Kings and Common Men in The National Portrait Gallery's "The Great War in Portraits"

Source: http://www.npg.org.uk/

As the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of WWI draws nearer, museums and galleries throughout London are remembering the millions of men who lost their lives in the conflict. The exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, entitled "The Great War in Portraits," seeks to showcase both the powerful men of the war and the everyday soldiers. The format of the exhibition places these two types of men immediately next to each other, prestigious portraits next to paintings of dead men. The exhibit attempts to show the entire picture of English involvement in WWI, using a range of mediums and portraits to do so.

"The Rock Drill" by Sir Jacob Epstein
Source: http://theministryofcuriosity.
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The contrasts of the exhibit become incredibly clear as visitors turn into each new room of the exhibit, viewing the portraits and other art objects framed in doorways. A statue of a mutilated figure made of machine parts, entitled "The Rock Drill," greets visitors as they enter the exhibit. This black, stark figure composed of sharps angles and lines sets the desolate tone for the rest of the exhibit. Turning from the statue, a large portrait of King George V dressed in regal finery is the first object seen in the second room. The king is surrounded by images of other rulers on the adjacent walls. A portrait of the Kaiser hangs in the room, but the image of Archduke Franz Ferdinand predominates. While his official portrait may be dwarfed by the image of King George and the Kaiser, his figure appears in other forms, including a miniature attached to a keepsake box, photographs of him and his wife immediately prior to their assassination, and newspaper articles about his death. Interestingly, the room that focuses primarily on the powerful players in the war also includes a photograph of Franz Ferdinand's assassin, suggesting the beginnings of a shift in the exhibit towards showing the power of the common man.

Turning to the third room of the exhibit, the painting framed in the doorway emphasizes the shift in tone; "The Dead Stretcher Bearer" shows exactly the devastation of the war, as well as the irony that impacted many WWI writers in the fact that the image shows a stretcher bearer dead on the stretcher he's supposed to carry. The common soldier and military leaders are divided by a line down the middle of the room, which is physically made by a showcase of postcards from the home front that displayed the idealized image of the war for the women who "worship decorations" and "listen with delight, / By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled" (Sassoon, "Glory of Women," 3, 5-6). The bronze cast of the infantry man's head on the left side of the room contrasts the well-developed, layered portraits of Haig and other military commanders that display all of their military medals and ranks hung on the right side of the room. In this room, the divide in sentiments about the war which led Sassoon to assert, "I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest,"  is physicalized by the dividing line down the middle of the room.

Some of the portraits on the wall of "The Valiant andthe Damned"
Source: http://theministryofcuriosity.
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great-war-in-portraits.html

Turning to the next room, visitors are confronted by a towering portrait of Winston Churchill, but not the typical portrait we think of. He's much younger in this portrait and appears more reserved and unsure. While the portrait of Churchill may not align with the portraits of soldiers, it also isn't the portrait of grandeur like that of King George V. This understated quality of the portrait seems to transition into the wall of photographic portraits of men and women of every race and nationality who were impacted by the war. While the rest of the room includes more paintings of the aftermath of the war, showing both physical and mental injuries from where the soldiers "stood in Hell," this wall of photographs of "the valiant and the damned" captures lives that were lost or irrevocably changed by the war that might have been otherwise overlooked in other WWI exhibitions that appear in London this year. Thus, the exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery captures WWI on all levels of society, from the Western front to the home front, and from the highest powers to the lowest, to show just how great of an impact the war had and continues to have to this day.

The Poem in the Museum