War at Sea

As we approach nearly 100 years since the end of the First World War, the newly refurbished Scottish National Portrait Gallery has undertaken an exhibition of John Lavery’s work as a naval war artist. Unfortunately these seem like the paintings of an artist that would rather be doing something else. As Lavery himself concedes, he could have been braver with his documentation of the conflict. A missed opportunity perhaps?

One cannot deny he has a certain facility with paint and the rendering of objects; take his Mine Laying Submarines, Harwich. But, as with this painting and many others in the show, this is a banal documentation of events almost akin to a still life. The artist’s palette is nothing short of dismal; in the main a terribly-bright green is used alongside a horrible blue.

A war artist should aim to communicate something of what he felt in the face of human conflict. He should help the viewer to understand what war is like. But Lavery consistently fails to capture anything beyond a mere record of events. His paintings of battleships stationed at Stromness are his weakest. Huge metal battleships, the pride of the British fleet, seem flimsy and floppy under Lavery’s brush. It is said that the artist required an ‘electrified suit’ to help keep out the northern Scottish cold whilst painting. His discomfort shines through in the execution of these prosaic pictures.

It was difficult for official war artists; dealing with censorship and the heavy workload passed down from the administration was not conducive to creativity. But there were great First World War paintings like Singer-Sargent’s magnificent Gassed or Nevinson’s nightmarish La Mitrailleuse. Lavery’s best works were of tennis matches and pretty young girls. He was clearly far more at ease in amongst the social elites than surrounded by bitterly cold seas of naval warfare.