The accompanying photos of George and Sadie were taken at William Mayer’s studio in Esslingen in about 1878, when George was five and Sadie eight years old.

 David Cox

Recovering from loss

09 March 2007 by soplew. No comments
George Lambert: Gallipoli and Palestine Landscapes, Conservation, Exhibition

When Gajendra Rawat and I (Sophie) surveyed the Lambert artworks on paper for the exhibition we identified a couple of works that required some repairs prior to being displayed.

This drawing Train station, Semakh by George Lambert (left) had areas of loss due to an insect attack (which happened before we purchased the drawing in 1930). Lambert described Semakh as “a railway station of picturesque conglomeration of not more than usually dirty Arab huts, and a few tents and horses of the occupation people on the shore, southern end, of the Sea of Galilee. It is really beautiful here.” ¹ The drawing was made in June 1919 as Lambert toured Palestine after his visit to Gallipoli with the Australian Historical Mission.

We decided to infill these losses with western style papers. Western papers are made from short fibres such as cotton linter or wood pulp. The paper was chosen based on its weight and texture being similar to Lambert’s. It is a medium weight western paper with no papermaking marks (chain or laid lines). As the paper was not the right colour it was toned with high quality watercolour paints. The shape of the loss area was traced to enable the most accurate reproduction of the paper shape required.

The western paper used for the repair was adhered to the drawing with dilute wheat starch paste with a Japanese tissue repair strip on the back for support. Japanese tissue paper is made from long ‘bast’ or plant fibres like Kozo, Mitsumata, or Gampi, which are all light and strong. We are guided by conservation ethics so we only use materials of the highest quality and most stable nature, for example starch paste and Japanese tissue, and the repairs must be completely reversible to allow for removal if it is necessary in the future. Once repaired the drawing was left under weights for a couple of days to make sure it was nice and flat. As you can see in the picture below, the end result was that the loss was disguised yet the modern repairs are still visible to the trained eye.

1. Amy Lambert Thirty Years of an Artist’s Life, Sydney 1938, p. 125.

Sophie Lewincamp, Conservator-Paper

With the 7th Light Horse at Nalin

02 March 2007 by Janda Gooding. No comments
George Lambert: Gallipoli and Palestine Landscapes, Exhibition

The war diaries for the Light Horse have gone online and I have been madly scanning the pages for references to Lambert’s travels during 1918 and 1919. Lambert was accompanied by experienced Light Horse officers and fortunately there are a couple of references to him in the diaries. Lambert stayed with the 7th Light Horse Regiment for 5 days from 18 to 22 February when they were stationed along the front line at Nalin. Most interesting for me is that the diary for the regiment records Lambert’s arrival and provides an insight into the activities the artist would have witnessed.

The regiment had moved up to Nalin from its rest camp at Wady Hanein on 4 February and relieved the Canterbury Mounted Rifles. On 18 February just before Lambert arrived they were visited by the Brigadier General (Sir Granville de laune Ryrie) commanding the 2nd Australian Light Horse Brigade who arrived by motor car: “They inspected the position and work which had been done here and were well satisfied with the work carried out.” (war diary 18 February 1918) Shortly after, Lambert and three other men from headquarters arrived and over the next few days the artist made sketches of what was going on around him.

The 7th Light Horse’s position was close to the small village of Nalin and, although the local residents were told to stay away, Arabs often wandered through the lines as they tried to go about their regular business. On 20 February Lambert made a drawing of a party of Arabs taken in for questioning. The incident report stated: “They said the Turks had ordered them to go to Nablus, but they decided to come back through the lines.” Two men were taken on to Ramleh for further questioning while the others were allowed to proceed on their donkeys.

Although this was considered the front line the 7th only saw sporadic action; during the day the regiment observed any movement by the Turkish troops and at night patrolled the line. Patrols went out to reconnoitre the ground and locate water supplies and occasionally those in the line shot at passing Turkish planes. The daily routine also included rifle range and target practice. Most of the men were engaged in constructing and improving roads, digging trenches and reinforcing the sangars – fortified positions built from rock that served as observation posts and sniper positions. Material to reinforce the sangars was in short supply so they quarried and blasted stone. Travelling around the site on horseback, Lambert made sketches of the quarrying activities and two oil studies of the troops in the sangars.

Jebel Saba, near Nalin was painted on 21 February – a rainy day according to the unit diary. It shows troops in an observation post. Set amongst boulders and weathered limestone outcrops, Lambert has included the smaller details of the landscape – the cacti, an ancient tree and a spot of red, perhaps indicating a flower – to convey the essence of the landscape the troops inhabited. His other oil sketch Front line sangar, with the 7th Light Horse gives us a close up view of how the sangar was constructed and its prominent position in the landscape. The war diary notes that the walls of the sangars were about 8 feet thick at the bottom tapering to 4 feet at the top and inside there was a trench which was blasted out of the rocks.

On 20 February Colonel John Arnott, commander of the training centre at Moascar, visited the regiment. Lambert made a quick pencil sketch of Arnott meeting with officers in their mess – basically a makeshift table set up in a small cave or tomb. Lambert also made more detailed studies of the commander of the 7th, Lieutenant-Colonel George Macarthur-Onslow and Lieutenant Clive Holland the officer who compiled the diary entries.

On 22 February – another rainy day – George Lambert is noted as leaving the 7th Light Horse at Nalin to report to divisional headquarters at Jerusalem. The 7th Australian Light Horse Regiment was relieved just over a week later on 7 March 1918.

Janda