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/

Philip Connard, CVO, RA, (1875 - 1958) - British artist who served in the Royal Artillery on the Western Front before becoming an official Royal Naval war artist during the First World War

 With thanks to Ognyan Hristov for finding this artist for us 

Self portrait

 Philip Connard was born in Southport, Lancashire, UK, on 24th March   1875.  He left school to go out to work as a house decorator, enrolling to 1study art at evening classes.  Philip won a scholarship to study at the   Royal College of Art in London.   After a brief period in France, he     returned to London and worked as an illustrator, before taking  up a     teaching post at Lambeth School of Art.

 During the First World War, Philip volunteered and joined the Royal   Field Artillery as a Gunner (Private).  He was posted to France, where he   took part in several actions before being sent home suffering from Shell   Shock.  By then, he had attained the rank of Captain.

 Appointed as an official war artist by the Royal Navy, Philip painted the   surrender of the German ship SMS “Goeben” and “St George's Day:   Bridge of HMS 'Canterbury', on Patrol Work when the Great Naval Raid on Zeebrugge and Ostend Took Place” on 23rd April 1918.

Philip  was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1918 and became a full Academician in 1925. He was Keeper of the Royal Academy school - the principal tutor - from 1945 to 1949 and was a member of the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours. In 1950, Philip was appointed a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order. 

Philip never forgot his roots, founding The Southport Palette Club in 1921 in order to hold annual exhibitions of the work of local artists. He was President of the Club until his death on 8th December 1958  in Twickenham

Anti-aircraft Gun, 1918

St George's Day 1918 - Bridge of HMS Canterbury

Sources:  Wikipedia and

https://www.facebook.com/groups/385353788875799

Wilhelm Thöny (1888–1949) – Austrian artist

 Found by Paul Simadas and posted on the

Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/groups/385353788875799

Wilhelm Thöny was born in 1888 in the Austrian province of Styria and died in New York in 1949. He became a painter, graphic artist, engraver and illustrator. Thöny trained at the State Art School in Graz, and then the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich from 1908 to 1912.

In 1915, Thöny volunteered to join the Graz Rifle Regiment #3. In 1916, now as an army artist, he was commissioned to paint portraits of enemy soldiers for the book "The enemies of Germany and its allies” or “Die Feinde Deutschlands und seiner Verbündeten". He visited prisoner of war camps at Braunau in Bohemia, Kleinmünchen and Mauthausen to paint portrait studies of captured Greek, Italian, Albanian and Romanian soldiers.

In the portrait shown here he has painted a Greek soldier in a martial pose showing a certain empathy for his subject:

Wilhelm Thöny is considered one of the most important Austrian artists of the first half of the 20th century, who, according to the latest findings, can be ranked alongside such famous painters as Oskar Kokoschka, Herbert Boeckl or the artists of the Nötscher Kreis like Anton Kolig, Franz Wiegele.

Sources: post by Paul Simadas and Wikipedia

Jean-Louis Forain (1852 – 1931) – French artist

 

Jean-Louis Forain was a French artist, who specialized in painting, print making, and illustration. He was born in Reims in France on 23rd October 1852 and moved to Paris with his family when he was eight years old. 

During the First World War, Forain's illustrations honoured the patriotism of his contemporaries, and he enlisted in the Section de Camouflage under Lucien-Victor Guirand de Scévola.  He was also a war correspondent. A number of his caricatures published in the popular press at the time became posters and postcards.

Untitled caricature by Jean-Louis Forain

In his later years, Forain created numerous scenes of the Law Courts and other Parisian institutions and social satire caricatures of late 19th and early 20th century French life.

In 1931, shortly before his death on 11th July, Forain was made a member of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. He was one of France's most famous and revered artists during his time. He was, perhaps, most highly respected for his numerous drawings which chronicled and commented on Parisian city life at the end of the 19th century. Followers and admirers of Forain's work included Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

Sources:  Artists of the First World War Facebook Page

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Louis_Forain