Prints from The Gladys Engel Lang and Kurt Lang Collection at the Smith College Museum of Art
The First World War
Percy John Delf Smith, English (1882-1948). Death Marches from the series Dance of Death, 1914-1918. Drypoint and etching printed in black on medium weight, slightly textured, white paper. The Gladys Engel Lang and Kurt Lang Collection. Promised gift. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC TR 7604.774.
Charles Huard, French (1874-1965). French Troops in a French Village, ca. 1915. Etching printed in black on medium weight, moderately textured, cream colored paper. The Gladys Engel Lang and Kurt Lang Collection. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 2014:32-626.
Percy John Delf Smith, English (1882-1948). Death Waits from the series Dance of Death, 1914-1918. Etching printed in black on medium weight, moderately textured, cream colored paper. The Gladys Engel Lang and Kurt Lang Collection. Promised gift. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC TR 7604.773.
Lester George Hornby, American (1882-1956). The P.C.’s at Bantheville, 1918. Etching printed in black on medium weight, slightly textured, white paper. The Gladys Engel Lang and Kurt Lang Collection. Promised gift. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 2014:32-471.
Percy John Delf Smith, English (1882-1948). Death Ponders from the series Dance of Death, 1914-1918. Drypoint and etching printed in black on medium weight, moderately textured, cream colored paper. The Gladys Engel Lang and Kurt Lang Collection. Promised gift. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC TR 7604.775.
Raoul Varin, French (1865-1943). Rheims – World War I, ca. 1917. Etching printed in black on medium thick, slightly textured, beige paper. The Gladys Engel Lang and Kurt Lang Collection. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 2014:32-628.
Percy John Delf Smith, English (1882-1948). Death Intoxicates from the series Dance of Death, 1914-1918. Drypoint and etching printed in black on thick, moderately textured, white paper. The Gladys Engel Lang and Kurt Lang Collection. Promised gift. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC TR 7604.778.
Percy John Delf Smith, English (1882-1948). Death Refuses from the series Dance of Death, 1914-1918. Drypoint and etching printed in black on medium weight, moderately textured, white paper. The Gladys Engel Lang and Kurt Lang Collection. Promised gift. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC TR 7604.776.
Maria Caspar-Filser, German (1878-1968). March Through a Burning Village, 1914. Lithograph printed in black with handcoloring on medium thick, smooth, tan paper. The Gladys Engel Lang and Kurt Lang Collection. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC 2014:32-18.
Percy John Delf Smith, English (1882-1948). Death Forbids from the series Dance of Death, 1914-1918. Drypoint and etching printed in black on paper. The Gladys Engel Lang and Kurt Lang Collection. Promised gift. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC TR 7604.777.
William Rothenstein, British (1872-1945). Untitled, n.d.. Etching printed in black on medium weight, moderately textured, cream colored paper. The Gladys Engel Lang and Kurt Lang Collection. Promised gift. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC TR 7604.770.
Percy John Delf Smith, English (1882-1948). Death Awed from the series Dance of Death, 1914-1918. Etching printed in black on medium weight, moderately textured, cream-colored paper. The Gladys Engel Lang and Kurt Lang Collection. Promised gift. Photography by Petegorsky/Gipe. SC TR 7604.772.
It goes without saying that the events of the First World War radically altered not only the worldviews but the artistic output of those who witnessed it, be it from the front lines or the home front. In his introduction to his 1919 volume Art and the Great War, Albert Eugene Gallatin notes that the First World War was the first in which governments commissioned “war artists” to illustrate the conflict, such as Charles Huard for the French government. Others, like Percy John Delf Smith, served in the trenches. This experience very likely inspired the fantastical, psychological imagery of his Dance of Death series, completed during the span of the war.1
The prints in this gallery give the viewer varying perspectives of the war, from the banality and boredom of trench warfare to disturbing and striking images of the horrors of battle. And even as he may shy away from works like Smith’s, Gallatin accurately notes that “[w]ar pictures of to-day [sic] have almost no roots in the past; the pictorial recorder of modern warfare has no sign-posts to guide him. For one thing, for the first time landscape formed an important feature of the war picture”2—something that a gallery of depictions of trench outposts, a bombed-out French city, wounded and dead soldiers stacked in the muck of a trench, or even a desolate stand of trees would confirm. While the realism of most of the prints in this gallery may have more to do with when and where they were made, the horrors of war needed little in the way of artistic liberty or flourish to be truly shocking.
