What Could Have Bean: Using Digital Art History to Revisit Australia's First World War Official War Art

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Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge and thank the peer reviewers and editor for their helpful comments on this article, and especially curatorial colleagues at the Memorial and the team at Ortelia who worked on Art of Nation.

Notes

1. Charles Bean, ‘Further Memoir, Together with Appendices, by CEW Bean, Official Historian, Australian Imperial Force, Concerning the Official Records and History of the Australian Imperial Force; and the Establishment of a Memorial’, April 1919. National Archives of Australia (NAA): AWM93, 2/5/7.

2. Art of Nation (https://www.awm.gov.au/art-of-nation) is a partnership between Ortelia Interactive Spaces and the Australian War Memorial. Lead curator Anthea Gunn with Emily Wubben, with content development by art curators Hannah Hutchison, Warwick Heywood, Bridie Macgillicuddy, Alex Torrens, Diana Warnes, Laura Webster and curatorial intern Aylin Akyol, with oversight by Head of Art Ryan Johnston. From Ortelia, project management and 3D modelling by Lazaros Kastanis and technical development by Darren Pack. Subsequently the Memorial's photography section has curated another exhibition within Art of Nation, showcasing the May 1918 exhibition in London of Australian official war photography. The exhibition, led by Kate Morschel, was being developed at the time of writing this article and so is beyond its scope.

3. For recent uses of spatial analysis, see Paul B. Jaskot et al., ‘A Research-Based Model for Digital Mapping and Art History: Notes from the Field’, Artl@s Bulletin 4, no. 1 (2015), http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/artlas/vol4/iss1/5; Pamela Fletcher, ‘Reflections on Digital Art History’, Re-Views: Field Editors’ Reflections, caa.reviews June 18 (2015), doi:10.3202/caa.reviews.2015.73; Johanna Drucker et al. ‘Digital Art History: The American Scene’, Perspective 2 (2015), http://perspective.revues.org/6021; Richard White, ‘What is Spatial History’, Spatial History Project, Feb (2010), https://web.stanford.edu/group/spatialhistory/cgi-bin/site/pub.php?id=29.

4. Developed using the Web Graphics Library technology in order for the AWM to be able to deliver Art of Nation via a standard browser without the need for third-party plugins or software.

5. Ortelia Curator: http://ortelia.com/products/ortelia-curator-3d-exhibitions-for-museums-and-galleries/.

6. Bean, ‘Further Memoir’, 79.

7. Peter Londey, ‘A Possession Forever: Charles Bean, the Ancient Greeks, and Military Commemoration in Australia’, Australian Journal of Politics and History 53, no. 3 (2007): 346.

8. Letter from Bean to Pretty, Sept 12, 1923. ‘Australian War Memorial Registry File: Australian War Memorial (Its nature and method of raising funds) and Provision of site at Federal Capital’. National Archives of Australia (NAA): AWM 93, 12/12/6.

9. Michael McKernan, Here Is Their Spirit: A History of The Australian War Memorial 1917–1990 (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press with the Australian War Memorial, 1991), 95–6.

10. McKernan, Here Is Their Spirit, 36.

11. 'HISTORIC PICTURE' The Argus, 12 June 1915, 7 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article1523880 cited in Silvia Mergenthal, ‘Dangerous Ground and Fatal Shore: Remediating Gallipoli,’ in Australia and the Great War: Identity, Memory and Mythology, ed. Michael J.K. Walsh and Andrekos Varnava (Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing, 2016), 178.

12. Margaret Hutchison, ‘Painting War: Memory Making and Australia's Official War Art Scheme 1916–22’ (PhD diss., Australian National University, 2015), 25–53; Christopher Wray, Pozieres: Echoes of a Distant Battle (Port Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 187–99.

13. Hutchison, ‘Painting War’, 50, 57.

14. Ibid., 57–67.

15. Ibid., 68–79

16. Will Dyson to Andrew Fisher, August 23, 1916, in Wray, Pozieres, 187.

17. Will Dyson to Andrew Fisher, September 12, 1916. See correspondence in file, ‘Australian War Memorial registry files – First series’. National Archives of Australia (NAA): AWM93, 18/7/5 Part 1.

18. Wray, Pozieres, 192; ‘Captain George Washington Lambert’, Australian War Memorial, https://www.awm.gov.au/people/P65088/ and ‘Lieutenant Arthur Ernest Streeton’, Australian War Memorial, https://www.awm.gov.au/people/P10676828/.

19. Mary Gilmore, ‘Australia and War Paintings’, Sunday Times (Sydney), June 30, 1918, 6, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article123127871.

20. Wray, Pozieres, 192.

21. Charles Bean, diary entry, December 16, 1916. AWM38, 3DRL 606/68/1, www.awm.gov.au/collection/RCDIG1066833.

22. Ken Inglis, C.E.W. Bean, Australian Historian (St Lucia: The University of Queensland Press, 1970).

23. Ibid., 9.

24. Russel Ward, The Australian Legend (London: Oxford University Press, 1958).

25. Inglis, C.E.W. Bean, 12; Bill Gammage, The Broken Years: Australian Soldiers in the Great War (Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing, 1974, 2010), 2–6, 96.

26. McKernan, Here Is Their Spirit, 34–6.

27. Charles Bean, ‘Will Dyson: Artist and Soldier: Comrade of the AIF’, Reveille 1 Feb (1938): 16.

28. Bean, ‘Will Dyson’, 16.

29. A ‘batman' is assigned to a commissioned officer, essentially as a personal servant, but Bazley was more akin to a personal secretary and research assistant, and in later years a historian in his own right. A.J. Sweeting, ‘Bazley, Arthur William (1896–1972)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bazley-arthur-william-9457/text16633.

30. McKernan, Here Is Their Spirit, 56–7.

31. McKernan, Here Is Their Spirit, xi–xiii.

32. McKernan, Here Is Their Spirit, 37.

33. Anne-Marie Condé, ‘John Treloar, Official War Art and the Australian War Memorial’, Australian Journal of Politics and History 53, no. 3 (2007): 451–64.

34. Charles Bean, ‘Beginnings of the Australian War Memorial’, 1959, ‘Official History, 1914–18 War: Records of Charles E W Bean, Official Historian’. National Archives of Australia (NAA): AWM38, 3DRL 6673/619.

35. Charles Bean, ‘Australian Records Preserved as Sacred Things’, British Headquarters, France, September 29, 1917. Published nationally, for example, in: The Register (Adelaide), Dec 7, 1917; Newcastle Morning Herald, Dec 7, 1917; Swan Hill Guardian, Dec 10, 1917; The Mercury (Hobart), Dec 17, 1917; Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton), Dec 21, 1917.

36. Bean, ‘Australian Records Preserved as Sacred Things’, September 1917.

37. As is well documented, this was specifically in contrast to Frank Hurley's practice of composite photography where two or more negatives are combined in one print. See Robert Dixon, Photography, Early Cinema and Colonial Modernity: Frank Hurley's Synchronized Lecture Entertainments (London: Anthem Press, 2011), 47–54.

38. Bean, ‘Australian Records Preserved as Sacred Things’, September 1917.

39. As noted earlier, photography curators at the AWM have developed a second exhibition within Art of Nation, while space precludes detailed analysis of it here, this exhibition will make the roles of the official photography and art collections apparent, especially regarding Hurley's composites.

40. Tom Cross, Artists and Bohemians: 100 years with the Chelsea Arts Club (London: Quiller Press, 1992).

41. See correspondence on file ‘Australian War Records Section registry files and register of file titles: Artists – Appointments – Applications for positions as artists in AWRS.’ National Archives of Australia (NAA): AWM16, 4351/2/15 Part 2.

42. See correspondence on file ‘Official History, 1914–18 War: Records of Charles E W Bean, Official Historian: Papers, 1917–19’. National Archives of Australia (NAA): AWM38, 3DRL 6673/286.

43. See correspondence on file National Archives of Australia (NAA): AWM38, 3DRL 6673/286.

44. Bean, ‘Further Memoir’, 1919; Londey, ‘A Possession Forever’, 344–59.

45. Charles Bean to John Treloar, July 1918, See correspondence on file. ‘Australian War Memorial registry files – First series.’ National Archives of Australia (NAA): AWM93, 18/1/29.

46. Ibid.

47. Documented throughout file, Historic Memorials (War) Paintings by Anzac Artists. National Archives of Australia (NAA): A2, 1920/1044.

48. The AIF artists were able to make faster progress; as they were enlisted, they received pay in accord with their rank, and so payments did not have to be approved by government. Bean, ‘Further Memoir’, 1919.

49. See examples of the art committee correspondence 1920–37 on file, ‘Official History, 1914–18 War: Records of Charles E W Bean, Official Historian: Papers, 1920–37’. NAA: AWM 38, 3DRL 6673/287 and ‘Official History, 1914–18 War: Records of Charles E W Bean, Official Historian: Papers, 1926–27’. National Archives of Australia (NAA): AWM, 3DRL 6673/796.

50. For example, James Scott was commissioned to paint Battle Scene (1919, oil on canvas, 143 × 194.2 cm, ART03419, AWM collection) depicting the death of Major Percy Black during the battle of Bullecourt on 11 April 1917, but it was deemed unacceptable. Scott created a second painting of the scene, but Charles Wheeler was then commissioned to paint a third (The Death of Major Black, 1923, oil on canvas, 129.7 × 236.8 cm, ART03558, AWM collection).

51. John Treloar to Charles Bean, Jan 10 and Nov 10, 1921. See correspondence on file, ‘Official History, 1914–18 War: Records of Charles E W Bean, Official Historian: Papers, 1926–27’, National Archives of Australia (NAA): AWM38, 3DRL 6673/796.

52. John Treloar to Charles Bean, June 27, 1921.

53. Anne-Marie Condé, ‘Imagining a Collection: Creating Australia's Records of War’, reCollections 2, no. 1, http://recollections.nma.gov.au/issues/vol_2_no_1/papers/imagining_a_collection.

54. Catherine Speck, ‘The Australian War Museum, Women Artists and the National Memory of the First World War’, in When the Soldiers Return: November 2007 Conference Proceedings, ed. Martin Crotty (Brisbane: University of Queensland, School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, 2009), 277–90.

55. For example, Bean wrote to AWM Director, John Treloar, May 15, 1923 disagreeing with the purchase of H.S. Power's Corbie Abbey (1918, oil on canvas, 80.2 × 119.8 cm, ART03648, AWM collection) as it was unlikely ‘our eventual picture gallery will contain much room for still subjects such as this’, citing ‘the difficulty of hanging [that had] arisen already in the case of the portraits’. See correspondence on file ‘Official History, 1914–18 War: Records of Charles E W Bean, Official Historian: Papers, 1920–37’. National Archives of Australia (NAA): AWM38 3DRL 6673/287.

56. Bean referred to these as ‘of the utmost value as a record’ [his emphasis] when he argued they should be retained as a whole federal collection, and not distributed among state galleries, as were the war ‘trophies’. Charles Bean, ‘The Australian War Records: An Account of the Present Development Overseas and Suggestions of Course Necessary to be Taken at the End of the War’, March 1918, 30. National Archives of Australia (NAA): AWM38 3DRL, 6673/362.

57. These include those by the artists who were best known at the time, and since – such as George Lambert, with his iconic Anzac, The Landing 1915 (1920–22, oil on canvas, 199.8 × 370.2 cm, ART02873, AWM collection) and The Charge of the Australian Light Horse at Beersheba, 1917 (1920, oil on canvas, 122.7 × 245 cm, ART02811, AWM collection); and Arthur Streeton, with The Somme Valley near Corbie (1919, oil on canvas, 153 × 245.5 cm, ART03497, AWM collection) – and works that have become beloved to AWM audiences, such as those by H. Septimus Power; for example, First Australian Division Artillery going into the 3rd Battle of Ypres (1919, oil on canvas, 121.7 × 245 cm, ART03330, AWM collection). Will Longstaff's Midnight at Menin Gate (1927, oil on canvas, 137 × 270 cm, ART09807, AWM collection) is the best-known painting relating to the First World War in the AWM collection, but as it was not commissioned or acquired in order to depict the Australians during the First World War, and as it does not appear on any of Bean's lists to that purpose, it has not been included in Art of Nation.

58. Parkes proposed a State House – a kind of Panthéon – to mark the colony's centenary. Paul Ashton, ‘Centennial Park’, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/centennial_park. See also, 'Legislative Assembly', Sydney Morning Herald, July 1, 1887, 3; K.S. Inglis, Sacred Places: War Memorials in the Australian Landscape, 3rd ed. (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2008), 30–1.

59. Andrew Yip, ‘A Portrait of the Nation as a Young Man: The Genesis of Gallipoli Mythologies in Australian and Turkish Art' (PhD diss., University of Sydney, 2010), 48–81.

60. Bean,‘Further Memoir’, 1919, 93–5.

61. Charles Bean, ‘The Australian War Records: An Account of the Present Development Overseas and Suggestions of Course Necessary to be taken at the end of the War’, March 1918, 33. ‘Official History, 1914–18 War’. National Archives of Australia (NAA): AWM38, 3DRL 6673/362.

62. Charles Bean, ‘Outline of Scheme for the Australian War Museum’, July 1919. ‘Australian War Museum Main File’. National Archives of Australia (NAA): A1 1921/6401.

63. McKernan, Here Is Their Spirit, 39–40.

64. Bean, March 1918, 30–1.

65. Catherine Roach, ‘Rehanging Reynolds at the British Institution: Methods for Reconstructing Ephemeral Displays’, British Art Studies 4, doi.org/10.17658/issn.2058-5462/issue-04/croach.

66. Anna Bentkowska-Kafel, ‘Debating Digital Art History’, International Journal for Digital Art History 1 (2015): 59.

67. Leslie Bowles and E.J. Gregory, Memorial to Lieutenant-Colonel John Treloar (1953, bronze, 84.2 × 73.2 × 3.2 cm, ART31470, AWM collection), https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/ART31470/. For Treloar's character, see Condé, ‘John Treloar’, 451–64.

68. The Lincoln Memorial did not open until 1922, but Bean's 1919 description of the proposed AWM is certainly reminiscent of it. Bean, ‘Beginnings of the Australian War Memorial’, 1959.

69. Project development was also documented on the AWM blog: https://www.awm.gov.au/visit/exhibitions/art-of-nation/learn-more.