Before photography became fast, portable and cheap, the world relied on artists to explain war.

Memorial Day began after the Civil War, when whole communities decorated the graves of fallen soldiers. Today, we see it more as the first holiday of summer. Partly, I think, this reflects the relative peacefulness of the past half-century.

The scale of American deaths in earlier wars beggars the imagination: Civil War, ~655,000 deaths. World War I, 116,516 deaths. World War II, 405,399 deaths. Korean War, ~36,500 deaths, Vietnam: 58,220 deaths

In contrast, the last fifty years of American military engagement has resulted in fewer than 10,000 combat deaths. That is not to diminish those losses; every one of those families has experienced personal holocaust. But perhaps it explains why we as a nation don’t see Memorial Day in the same way as our ancestors.

Wartime artists

Before photography became fast, portable and cheap, the world relied on artists to explain war. The efficiency of modern killing developed in step with the development of modern publishing, and therefore the age of illustration.

War artists were never fringe observers. They were journalists, historians, propagandists, and eyewitnesses. Long before television correspondents crouched behind sandbags, illustrators (and writers like Ernie Pyle) crouched in mud, smoke, blood and cannon-fire, notebooks on their knees.

Their work required speed, courage and ruthless editing. Their ability to simplify complex scenes into strong patterns made their work readable in newspapers and magazines.

The American Civil War created enormous demand for battlefield illustration. Readers wanted immediacy, and illustrators delivered it. While some artists romanticized combat, most painted the mud, exhaustion and grief with brutal honesty.

Today, we have endless photographs, and there are some with the emotional resonance of war drawings—Joe Rosenthal’s Iwo Jima picture of 1945, the Associated Press’ napalm picture of 1975 and the 2001 World Trade Center attack among them. But cameras only became fast enough to take action shots in the middle of the 20^th century. With AI image manipulation we now don’t believe anything we see. 75 years of documentary photography seems very brief compared to the history of sketchbook journalism.

There have been hundreds and hundreds of war artists. Following is a partial list. Studying them is important not just for what they said, but for how the pressures of visual journalism refined their drawing and painting skills.

Francisco Goya became a bitter critic of war and its aftermath from the  Peninsular War of 1808–1814. His Disasters of War are a series of 82 prints chronicling the ways war harms the people living through it. It’s a good reminder to pray for Ukraine, Iran, and others living through war.

Winslow Homer worked as a battlefield illustrator for Harper’s Weekly, producing unsentimental scenes of soldiers’ daily lives, camps, marches and combat aftermath. Alfred Waud was more unsparing and immediate than Homer; he often drew while under fire. We’ve so romanticized the work of Frederic Remington, that we lose sight of his work as an artist-correspondent in Cuba and the American west. Harvey Dunn was one of the great artists of WW1’s American Expeditionary Force. His brutal, emotional battlefield scenes carry enormous force and psychological weight.

The Canadian Group of Seven painters are disproportionally represented in WW1 painting. AY Jackson enlisted in the Canadian Infantry in 1915. After being wounded in 1917, he documented the Western Front. Frederick Varley served as an official war artist for the Canadian War Records, focusing heavily on the raw emotional toll of war. Arthur Lismer primarily painted the home front, including his great portraits of dazzle-painted ships. And Lawren Harris, who was rich enough to buy his way out, enlisted in 1916 and served until he suffered a nervous breakdown.

There are too many British war artists to list. Paul Nash painted haunting, surrealist landscapes of the Western Front in WWI and aerial combat in WWII, emphasizing the clash of man versus machine. Ex-pat American John Singer Sargent was famous for his massive 1918 painting Gassed, which captures the devastating human cost of a mustard gas attack. CRW Nevinson used cubism and futurism to depict the raw, mechanized brutality of modern warfare. Sir Stanley Spencer produced deeply personal and spiritual interpretations of military life, particularly his murals at Sandham Memorial Chapel. Henry Moore did poignant, sculptural sketches of civilians sheltering in the London Underground during the Blitz. And Laura Knight captured the contributions of women, notably painting women working in munitions factories and military operations. 

And of course, there’s Käthe Kollwitz, who probably survived the Nazis because she was too famous to send to the gas chambers.

Then there were the American artists embedded with our troops during WW2. Mitchell Jamieson was in the first wave of assault boats that landed during the invasion of Sicily.Tom Lea produced Pacific Theater images including exhausted Marines and battlefield casualties rendered with stark humanity. Howard Brodie covered World War II, Korea, and Vietnam with fast, expressive drawings done near combat zones.

It’s a very incomplete list, but it’s a start. Take a few minutes and remember our troops this Memorial Day.

Registration is now open for workshops in 2026! Reserve your spot:

• Advanced Plein Air Painting | Rockport, ME, July 13-17, 2026
• Sea & Sky | Acadia National Park, ME, August 2–7, 2026
• Find your Authentic Voice in Plein Air | Berkshires, MA, August 10-14, 2026
• New! Color Clinic 2026 | Rockport, ME, October 3-4, 2026
• New! Composition Week 2026 | Rockport, ME, October 5-9, 2026

Can’t commit to a full workshop? Work online at your own pace:

Seven Protocols for Successful Oil Painters

View Entire Post