An exhibition at the Estorick Collection in London offers a rare glimpse of Britain’s First World War Italian campaign, writes CN Editor Peter Alhadeff.
‘War in the Sunshine’ at the Estorick Collection in Islington features 75 works by the artist Sydney Carline, and photographers Ernest Brooks and William Brunell, specially loaned from the Imperial War Museum.
For Sydney Carline, official war artist and pilot, the Italian front provided an unrivalled opportunity to show British planes in action against the spectacular backdrop of the Alps.
In particular, he was instructed to record the deeds of Britain’s newly-formed Royal Air Force, using an aircraft set aside for his purposes.
Carline’s scenes of Sopwith Camels wheeling in the skies above Europe’s highest mountain range are among the most evocative works in a room entirely devoted to his paintings and drawings.
Carline would typically make simple sketches in charcoal or pencil while airborne, then work them up in watercolour or pastel soon after landing.
He did not gloss over the bloody business of war in his pictures of Austro-Hungarian troops being strafed on the ground, or British planes dodging distinctive black puffs of anti-aircaft fire over the Piave.
Displayed separately is a collection of photographs by the prolific Ernest Brooks, best known for his pictures of the battlefields of France and Flanders, and apparently a reluctant arrival on the Italian front.
According to the exhibition notes, the ex-soldier came to Italy in November 1917 ‘with a low opinion of its people and especially of its military. His perceptions became even more negative as time passed’.
Even so, Brooks does join William Brunell in composing some charming studies of Italian civilians, albeit he’s back on more familiar territory with a trio of the Allied military commanders, Sir Frederick Lambert, Armando Diaz and Jean Graziani.
Britain and France dispatched an expeditionary force to Italy in October 1917, fearing their ally would collapse after being crushed by the Central Powers at the Battle of Caporetto.
In reality, the ‘War in the Sunshine’ was as fierce and unpleasant as any other (for Italians, the alpine fighting of 1915-18 is remembered as ‘La Guerra Blanca’ – the White War), and this exhibition casts some of Italy’s best-loved historic cities and landscapes in a very different light.
‘War in the Sunshine: The British in Italy 1917-18’ is at the Estorick Collection, 39a Canonbury Square, London N1 2AN until 19 March 2017.