You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Frederick Arthur Farrell (1882-1935) came from a distinguished Glasgow family. He initially studied civil engineering, and as an artist was self-taught, although he owes a debt to the advice and example of Muirhead Bone. By the outbreak of World War I he was developing a reputation as an up-and-coming etcher and watercolourist of portraits and topographical subjects. He enlisted as a sapper, or military engineer, with the Royal Engineers Railway Troops Depot but was discharged from the Army due to ill health. In December 1916, Farrell returned to the Front as a war artist, attached for three weeks to the 15th, 16th and 17th Highland Light Infantry in Flanders. In November 1917 he was in Fran...
As a former soldier, Farrell's sketches and watercolours of the Front powerfully offer a landscape filtered through personal experience and emotion. Battle scenes and strategic deliberations are reconstructed, informed by first-hand accounts. Many include portraits of actual soldiers. There are poignant images of graves, devastated landscapes and destroyed churches. However, there are also scenes of reconstruction and renewed activity amid the desolation. He is at his most dynamic in his drawings of the munitions factories which are full of noise, light and movement. In these there is a sense of joy and energy in industry and machinery, in patterning and design. The commission Farrell received from the Corporation of Glasgow to produce 50 drawings of the front line and munitions factories in the city to record the war for posterity was extraordinary.
None
None
None