Despite the fact that Augustus John had undertaken work on a huge mural for the Canadian War Memorial Fund and painters like D Y Cameron and James Kerr-Lawson had been sent to the front as Honorary Majors, it was Brangywn who was invited to design a lunette depicting Canada’s war record for Winnipeg’s New Parliament Building designed by Frank Worthington Simon, President of the RIBA, England. The lunette, 22ft above floor level, is on one side of the rotunda at the top of a central staircase, flanked by Corinthian columns, and lit by diffused light from stippled glass in the eye of the dome above.
The diary written by Brangwyn’s assistant Frank Alford provides useful and sometimes amusing insights into the progress of the work. Apart from numerous studies the preliminary work was merely a rough cartoon on an imperial sized sheet of grey lining paper. Brangwyn couldn’t decide initially whether to use oil or tempera and finally decided on the latter, but having purchased suitable canvas opted for oils, Alford noting that ‘the ground consequently will let the oil of the white lead and gold size fixing through to the front of the canvas when the ground has not been covered’.
On 3 January 1921 the canvas was lowered so that Brangwyn could work on the upper sections which had initially been laid in by Alford and on the 15 and 16 January the canvas was taken down from scaffolding and a thick jelly size was applied to the back by Alford and Brooks (the local builder and decorator employed by Brangwyn). The panel was declared completed on 20 January and was inspected two days later by Frank Simon who became concerned that the dimensions were not correct.
The problem must have been overcome because on 29 January Alford insured the panel for £2,000 with De Fall of London Wall and arranged for collection and transit with the Dominion Express Company. For this purpose the canvas was laid face down and rolled in brown paper round a nine inch roller which was then covered in thin zinc sheeting soldered at the joints to make it waterproof and placed in a wooden box which was duly collected on 1 February. On 22 March 1921 Brangwyn received news that the canvas had arrived in Winnipeg and had been fixed. He was paid $10,000.
Brangwyn’s own description of his work was printed in the Manitoba Free Press, 23 April 1920:
‘In the foreground there is a processional group of soldiers representing life at the front. On the left are men digging trenches and one is playing an accordian. In the centre is a group of wounded going to the dressing station, and at the right are men feeding from a kettle of soup. In the background a big siege gun is being loaded in a ruined wood, with a shattered building in the background. The colour treatment is light rather than gay, with sunny effect in gold and blue to give the full decorative value. The picture tells the story without any stress on war’s horrors.’
The ruined building may represent the ‘shell-torn city of Ypres’ as heralded by the Manitoba Free Press; the Canadian forces were involved in the second battle of Ypres in February 1915. Brangwyn more mundanely observed that ‘the first shot from the gun would have destroyed the building and that decorative purposes alone kept it standing’.
In 1925 Thomas W Leslie wrote a guidebook and suggested that the roadside shrine with the Madonna and Child symbolized ‘The Faith of the Soldiers’; the accordion player represented ‘The Spirit of the Soldiers’; the French peasant with spade illustrated ‘how war disorganizes peaceful pursuits’; and the men eating and drinking indicated the ‘commissariat side of the army’.
But Brangwyn didn’t DO symbolism – it just indicates how people interpret works.
Studies on this website: Soldier offering drink to comrade and Two wounded soldiers and Wounded soldier