British War Artists
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Glasgow Museums has a collection of over 250 works dating from between 1830 and 1990 which broadly represent Britain at war. This collection includes oil paintings, watercolours, drawings, etchings and lithographs. The majority of these works illustrate the two world wars of the 20th century, but there are also depictions by history painters of earlier battles and associated events dating back to William Wallace, Robert Bruce, the Covenanters, the English Civil War and the Jacobite Rising. The Crimean campaign and the Gulf War are also represented within the collection. Sir Muirhead Bone is of particular interest, as he was the only person to be appointed as an official war artist in two world wars. His work is well represented in the collection along with other artists of World War II, including Brangwyn, McBey and Fred Farrell. Notable in this collection are an important set of prints produced by Ian Fleming which depict the World War II blitz on Clydebank and a set of etchings of the horrors of the World War I by the soldier-artist Percy Smith Following World War II, Glasgow, like many British public art galleries, received an allocation of pictures commissioned by the War Artists Advisory Commission. This amounted to a total of 70 works by various artists. These cover aspects of wartime activities but, in common with official restrictions, actual combat is rarely depicted.
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