Studio: international art (69.1916)

British Artists in the IVar Zone

has been rather the chance by which Mr. Bone's on the March to the Somme. Could the play

art has profited, and the result is most interesting of light and shadow over an undulating land-

and successful. It certainly has supplied him scape be given more truthfully or sensitively?

with a very great number of motives. For his The susceptible touch of the chalk line and wash

drawings include not only views of ruins, or battle- give rhythm, form, and atmospheric effect to the

fields, but every phase of subjects and incidents whole most perfectly. The figures not only com-

that have been, and are, taking place on the Western pletely express movement (look at the group of

War frontier, viz. military operations, hospital galloping horsemen in mid-distance), but the long

scenes, camp and trench life. Looking through the sweeping line of the far-off troops also emphasises

many drawings, one can trace his travels from the the dip of the valley, and this line is repeated

moment of his arrival in France, when he notes in the foreground figures, and the eye wanders

down his first impression of the evidences of War interested from point to point,
in the shape of a delicate drawing, admirable in Outside Arras (near the German lines) from the

line and design (here reproduced) of The British reproduction does not look a very interesting

Red Cross Depot at Boulogne, to the impressive subject, but the artist has made it so. A beautiful

drawing called Watching British Artillery Fire on drawing called The Country near Amiens too has

Trones Wood. This latter drawing shows the no subject but is full of the power that Rembrandt

extraordinary power and vitality of Mr. Bone's or Ruisdael possessed of expressing vast distances

work. From the reproduction one can realise the and atmospheric effects. Mr. Bone's drawing is

scene with its view across the vast plain stretching one that tells of a country of flat plains spreading

to the windy sky and rapidly drifting smoke from endlessly. In fact the whole series of landscapes

the distant guns. How simply yet powerfully in this campaign, especially those interminable

expressed is the foreground scarred with shell- straight French roads, in the artist's hands, offer

holes, where there is never the touch of a line themselves as a modern wandering place for the

or a wash too much. The same thing applies mind, so vividly are they expressed. A drawing

equally to the marvellous drawing British Troops of a road along which a transport is moving with

"outside arras (near the German lines)" (From "The Western Front"J drawing by muirhead bone

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