The Russell Cotes Art Gallery in Bournemouth is a slightly incongruous place to hold an exhibition of war art, with it pot plants, Arts and Crafts decor and spectacular seascape views. Yet, the Morning Room is testimony to the reality that war can strike anywhere: the ceiling was repainted by Anna Zinkeisen after a blast wave from a German parachute mine caused its collapse in 1941. Their exhibition space is currently devoted to Artist as Witness: the Impact of War, too large a theme perhaps for such a small venue, but nonetheless an absorbing show which although focused on the two World Wars, is brought right up to date with contributions from George Butler in Ukraine.
There is a clear attempt to avoid the cliches of war art and to reflect the full range of those impacted. This is particularly seen in the contribution of women, some of whom, like Ethel Gabain, were employed as official War Artists, creating images of the Home Front. Themed sections include the rather unglamorous sounding 'Food Production' and 'War Preparations': Evelyn Dunbar has become a recognised name in recent years and while her unfussy depiction of the Women's Land Army Hostel has less visual impact than some of her works, it remains a fascinating slice of social history. In contrast Archibald Standish-Hartrick's lithograph invests his ploughing female figure with timelessness which seems to echo back to Medieval Books of Hours and James Bateman's Evacuees Help with the Hay Harvest is a rural idyll which belies the labour and the uprooted workforce involved.
The horror of war is never far away with Holocaust survivor Edith Birkin, and Robert McBryde's eeries ruins, but in many ways it is the banality which strikes home: Laura Knight's and George Biddle's sketched recordings of the Nuremberg Trials. These sit alongside more conventional reportage like Stephen Bone's Tank Landing Craft, with its dawn sky and eerie silence which not only feels like the calm before the storm but engenders the stiff upper lip stoicism of British films. Similarly, Charles Burleigh's scene of Brighton Pavillion being used as a hospital is a straightforward representation, which derives its power from the incongruity of the grandiose setting and the ranks of white-sheeted beds.
There are plenty of big names: John Lavery's view of cavalry horses in Green Park 1914, and Lady Butler's watercolour of a VC hero in a kilt both seem like left-0vers from another more honourable age. Paul Nash manages to conjure poetry from the decimation of the First World War. Yet, as often the case with provincial exhibitions in which curators have raided both their own collections and the stacks of other museums, there are new names to discover. The faceless ghostly figures of Amy Julia Drucker's 1916 Air Raid Shelter, crowded under artificial lights are reminiscent of Henry Moore's sketches of the same from the Second World War. Albert Richards' Anti Tank Ditch is like an bloody gash across the landscape; John Armstrong's The Red Cow takes a deliberately oblique view on the impact of war on the countryside.
This is an unfussy exhibition, with a good range of works and a functional display which allows all your attention to focus on the fifty or so pieces of art. There is variety aplenty, and Gill Clarke's clever juxtapositions of themes and examples means that one never feels overwhelmed by the subject. It is, however, impossible not to leave with a heavy heart: George Butler's works mean that this is the stuff of present reality not past history. Ultimately, all artists can do is to bear witness.
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