Francis Edgar Dodd RA (1874 – 1949) was a British artist and printmaker

A post by Chris Dubbs on the Facebook Page Artists of the First World War led me to research Francis Edgar Dodd.

Francis Edgar Dodd was born on 29th November 1874 in Holyhead, Anglesey, Wales. His parents were Benjamin Dodd, a Wesleyan Church Minister, and his wife, Jane Frances Dodd, nee Shaw. Francis had the following siblings:  Benjamin Herbert, Frederick R., Gertrude Helena, Walter Stanley and Elsie Lilian.   In 1881 the family lived in Bolton, Lancashire and in 1891 they lived in Barony, Kelvin, Lanarkshire, Scotland.

Francis studied art at the Glasgow School of Art, where a fellow student was Muirhead Bone, who married Francis’s sister Gertrude Helena. In 1893, while studying in Glasgow, Francis won the Haldane Scholarship, awarded by the Trustees at the School  for travel. That enabled  him to study art in France, Italy and later Spain.  Francis returned to Britain in 1895, where he lived in Manchester, before moving to Blackheath in London in 1904. While in Manchester, Francis became friendly with Charles Holden, the architect.

In 1911, Francis married Mary A. Ingle. The couple lived at Arundel House, Blackheath Park, in Blackheath, London SE3.

In 1916, Francis was appointed official war artist by Charles Masterman, the Head of the War Propaganda Bureau (WPB), replacing Muirhead Bone.    He served on the Western Front and painted over thirty portraits of senior military personnel.  On 5th June 1918, Francis joined the Royal Navy.

Surrendered U-boat under British flag 20 Nov 1918 by Francis Dodd. IWM image

Francis was appointed a Trustee of the Tate Gallery in 1929, a position he held for six years. He was elected  an Associate Member of the Royal Academy in 1927 and a full Member in 1935.

After the death of his first wife, Francis married Ellen Margaret Tanner in March 1949.  Ellen was the model for his painting “Lady in Black”.  Francis died at his home in Blackheath on 7th March 1949.

Portrait of Francis Dodd painted by his nephew Stephen Bone (13 November 1904 – 15 September 1958) – son of Muirhead Bone and Francis’s sister Gertrude.

Charles Henry Holden Litt.D, FRIBA, MRTPI, RDI (12 May 1875 – 1 May 1960) – architect

Charles Henry Holden Litt.D, FRIBA, MRTPI, RDI (12 May 1875 – 1 May 1960) – architect - and his wife, Margaret Steadman (née Macdonald, 1865–1954), a nurse and midwife, rushed to help in WW1.

During the First World War, Margaret Holden joined the "Friends' Emergency Committee for the Assistance of Germans, Austrians and Hungarians in distress" which helped refugees of those countries stranded in London by the conflict. Charles Holden served with the Red Cross's London Ambulance Column as a stretcher-bearer transferring wounded troops from London's stations to its hospitals. Holden also served on the fire watch at St Paul's Cathedral between 1915 and 1917.

On 3 October 1917, Holden was appointed a temporary lieutenant with the army's Directorate of Graves Registration and Enquiries. He travelled to the Western Front for the first time later that month and began planning new cemeteries and expanding existing ones.

Charles described what he saw: “The country is one vast wilderness, blasted out of recognition where once villages & orchards & fertile land, now tossed about & churned in hopeless disorder with never a landmark as far as the eye can reach & dotted about in the scrub and untidiness of it all are to be seen here & there singly & in groups little white crosses marking the place where men have fallen and been buried.”

In September 1918, Charles transferred to the Imperial War Graves Commission (now called the Commonwealth War Graves Commission) with the rank of Major. From 1918 until 1928 he worked on 69 Commission cemeteries, initially, managing the drawing office and working as the senior design architect under the three principal architects in France and Belgium - Edwin Lutyens, Reginald Blomfield and Herbert Baker

In 1920, he was promoted to be the fourth principal architect. His work for the Commission included memorials to the New Zealand missing dead at Messines Ridge British Cemetery, and the Buttes New British Cemetery at Zonnebeke.

In 1922, Holden designed the War Memorial Gateway for Clifton College, Bristol, using a combination of limestone and gritstone to match the Gothic style of the school's buildings.

Portrait of Charles Holden by his friend the artist Francis Edgar Dodd.

Philip Connard, CVO, RA, (1875 - 1958) - British artist

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 study 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.

Elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1918, Philip became a full Academician in 1925. He was Keeper of the Royal Academy school - the principal tutor - from 1945 to 1949. He was 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.

With thanks to Historian Debbie Cameron for posting this painting on Artists of the First World War Facebook Group Page.

Gertrude Leese (1870-1963) – British VAD, artist and illustrator

Clare Walters, writer, has researched Gertrude. Clare says:

“During the First World War, Leese volunteered in the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) at Etaples, in an Allied military camp that had many hospitals on site. The Imperial War Museum holds five sketches Leese made while there, which she donated to the museum in 1954. These delicate, dynamic ink-on-paper illustrations give us a glimpse into life on a busy wartime base.

During the first decade of the twentieth century she illustrated a number of books for George Bell and Sons, including George Sand’s La Mare au Diable and François le Champi in 1908, and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe in 1909. Her name is credited in substantial type on the covers and title pages of these books, and each includes a generous mix of black-and-white line illustrations and coloured plates. She had studied with Max Bohm (1868-1923) at the international art colony in the fishing port of Etaples, and her work was shown at the ‘Salon des Artistes Français’ in Paris in 1902.

Leese was friends with many artists of the time, including Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957), co-founder of the Vorticist movement, and Helen Saunders (1885-1963) and Jessica Dismorr (1885-1939). Along with Lewis and others, Saunders and Dismorr both signed the original Vorticist manifesto in 1914 and they are depicted in William Roberts’ 1961 painting, held in the Tate, The Vorticists at the Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel: Spring 1915 (the restaurant was in Percy Street, London). Leese was also close friends with her second cousin, Catherina Dawson Giles (1878-1955), known as Kathie, another painter who knew this group.

In 1924 Leese, then in her fifties, studied at the Académie de la Palette in Paris, where Dismorr had studied earlier in 1910-13. Subsequently she sketched and painted many other European scenes, including a number of the French Riviera and the Mediterranean. But it is the immediacy of these simple wartime sketches that are particularly poignant, as they are such a clear and vivid reminder of the people involved in that challenging and harrowing time of more than 100 years ago.”

Clare Walters
http://www.eyemagazine.com/blog/post/unofficial-war-artist?fbclid=IwAR3BUsiPRIUj5v19M4LnYLxf_w3Y7a-rkf6qj2HRsb18EZwnAXM3ModjDDs

If anyone has a photograph of Gertrude, please get in touch.

Walter E. Spradbery, DCM (1889 – 1969) British Artist

With thanks to Historian Debbie Cameron for telling me about Walter and thanks to Walter’s cousin, Philip Spradbery, who has a lifelong passion for painting, who kindly supplied additional information and to Sergio Sbalchiero for finding paintings by Walter.

Walter Ermest Spradbery was born on 29th March 1889 in East Dulwich, London, UK. His parents were Joseph Spradbery and his wife Emily Spradbery, nee Feltham.  Walter had a brother, Charles V., b. 1879.

Walter studied at Walthamstow Art School, then worked as an art teacher. He regularly exhibited his work at the Royal Academy. His main artistic media were water colour, linocuts and poster design. Walter designed posters for London transport companies and for British Rail.

During the First World War, Walter, who was a pacifist, joined the Royal Army Medical Corps and served as a medical orderly and stretcher-bearer on the Western Front. He served with 36 Field Ambulance during the Somme Offensive in 1916 and was Mentioned in Despatches several times for bravery rescuing wounded men under fire.   He was awarded a Distinguished Conduct Medal.

On 11th November 1918, Walter wrote to his Mother:

"Hostilities ceased on all fronts at 11 o’clock today. Oh happy mothers, happy sweethearts, happy wives, whose loved ones will come safely back... and those lone souls who have lost their very own; today is too unkind to them - how can they face our joy? 'Peace on Earth, Goodwill towards men' - an unseen choir sings it in our breasts - prompting men to evolve a better world more worthy of our ideals and aspirations. Let us begin."

On 21st August 1929, Walter married opera singer Dorothy D’Orsay (maiden name Horsey) and the couple lived in Epping Forest.   They had two children.

Walter died in Epping, Essex in 1969. An exhibition of the work of WW1 artist Walter Spradbery was held in 2018 at The Epping Forest District Museum.

A biography of Walter Spradbery’s life and times, "My Dear Jim", has been compiled and published by his son, John Spradbery (Mail order from Elizabeth Spradbery: el.malet@gmail.com)

Sources:  http://www.xcsconsulting.com.au/walter-e-spradbery.html
https://theatricalia.com/person/k2t/dorothy-d-orsay
https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections/collections-online/people/item/1996-5125

A poem by Walter Spradbery written in 1915 and kindly supplied by his cousin, Philip Spradbery.

THE BALLAD OF BARNHAM COMMON

“Eyes Have They, But See Not”

The flowers that grow on Barnham’s plain
Are beautiful to see;
The bugloss and the speedwell’s blue
Fair as a summer’s sea,
Blue as a summer’s sky are they
As a child’s eyes may be:

And the tender little pansy’s
Uplifted cherub face,
With golden eye, and purple wings
And unpretentious grace,
Peeps shyly from amid the grass
In every shady place.

But wearily we drag our feet
Over the jeweled sods,
And discipline, it weighs us down
With the curse of an iron rod;
And ‘iron rods’ we carry
To kill the sons of God.

The cranebill’s starry floweret
Is scattered o’er the plain;
Its pale magenta blossoms
We trample in our pain,
And dully long for peace, and love
And our dear homes again.

With iron heels we tread them down,
We tread them in the sand;
We crush their beauty ’neath our feet
Too tired to understand
The ugly ruthless thing we do.
Now war is on the land.

The golden gorse, across the heath
Is a mass of yellow flame;
Its unconsuming fires praise
The Sun God’s glorious name.
But war it burns things black and dead,
And fills men’s hearts with shame.

And scarlet is the pimpernel
And bright the poppy’s red
But brighter still is the blood we’ll spill
Ere we ourselves are dead:
No flower so rich, in the deep dug ditch,
As the blood our guns may shed.

The grass is worn with the ceaseless tread
Of our marching to and fro,
And where we drill on the mossy hill
Great bare patches show;
For ’neath the heel of the War God’s foot
No fair thing may grow. 

But time revenges the patient weak
Whom the Ruthless crush and kill,
And delicate things that droop and die,
Like the flowers on the grassy hill,
Will bloom again on another plain
Fairer and sweeter still.

The barren stretch of Flander’s plains
Is desolate and bare,
And the shriek of shell, and stench and smell
Float on the morning air
And splintered stumps are all that speak
Of what once blossomed there.

Yet the flowers our feet have trodden down
Will be born again,
And rich and fine, on Flander’s fields,
Will dance in the gentle rain
Will dance on the dead that feed their roots
The countless, ghastly slain.

The little flowers we’ve trodden down
Will scent each ugly grave,
Will hide the ghastly torn limbs
O the coward and the brave
And gaily smile at the morning sun,
O’er the foolish and the knave.

Oh, the river runs o’er Barnham’s plains
This where our horses drink –
And a thousand fair and charming things
Blossom on its brink.
But we have trod them in the mud
Nor paused to praise or think.

The pinkish purple loose-strife
Bows on the river’s edge,
Forget-me-not and orchids,
The flowering rush and sedge
While briar rose and bryony
Entangle in the hedge.

And crowsfoot gleams on the river,
Like snowflakes in the sun
And sways in the moving waters
That over the pebbles run.
But we cannot pause for such a thing,
Who’re crossing the stream with a gun.

But the rivers which flow in Flanders
Are rivers of blood methinks
And will, one day, colour the roses
Whose roots from that soil drink,
And a thousand flowers will blossom
Where a corpse now rots and stinks.

And we who train at Thetford
Parade on Barnham Hill
And prod coarse sack with bayonets
To gain the skill to kill
To disembowel and mutilate
Men who are brothers still.

While all around is beauty
And overhead the sky,
Where fleecy clouds in freedom float
Over the men that die;
And nature laughs at our folly
As we pass her treasures by.

With a garland of peaceful beauty
She tempts us to lay down our arms;
With a myriad of fearless blossoms
She mocks at our childish alarms,
With a tangle of wonderful flowerets
She seeks to ensnare us with charms.

Oh, he who sees God in a daisy,
Can see more clearly in man,
The light of the Glorious Eternal
That through all Living Things ran,
When the wheels of time first started,
And the Song of Life began.

Walter E. Spradbery (1915)

Arthur Royce Bradbury (1892 - 1977) – British artist

Born on the 17th September 1892 in Preston, Lancashire, UK, Arthur specialised in painting portraits, landscapes and seascapes in oil, watercolour and pastel. He was an accomplished etcher and taught art at the Pembroke Lodge School and Wimborne Grammar School. He studied at the St. John’s Wood School of Art before being accepted at the Royal Academy Schools. In 1913 he lived in Bournemouth, then Parkstone, Dorset in 1915, before moving to Poole.

Arthur trained as a cadet with the Merchant Navy, serving on the West African trade route, before taking up art. It was then that he made several voyages on the barquentine ‘Waterwitch’ carrying coal and china clay from Cornish ports. The ‘Waterwitch’ was the last trading square rigger in British service at that time.

He became an Associate of the Royal West of England Academy and exhibited there and elsewhere, mainly portraits. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1913 - a work entitled ‘Iris’ - and went on to exhibit fourteen works there. Examples of his work may be seen at the Liverpool and Brighton Public Art Galleries.

Arthur served during The First World War as a Second Lieutenant with the 3rd Bn. Dorsetshire Regiment (London Gazette, 26 July 1915) and was then attached to the Dorset Regiment and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers.

On 27th July 1924, Arthur married Evelyn Ethel Mate 27th July 1924 and the couple lived in Poole, Dorset.  Arthur died in 1977.

Victoria Monkhouse (1885 – 1970) - British Artist and illustrator, possibly best remembered for her illustrations of women working on the Home Front in Britain during the First World War.

Louisa Victoria Monkhouse was born on 24th May 1885 in Barton, Chesterton, Cambridgeshire
Her parents were Alfred William Monkhouse, an Anglican Church Minister, and his wife, Mary Eliza Monkhouse, nee Stuart, who was from Canada.   Louisa had the following siblings:  Mary Violet, b. 1877, Alf Cyril Delopope, b. 1878, Mabel Agnes, b., 1879, Ellen Janet, b. 1882.

Victoria was educated at Cambridge University where, alongside her studies, she created a series of caricatures of university academics, which the “Cambridge University Magazine” published during 1907.

During the First World War the sisters all helped the war effort - Mary Violet worked as a Red Cross Nurse, Mabel Agnes, worked in Ordnance in Coventry, Ellen Janet was a VAD  nurse and Victoria worked as a canteen worker.

Following the establishment of the Imperial War Museum (IWM) in London during the First World War, a decision was made to record the contribution women were making to the war effort.  Writer and explorer Agnes Conway, daughter of the first honorary Director-General of the IWM, was appointed to organise and lead the Museum's newly created Women's Work Sub-Committee.  Agnes contacted Victoria Monkhouse and commissioned her to produce a series of sketches and watercolours showing women working in the jobs left vacant by men who were serving in the forces. Victoria produced a series of paintings, showing women working as bus conductresses, drivers, window cleaners and in a wide variety of other exclusively male roles.

After the War, Victoria exhibited her work in various exhibitions during the 1920s.
In 1939 Victoria lived with her sisters – Mary Violet, who was also an artist, Mabel Agnes and Ellen Janet - in Eton, Buckinghamshire.  Victoria died in 1970.