My life with pictures (part 1)

   Art wasn't really on my radar as I grew up in working class Brixton, South London during the mid 1960's. The flat my family and I lived in had four old framed prints on our living room wall. I think they were given to my dad by one of his customers. I don't remember any pictures on the walls of my first school and Sculpture was something big black and municipal. A Field Marshal on a horse or a Politician towering above me as we drove through central London on our way to visit family or friends. That was the sum of my exposure to the world of art. It wasn't part of my world or seemingly those around me. It just wasn't meant for us.
   Then one day my friend Frank Kelly (where are you now? I do hope you're happy) and I walked the three or four miles from where we lived to the Imperial War Museum. Situated slightly anonymously behind Waterloo Station. It was one of several huge adventures two ten year old Brixton boys undertook during their school holidays back then. Wearing shorts and strippy tee shirts.The unofficial uniform of all ten year olds in 60's Britain. We set off.
   The IWM was stuffed with old guns, huge shells, uniforms, planes hanging from ceilings, bits of tanks, photos of soldiers and lots more. Along with football and sweets it's what little boys back then lived for. Not thirty feet from the entrance hung high up on a wall was a painting that changed me. It was huge. Over six metres long and two and a bit tall. That's over 20 foot long and almost eight high in old money. The subject is tragic. Which wasn't lost on the two ten year olds staring up at it. The IWM was all those years ago primarily there to show the Nation's  military successes but here was a picture showing it's tragic failure. That war repeats what it purports to end. Human suffering.

   It's title is "Gassed" painted by the Anglo American Artist John Singer Sargent. Who spent much of his career painting the rich and wealthy of Europe. As the title suggests, it shows the aftermath of a gas attack and given that the wind doesn't favour either Army. You were just as likely to be gassed by your side as the enemy. Sargent was commissioned by the British War Memorials Committee in 1918 as the war was coming to its close. To produce a work for the "Hall of Remembrance."  Although 62 years old. He travelled to the Western Front to find the inspiration for his epic work. He got word one afternoon, of a good many gas cases at a field dressing station. He went there drew pencil sketches and made notes. This ultimately lead to the painting above. Finished in 1919.

   I knew none of this then but what I did learn that day was how a painting can affect me and tell me so much in just the blink of an eye.

  If by any chance you happen to read this and live near Kansas City, Missouri. The painting is there on loan. At the "National World War One Museum" till June. Go see it and tell me what you think.

   

   Onwards, upwards and careering towards a picture full fulfillment :)))