“The Great War in Portraits” – National Portrait Gallery

   

This free exhibition is about the World War One (1914 -1918), depicted through painted, filmed and photographic portraits. As I was looking around at the exhibition, I got a sense of how many people were involved.  One of the images that caught my eye was the college of 40 different faces from soldiers to nurses.  This for me gave a more personal meaning to exhibition. Each portrait as good as the other, but as collection are very great pieces of photography.

The layout of the exhibition was anti-clockwise, and divided into section:

1. Torso in Metal from the rock drill, bronze 1913-14,

2. Royalty and the assassin

3. Leaders and followers

4. The valiant and the dammed

5. Fact & Fiction – The Battle of the Somme in film 

My favourite part of the exhibition were section 3, William Orpen charcoal of “Royal Irish Fusiliers: 'Just come from the Chemical Works, Roeux: 21st May 1917” because there weren’t a lot of charcoal images and thought that use of tone and contrast was really excellent.

Also, I think that highlight was section 5, the film of The Battle of the Somme, which showed soldiers in the war going about their every day business. It was really interesting seeing that being there is not much footage of World War One. 

Overall, I thought that this gallery exhibition was really useful. I learn a lot about the main people who were involved in The Great War. I would recommend this exhibition to anyone who interested in history, patriotic or loves media of all kinds.

Bibliography 

Museum Visit
Moorhouse, Paul, (The Great War in Portraits) The National Portrait Gallery, (01/03/2014).

Images

Poster of Gallery exhibition - http://www.npg.org.uk -  Accessed on 06/02/14