Byam Shaw: In the Years of the War, 1914

"The Flag" by Byam Shaw

"Artists were not behind in joining the war effort [WWI], where their age allowed, and when it did not, they made ready for what the future might bring. The young men at our art school were soon in Kitchener's Army and, presently, most of the girls were on munitions or working on the land. Shaw and I joined the United Arts Rifles, a training corps whose headquarters were at that time the basement of the Royal Academy, and whose drill ground was the quadrangle.

It happened one evening at bayonet exercise that Byam and I were together attacking the defenders of the steps to the Academy, literally fighting for admittance - just one of the little ironies of life he appreciated. Later on Shaw thought he would be more use as a special constable, and so resigned. His work and thought were all for the War. He got busy with war cartoons and his series illustrate both his attitude and the progress of the War. They appeared in 'The Evening Stand', 'The Sunday Times', 'Daily Express', 'The Cartoon', 'The Daily Chronicle', 'The Daily Call', and 'The Dump'. 

Starting with his poster for the London Rifle Brigade, he shows a young man getting into his jacket after medical inspection, his eyes bright and content, a sergeant opening the door, which reveals the battlefield of Flanders.When recruiting flagged, he drew a bugle at the top of a page and, on the one side, armed Britannia, on the other, the shirker, a well-to-do in dressing gown with cigarette and bath sponge. Stern Britannia, pointing to the bugle, says: 'Did you not hear me call you before?' In another Britannia, in helmet and breastplate, and draped in the Union Jack, fondles her four lion cubs: 'My splendid ones, well done'; and so, with easily recognized allegory, he made his points.

He also designed a memorial brass to Geoffrey Charles Shakerley, 1st Battalion King's Royal Rifles; made drawings for the Union Jack Club; designed a cover in aid of the 'Children's League of Pity', and another for the Royal Horticultural Society's Red Cross Sale.He was commissioned to paint one of the Canadian War Memorial pictures, his subject being 'The Flag', and he painted it clasped in the arms of a dead soldier who lies on the base of a monument between lion's paws. Around this are grouped women and children and old men in attitudes of sorrow, despair, appeal, hope, and wistfulness."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Art & Life of Byam Shaw" by Rex Vicat Cole.)