Arthur Nantel (1874 - 1948) – Canadian soldier artist and POW in WW1

 With thanks to Paul Hendereson for finding this artist for us

Portrait of Nantel in
PoW camp
1916

Arthur Nantel was born on 22nd November 1874 in Montréal, Quebec, Canada.

Arthur began his career as a commercial artist in his home town of Montreal, and although he had no formal training he spent a lifetime earning a living in the arts. This talent helped him make it through the dark years of World War

When war broke out in August 1914, at the age of 41, Arthur enlisted with the 14th Royal Montreal Battalion. He first saw action at Ypres, Belgium, in April 1915, during the Battle of St. Julien. He was captured there and spent the remainder of the war as a Prisoner of War  at Giessen, a German prisoner of war camp.

For the first few years, Arthur’s captors saw him as a valuable commodity, exploiting him at every opportunity. He and a few other talented PoWs were given a small hut that they nicknamed Giessen Studio. “I sat at my easel, trying to earn the value of a piece of wurst (sausage) to assuage my voracious appetite…. Distinguished officers vied with each other in their efforts to have the monopoly of selling my works at a profit of 7,000 per cent.”

In 1917 he helped design a monument for the men who died in captivity at Giessen Camp, but that same year there was a change in command at the camp and Giessen Studio was shut down. Arthur ground out the remainder of the war in hard labour. His last seven months of internment were spent slaving in a mine.

The art from his days at the studio reflects his French Canadian roots. In spite of the misery of his position many of his works are filled with colour and joie de vivre. Those lively paintings have a folk art quality to them. The artist described his painting of Christmas Eve, 1916. “The evening jollification, which began with fairly orthodox dancing, gradually became a wild farandole (a communal dance) in and around the chimneys of the hut.”

Christmas Eve, 1916.

The years in a German PoW camp sharpened his artistic skills and after the war Nantel moved to New York where he worked as an illustrator for United Artists Studios, the motion picture company. In the 1930s he worked as a freelance illustrator. Nantel died on 6th November 1948 but he left behind a rare glimpse into the life of a WW I PoW.

Today, 31 of his works reside at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.

Sources: Wikipedia and Find my Past

Charles Spencelayh (1865 – 1958) – British artist

Self  portrait

Charles Spencelayh was born in Rochester in Kent, UK on 27th October 1865.  He first studied at the National Art Training School, South Kensington. 

Charles showed his work at the Paris Salon but most of his exhibitions were in Britain. Between 1892 and 1958, he exhibited over 30 paintings at the Royal Academy, including "Why War" (1939), which won the Royal Academy ‘Picture of the Year’. He was also a founder member of the Royal Society of Miniature Painters, where he exhibited 129 miniatures between 1896 and 1954.

His son Vernon served in the Kings Liverpool and was later commissioned into the Worcersters.

Many of his subjects were of domestic scenes, painted with an almost photographic detail, such as "The Laughing Parson" (1935) and "His Daily Ration" (1946). He also painted still life subjects including "Apples" (1951).

Chaarles Spencelayh was a favourite of Queen Mary, who was an avid collector of his work. In 1924 he painted a miniature of King George V for the Queen's dolls’ house.

Charles died on 25th June 1958.

On 17th December 2009, Charles Spencelayh's masterpiece "The Old Dealer" was sold at auction at Sotheby's for over £345,000.

“A Minute’s Silence” painted in 1928 by Charles Spencelayh.

Source: Wikipedia 

NOTE; Silence is observed as part of Remembrance Day to remember those who died in conflict. Held each year at 11:00 am on 11th November.

Georgia O’Keefe ( 1887 – 1986) – American artist

Found by Dr Connie Ruzich

Georgia Totto O'Keeffe was born on 15th November 1887. She was the second of seven children. She attended Town Hall School in Sun Prairie.  By the age of ten, she had decided to become an artist.  With her sisters, Ida and Anita, Georgia received art instruction from local watercolorist Sara Mann and went on to attended high school at The Sacred Heart Academy in Madison, Wisconsin, as a boarder between 1901 and 1902. In late 1902, the O'Keeffes moved from Wisconsin to the close-knit neighborhood of Peacock Hill in Williamsburg, Virginia, where Georgia's father started a business making rusticated cast concrete block in anticipation of a demand for the block in the Virginia Peninsula building trade, but the demand never materialized.  

Georgia stayed in Wisconsin attending Madison Central High School until joining her family in Virginia in 1903. She completed high school as a boarder at Chatham Episcopal Institute in Virginia (now Chatham Hall), graduating in 1905. At Chatham, she was a member of Kappa Delta Sorority.  She then went on to study art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, working part time as a commercial illustrator or a teacher to pay for further education.

Alfred Stieglitz, an art dealer and photographer, held an exhibit of Georgia’s work in 1916.

Georgia taught and headed the art department at West Texas State Normal College, watching over her youngest sibling, Claudia, at her mother's request. In 1917, she visited her brother, Alexis, at a military camp in Texas before he shipped out for Europe during the First World War.  While there, she created the painting “The Flag” which expressed her anxiety and depression about the war.

She moved to New York in 1918 at Alfred Stieglitz's request and began working seriously as an artist. They developed a professional and personal relationship that led to their marriage on 11th December 1924.

After a long and illustrious career, Georgia died on 6th March 1986.

William Lionel Wyllie (1851 - 1931) – British Artist also known as W L Wyllie

 

An engraved portrait of W. L. Wyllie from The Illustrated London News of 4th May 1889

William was born on 5th July 1951 in London.  He was the elder son of William Morrison Wyllie (1820 – 1895), a prosperous minor-genre artist who lived in London and in Wimereux, France, by his wife Katherine Benham (1813 – 1872), a singer. Before marrying W. M. Wyllie, she had had three children by Percy Clinton Sydney Smythe, 6th Viscount Strangford. One of them, Wyllie's half-brother Lionel Percy Smythe (1839 – 1918), also made a name for himself as an artist.  And William’s younger brother, Charles Wyllie (1853 – 1923) was apparently also an artist.

William spent most of his early summers in France with his parents and developed a love of sailing. He began to draw from an early age and his natural talent was encouraged by his father and by Lionel Smythe, his step brother. He was given a thorough artistic education; first at the Heatherley School of Fine Art, and then in 1866, aged 15, at the Royal Academy Schools. At the Royal Academy he studied under Edwin Henry Landseer, John Everett Millais and Frederic Leighton, among others.  He further demonstrated his precocious talent when he won the Turner Gold Medal in 1869 at the age of eighteen.

Already a celebrated marine artist, at the outbreak of war in 1914, Wyllie became an accredited war artist and was commissioned by the Admiralty to visually record naval vessels and actions. He was given permission to travel on many Royal Navy ships and visited naval bases such as Harwich, Rosyth, Cromarty, and Scapa Flow, where he produced hundreds of studies and sketches. His wartime experiences were extensive: he not only cruised in His Majesty's ships but also flew in the air, submerged in a submarine, and took a trip in a Q-ship (a disguised armed merchant ship).

Two of William's sons by his wife Marion Amy Carew, who he married in 1879, were killed in the First World War. 

William died on 6th April 1931.

"Battle of the Falklands" (1918)

Source:  Wilipedia 

Hans Bohrdt (1857 – 1945) – German artist

Hans was born on 11th February 1857. His parents were Adolph Eduard Bohrdt and his wife, Rosalie Pauline Szymkowski. He was one of 7 siblings (Paul Reinhold, Albert Anton, Maria Ann, Clare Antonie, Johanna Antonie and Carl Eduard). His father was a civil servant in the legal department of the Imperial administration.

Hans’s love for the sea began when he was 15 after visiting the port of Hamburg.  

Hans was a self-taught artist and he gave private lessons to Kaiser Wilhelm II.

During the First World War, Hans worked as a prominent marine artist and illustrator for propaganda purposes, producing numerous illustrations, postcards and posters throughout the war. His work, which often depicted German naval power and valor, was a key part of the German propaganda machine.

Hans died on 19th December 1945.

Der Letzte Mann (Tr.The Last Man”) - painted by Hans  in 1915 

Source:   Wikipedia

 

Frank Earle Schoonover (1877 – 1972) - American illustrator

Frank Earle Schoonover was born on 19th August 1877 in Oxford, New Jersey, USA. He studied art under Howard Pyle at the Drexel Institute in Philadelphia and became a member of the Brandywine School

During the First World War, Frank contributed to the war effort by creating illustrations for the "Ladies Home Journal" magazine between 1918 and 1919.

Frank died on 1st September 1972 in Wilmington, Delaware, at the age of 95.

 

With thanks to Eddie Bon for finding this information for us.

Painting of the scene of Alvin York's exploits in the Argonne Forest on 8th October 1918 by Frank Earle Schoonover.. The painting, created in 1919, depicts the moment York single-handedly captured 132 German soldiers after single-handedly taking on a German machine gun nest.

John Rutherford Armstrong ARA (1893 – 1973) – British artist who served with the Royal Field artillery in WW1

Poretrait c. 1933

 John Rutherford Armstrong was born on 14th November 1893 in   Hastings, Sussex.  He was the third son of the Rev’d William   Alexander Armstrong and his wife, Emily Mary, née Cripps. 

 Educated at St Paul's School, London (1907–1912), he went on to   read law briefly at St John's College, Oxford, before starting a short   period of studies at the St John's Wood School of Art, London until   the war intervened.

  During his service as an officer in the Royal Field Artillery in   WW1, the period he spent in Salonika fostered a lifelong interest in   the painting and pottery of ancient Greece, a subject that appeared repeatedly in his later work. and his career in painting and design   began after his return and demobilization

Sources:

Photo of Armstrong c. 1933 from https://www.jennaburlingham.com/artists/361-john-armstrong/biography/