AWM Collection Record: ART03521

AWM image ART03521

ID Number: ART03521
Title: German 38 cm naval gun, captured near Chuignolles
Maker: Streeton, Arthur
Object type: Drawing
Place made: France: Picardie, Somme, Chuignolles
Date made: 1918
Physical description: watercolour with pencil
Measurements: 47.8 x 105 cm
Summary: Chuignolles; 1st Australian Division, 1st Infantry Brigade; German 38 cm naval gun, captured by 1st Brigade AIF, gun destroyed before capture; Western Front, Hindenburg Line; South of Cappy
Arthur Streeton is best known as one of the painters of the Heidelberg School in Melbourne in the late nineteenth century. His name is linked with Tom Roberts, Charles Conder, and Frederick McCubbin as responsible for developing in Australia an impressionist technique of painting, and depicting scenes that embraced the nationalistic concerns of the last two decades of the nineteenth century. During his lifetime he was acknowledged as the finest painter of the Australian landscape; he was the first Australian painter to be honoured by a retrospective exhibition in his own lifetime; and only the second to be knighted.

In 1918 while based in London, he was appointed by the Australian War Memorial as an official war artist and travelled to France to record the involvement of Australians in the battles taking place along the Somme River. During the period of his employment he produced ten paintings and eighty-six drawings that are held by the Memorial. These were all executed in the years 1918 and 1919. The Memorial later purchased his HMS Renown, Sydney Harbour painted in 1922, and commissioned several large paintings of significant wartime subjects.
Copyright: AWM copyright
Related subject: Artillery; Explosions and bursts; War damage
Related unit: 1st Australian Imperial Force
Related place: France; France: Picardie, Somme
Related conflict: First World War, 1914-1918

Last-Modified: Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:16:54 GMT

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