Muirhead Bone
Scottish, 1876-1953
Muirhead Bone was born in Glasgow. He qualified as an architect, before turning to art and studying at the Glasgow School of Art. He began printmaking in 1898, and although his first known print was a lithograph, he is better known for his etchings and drypoints. His subject matter was principally related to landscapes and architecture, which included urban construction and demolition sites, Gothic cathedrals and Norman buildings. During the World War I, Charles Masterman, head of the British War Propaganda Bureau, appointed Bone as Britain's first official war artist in May 1916. Bone had lobbied hard for the establishment of an Official War Artists scheme and in June 1916 he was sent to France with an honorary rank. Although thirty-eight years old at the outbreak of war, Bone was spared from certain enlistment by his appointment. Bone's small, black and white drawings, and their realistic intensity, reproduced well in the government-funded publications of the day. Commissioned as an honorary Second Lieutenant, Bone served as a war artist with the Allied forces on the Western Front and also with the Royal Navy for a time. During the Battle of the Somme and produced 150 drawings of the war before returning to England in October 1916. Over the next few months Bone returned to his earlier subject matter, drawing pictures of shipyards and battleships. He visited France again in 1917 where he took particular interest depicting architectural ruins.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, Muirhead Bone was appointed a member of the War Artists' Advisory Committee and also became a full-time salaried artist to the Ministry of Information specialising in Admiralty subjects. He produced scenes of coastal installations, evacuated troops and portraits of officers.
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