Fairley, John The Armistice and the Aftermath. The Story in Art

The new book The Armistice and The Aftermath, The Story in Art, to be published in October, in time for the Centenary has extensive sections and significant paintings by North American artists, notably on the celebrations of the end of the Great War in Philadelphia, Toronto and New York ( where 'fake news ' of the day a week earlier had caused much premature carousing)There are large paintings of the huge crowds which gathered on the day itself, and also in the book, immensely affecting paintings by veterans of the war, which took years, even decades, to emerge, including works by the Harlem painter Horace Pippin.The American commander in France, George Pershing, also features in The Armistice and the Aftermath, including a painting by his mistress in Paris , Micheline Rosco, who many years later married him.

But not only the people celebrating in the streets (Joseph Sampson) and the victorious military (Augustus John) and politicians (William Oroen) were captured on canvas by the painters, but also the landscapes devastated by the war (Nash brothers), the war cripples (Heinrich Hoerle and Otto Dix), the heavy political legacy of a lost war (Otto Dix) or the commemoration of the millions of dead (R. W. Nevinso) were taken up by painters from all the countries involved in the First World War. This volume, richly illustrated with colourful, mostly full-page reproductions, gives an impression of the different ways in which painters depicted and processed the end of the First World War, the Armistice and the immediate post-war period in their works.