The reality of World War I through an artist's eyes

Artists have attempted to capture the suffering and heroics of war since the Classical era, from Homer following the exploits of Achilles during the Trojan War in The Iliad to Mathew Brady's somber photographs of the men who fought in the Civil War.

The 20th century brought a new kind of conflict - global, industrialized - increasing the scope of the horror and the ability to inflict mass casualties. And with these wars came new attempts to document them. One involved a Philadelphia artist, who participated in the war begun 100 years ago this weekend, with the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo.

George Matthews Harding was a Philadelphia-born artist and architect. Before becoming a full-time artist and writer, Harding worked briefly as an architect while studying art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He contributed illustrations to the Saturday Evening Post and Harper's Monthly, taught briefly at the University of Pennsylvania and Moore College of Art, and established his own studio. In addition, Harding painted mural decorations for theaters, hotels, and other civic projects.

After the United States entered the First World War in April 1917, Harding began working as a poster illustrator for the Navy Recruiting Service. Not long after, he was one of eight people selected to serve in France as a combat artist with the American Expeditionary Forces.

Commissioned in February 1918, as captains in the Engineers Reserve Corps and given little military training - in one instance, training consisted of a five-minute briefing - combat artists were asked to produce original artwork depicting the wartime experiences of American soldiers. It was believed to be the first instance in the Army of men commissioned solely to produce art during wartime.

Despite the objective technologies of still photography and the motion film camera available by 1917, the American government desired to record the war subjectively.

In the eyes of Gen. John J. Pershing, commander of U.S. forces, who approved creation of the combat artist positions, these renditions would not only contribute to the visual historical record of the war, but would also prove amenable to propagandists' repurposing, especially for Liberty Bonds drives.

Arriving in France in the early summer of 1918, Harding and the other combat artists were provided credentials granting relatively free travel. Using whatever transportation they could find, the soldiers toured battlefields to record their impressions of what Harvey Dunn - a combat artist from South Dakota - called "the shock and loss and bitterness and blood of it."

These eight men created works in a variety of media for the Pictorial Publicity Division of the Committee on Public Information, the government's propaganda arm during the war. Stationed near the front at Neufchateau, the artists were officially directed not to participate in combat. Nevertheless, more than one ventured to trenches at the front to observe the fighting firsthand, including Harding.

Unlike the heraldic depictions of military glory prevalent in other government-sponsored visual arts, the majority of Harding's illustrations depict the common tasks delegated to enlisted men and "the grim reality of war." Shelled buildings, deserted villages, wandering refugees, casualty clearing stations; reality was emphasized over glorification of battle.

In fact, the combat artists' depictions were so faithful to enlisted men's experience that the Committee on Public Information deemed the initial output "lacking in sufficient drama," and began to doubt its use for propaganda. It was Pershing, ever the soldier's general, who expressed his "heartiest approval" of the combat artists' work and asserted that only men serving in France - not in Washington - could determine "sufficient drama."

Harding's illustrations record war as it was experienced, not as it was wistfully imagined. His illustrations depict men on "working parties," in which soldiers ventured into no-man's land to dig trenches and reconnoiter enemy movements; interacting with captured German soldiers, including their interrogation by Allied officers; and "mopping up," military argot for clearing recently gained areas of remaining enemy soldiers.

Harding also depicted soldiers sleeping in abandoned buildings, walking through plumes of deadly gas, and transporting matériel in preparation of an offensive. While the soldiers who make up Harding's subject matter are primarily Allied forces, these tasks were nearly universal to all armies serving in the Western Front that experienced the stalemate and attrition of trench warfare.

By the end of the war, Nov. 11, 1918, the artists had produced nearly 500 pieces of art. Harding returned to Philadelphia and later published a limited-run folio, The American Expeditionary Forces in Action, which contained lithographs of his illustrations. Two copies of the portfolio are available for viewing at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Harding reenlisted as a combat artist in the Marines, when he was in his 60s. He was sent to the Pacific theater, where he painted depictions of the Marines' island-hopping campaign, including their landing at Guam.