Image credit: IWM (Imperial War Museums)
As part of human society, soldiers and sailors inevitably appear in paintings of everyday life. Admired for their bravery in times of war, they are often naturally depicted at the forefront of battle-pieces with their horses and cannons. In peacetime they have sometimes been treated with humour and even suspicion, as in Duck’s Soldiers and Women Revelling.
Notable professional servicemen and women have of course been commemorated in formal commissioned portraits, in dress uniforms complete with medals.
More democratic were the many paintings and informal portraits of ordinary soldiers, sailors and air force personnel resulting from Britain’s official war artist schemes of the twentieth century. These artists did not avoid the worst aspects of modern warfare – poison gas and prison camps, for example.
