The Nickle Galleries is set to bring a rare exhibition of the works of Sir Alfred Munnings to Western Canada, with Munnings – The War Years, which connects the celebrated painter’s 1918 works with the present day Canadian military.

On display will be 41 paintings that were commissioned by Lord Beaverbrook to record the activities of the Canadian Calvary Brigade—including the Lord Strathcona’s Horse (LdSH)—and the Canadian Forestry Corps as part of the Canadian War Memorials Fund.

Alongside those paintings are artifacts and a collection of other works on loan from the LdSH, the Military Museums, and the Glenbow Museum.

Michele Hardy, Curatorial Director for the Nickle Galleries, said that Munnings – The War Years, although a departure from the usual Nickle Galleries exhibition, was an important one for Calgarians.

“We are always wanting to reach further, to reach more broadly, to connect with fields of endeavour, fields of study, on campus, off campus, to connect with the military museums, with whom we have a very long-standing relationship,” she said.

“It’s not the kind of work or the time period that we would ordinarily feature. However, the opportunity to show this work was too good to pass up.”

Hardy said the works would be of interest to students and for the public to understand how Munnings documented the final year of the war.

“There were soldiers involved in forestry. There were soldiers involved in the horses. There were soldiers working both on the front line, engaged in battle in the trenches, as it were, but there were also people required behind the scenes to support the war efforts. That’s really what Munnings was documenting,” she said.

“Just a quick look around at some of the paintings, there was felt beauty in the war, but there were these moments of purpose and nobility that Munnings captured with such skill.”

An example of that was the famous painting Charge of Flowerdew’s Squadron, which Munnings painted as a scene with the LdSH and Fort Garry Horse in the Battle of Moreuil Wood.

Contrasted against the pastoral representation of the charge are artifacts from Albertan soldiers like John James Willoughby, who was killed in the battle charging against a German machine gun squad, and whose body was not recovered until 1986 by a French farmer.

Connecting past conflict to the contemporary

Curatorial Coordinator of the Founders’ Gallery at the Military Museums, Dick Averns, said that part of the importance of the show was to provide contextual differences between Munnings’ paintings and other representations of the war.

“Some of the paintings are almost like people are out on a Sunday afternoon hike or a picnic, if you were to look at illustrations and photographs in the latter part of the war. Definitely, it was not like that,” he said.

“Canada sent, I think, over 130,000 horses to the front. There were millions of horses and donkeys and mules that were killed in the First World War. So, definitely we see a fine example of the beauty of the equestrian beast and beasts of burden into in the show at Nickle galleries. We’ve really tried to parallel the paintings a little bit with some of the artifacts that are in the show.”

Averns said that he was able to secure loans of objects from the Canadian War Museum as part of the show.

Averns said that Munnings was one of the first artists to create works of art in what would now be known as the Canadian Forces Artists Program.

“He was one of the very early artists; we see much more of a traditional representational approach with his paintings. But I would say that the quality of his brush strokes and the overall I find the works, you know, quite compelling. I think it gives a real insight for the value that an artist can bring to conflict,” he said.

“The nature of war art, you know, has somewhat of a niche about it. There are many other great galleries and museums that we have in Canada and in Western Canada for our students, this is really an opportunity for those that are interested in painting to be able to see some remarkable painting.”

Averns himself was deployed to the Middle East with the Canadian Forces in 2009 as an official war artist.

He said that one of the benefits of the war art program is that artists will gain access to theatres of conflict that would otherwise be inaccessible to journalists and civilian photographers.

That, in turn, can provide an insight into conflicts that would otherwise not be possible.

“Munnings came from the UK, and he liked some of the finer things in life. We see what could be termed as somewhat of a colonial perspective. I would like to highlight that in the current iteration of the Canadian Forces artist program, there is pretty much a free rein—no pun intended—for artists to offer their own interpretation. We have people from all across the country. We have people that maybe are not of a colonial background. We have indigenous artists that have been part of the Canadian Forces artist program,” he said.

“So there is the recognition for sure that the current war art program allows for a potentially more critical view of conflict.”

Hardy said that already there has been considerable interest by university students and from high schools to connect Munnings – The War Years to studies either at the university level or in the Grades 10 through 12 curriculum.

The exhibition opens on Sept. 18 and runs to Dec. 6. Entry to the exhibition is free.