George Lambert's work in Gallipoli and Palestine is part of our psyche, writes John Stapleton
THERE are the bright colours of harsh Middle Eastern deserts, riderless horses, empty white tents, and the famous beaches of Gallipoli, where to this day the hills speak of the thousands who died so pointlessly. Somehow, you can still feel the heat and the flies of that long ago war.
The Australian War Memorial has a new exhibition of works by one of Australia's earliest official war artists, titled George Lambert: Gallipoli and Palestinian Landscapes. The 80 paintings on display, chosen from the memorial's 32,000-piece collection, have rarely been seen by the public and never as part of a single exhibition.
On June 29, a symposium on Lambert's life and work will be held at the War Memorial.
During World War I, 16 Australian artists were appointed to travel to the battlefields where their countrymen fought and died. However, Lambert was the only artist sent to Palestine to cover that campaign. He was also the only official war artist at Gallipoli in 1919: the war had made earlier access impossible.
Lambert, who was sent to Gallipoli as part of the Australian Historical Mission, described the landscape as beautiful but sad. On leaving, Lambert told his wife: "I cannot tell you how pleased I am at getting clear of this graveyard, beautiful as it is."
Vietnam was often described as the world's first televised war and the technology for instantaneous communication of battle has been progressing ever since. The daily death tolls and the news footage of the chaos in Iraq are a significant factor in escalating opposition to the conflict.
Back in the early 20th century, the moving portraits and landscapes by Lambert had a similar effect: they imprinted a far- off conflict on the national psyche.
They were described by official war historian Charles Bean as "brilliant little flashes, vivid with life".
Janda Gooding, senior curator at the War Memorial, says the paintings have a searing, powerful quality: their immediacy and honesty derives from the fact that they were painted on the spot.
"Lambert's job in Gallipoli was to make studies and to interpret the landscape so that he could work on the very large commissioned paintings that the War Memorial has of Gallipoli," she says.
"It was a huge thing in the Australian experience of war. From only a few weeks after the event people were becoming familiar with the names and the places: what the Sphinx and the Nek were, where Australians died."
Lambert's work details the settings, the atmosphere and the topography of battle sites such as Anzac Cove and Romani, Beersheba and Baradi Gorge. His guides were often soldiers who had experienced fighting at first hand. The pieces produced in Palestine portray desert battlefields, rocky outcrops and troopers on duty, or with their horses. The scenes are reminiscent of outback Australia, which Lambert knew well from his younger days.
"You see in his work fabulous little jewels of vivid colour and bright light, these very open desert landscapes, quite similar to what he would have known growing up in rural NSW," Gooding says.
Lambert was a man of many parts, greatly admired by the soldiers he painted because he was a knockabout bloke who adapted well to the harsh conditions, she adds.
"He felt very comfortable there. He was an expert horseman and he won a great deal of respect from the soldiers because of his bush skills and horsemanship."
War Memorial director Steve Gower says the exhibition provides a unique insight into two very different landscapes that moulded the experience of Australians in World War: "The landscapes Lambert created of Gallipoli very much helped to shape public perceptions of that failed campaign; and those of Palestine capture the beauty and intensity of colour of the landscape over which the Light Horse units roamed."
Gooding says the War Memorial had always chosen highly regarded practitioners to assume the official post of war artist. "Lambert was one of the best Australian artists at the time, and one of the most important we have ever appointed," she notes. "He was highly regarded in both Australia and Britain."
When he was appointed, Lambert was better known as a portrait painter, but his love of landscape is clear in his evocative portrayals of the desert, the white tents and spindly palm trees against the bleached sands of the Middle East. He took his role very seriously and considered painting his contribution to the war effort.
Gooding says the tradition of having official war artists continues to this day. The first Australian war painter was Will Dyson, who had a reputation as a great cartoonist from his years at The Bulletin. Two artists, Charles Green and Lyndell Brown, have just returned from Iraq and Afghanistan, along with official photographer Sean Hobbs.
"They are doing exactly the same work Lambert did almost 100 years ago, recording what it is like to be there for the servicemen and women, the landscapes, and especially the emotional landscape of what it feels like," she says. "The role of a war artist is not just to capture the topography of a place, but the feeling of a place: what it was like for the Light Horsemen in 1917 to charge across theplains at the Beersheba."
Lambert was born in St Petersburg, in Russia, in 1873 and arrived in Australia during his early teens. While he later established his reputation in the salons of London and Paris, it was his work as a war artist that brought him to the attention of the Australian public.
He produced more than 500 paintings and drawings for the War Memorial during two official appointments and with some post-war commissions. His painting Anzac, the landing 1915, continuously on display since 1922 and widely reproduced, is regarded as one ofthe most important paintings in the memorial's collection.
The present exhibition, which took five years to organise, includes a group of small oil sketches on wood panels rapidly executed on the spot, as well as some painted on cigar box lids. They are spontaneous, intimate oil studies, with bright blues and reds amid the browns and greens of the landscape, often described as gem-like and in marked contrast to his better known and highly detailed battle paintings, which often took up to two years to complete.
The War Memorial has established a blog site for those who wish to discuss or contribute to the story of Lambert:
blog.awm.gov.au/Lambert/
George Lambert: Gallipoli and Palestine Landscapes is at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, until July 29, then touring nationally.
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