DOI issue:
No. 344 (November 1912)
DOI article:Studio-talk
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21393#0244
STUDIO-TALK
the result, evidently, of concentrated
thought by one who has witnessed and
shared in the horrors of war, and has been
moved by them to this powerful and
serious effort of interpretation." In each
of the seven etchings of this set, the artist's
theme is humanity in the person of the
soldier marching, fighting, dying, and
ever with grim Death close at hand,
grinning, mocking, exulting. The other
set is a series of dry-points, in which the
artist with no less poignancy has por-
trayed the martyrdom of Nature—the
unspeakable havoc and destruction in-
flicted on Mother Earth herself by the
great engines of war. Most, if not all,
of these are from the neighbourhood of
Thiepval, where the artist was stationed.
One, for instance, bears the title Site of
the Main Street of Thiepval, but the mind
cannot imagine that this blank stretch of
ground, pitted as it were with huge pock
marks, could ever have been the scene
of human life and activity. In another,
rising up amidst another such desolate ex-
panse of pock-marked land is a solitary tree
stump. But in none perhaps is the
" abomination of desolation " so brought
home to the onlooker as in this plate of The
Crater. Ere this great chasm had been
formed, men had been burrowing deep
in the earth day and night constructing
tunnels until the moment arrived when
the earth above, with every living thing
upon it, was blown into space, leaving
behind this immense crater amid the silence
of death. Of neither of these sets can it
be said that they are pleasant or attractive,
228
"DEATH MARCHES " (DANCE OF DEATH
SET, 1914-18). BY PERCY SMITH
the result, evidently, of concentrated
thought by one who has witnessed and
shared in the horrors of war, and has been
moved by them to this powerful and
serious effort of interpretation." In each
of the seven etchings of this set, the artist's
theme is humanity in the person of the
soldier marching, fighting, dying, and
ever with grim Death close at hand,
grinning, mocking, exulting. The other
set is a series of dry-points, in which the
artist with no less poignancy has por-
trayed the martyrdom of Nature—the
unspeakable havoc and destruction in-
flicted on Mother Earth herself by the
great engines of war. Most, if not all,
of these are from the neighbourhood of
Thiepval, where the artist was stationed.
One, for instance, bears the title Site of
the Main Street of Thiepval, but the mind
cannot imagine that this blank stretch of
ground, pitted as it were with huge pock
marks, could ever have been the scene
of human life and activity. In another,
rising up amidst another such desolate ex-
panse of pock-marked land is a solitary tree
stump. But in none perhaps is the
" abomination of desolation " so brought
home to the onlooker as in this plate of The
Crater. Ere this great chasm had been
formed, men had been burrowing deep
in the earth day and night constructing
tunnels until the moment arrived when
the earth above, with every living thing
upon it, was blown into space, leaving
behind this immense crater amid the silence
of death. Of neither of these sets can it
be said that they are pleasant or attractive,
228
"DEATH MARCHES " (DANCE OF DEATH
SET, 1914-18). BY PERCY SMITH