Gallipoli Boat
History : Art : English : Media Studies
Here is some information about the landing at Gallipoli from soldiers' letters and diaries at the time:
Painting: |
The Charge at The Nek on 7 August 1915 during the Gallipoli campaign is a well-known event — largely thanks to it being the climax of the film Gallipoli.
How does an artist represent war? As historical event, or as a message to the viewer? Use George Lambert's painting The Charge of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade at The Nek, 7 August 1915 and the information below and come to your own decision. 1. Look at the painting. Describe what you see.
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In Gallipoli Mission one of the official Australian historians of the war Charles Bean described Lambert's work on the painting:
'Descriptions are all too true,' wrote Lambert to his wife. 'Evidence grins coldly at us non-combatants ... from the point of view of the artist-historian The Nek is a wonderful setting to the tragedy'. The grim, rather beautiful landscape of distant ridge-tops surrounding this upland would be his background, his foreground the patch of level scrub with the line of charging men shown at the moment when, a few yards out from their trench, the full force of the Turk's rifle-fire struck them. As he says, he regarded himself in these works as the artist-historian, and he purposed in this picture to show the reaction of different types of Australian to this shocking experience. There was to be the larrikin; and the gently-bred type; the fair-haired Scandinavian Anzac; the lean countryman, and so on. You see them all in the picture which he painted some years afterwards in Australia from the landscape studies begun that morning on Plugge's Plateau and The Nek. [Charles Bean, Gallipoli Mission, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1948, p109] |
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| 2. Does the painting seem to be realistic, or created to convey a message? Explain your view. | |
| 3. Imagine that you had been asked to paint the event. Decide what feelings or messages you would like to get across to an audience, and sketch out or summarise how you would get these across. | |
