Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sundays (when I feel like working), I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, and the like that produced them.
Combat Gallery Sunday : The Martial Art of Marc Lee
If you don’t know this amazing artist, you should.
Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale
Thank you for your work, sir.
Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sundays (when I feel like working), I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, and the like that produced them.
Combat Gallery Sunday : The Martial Art of Walter L. Greene
Born in Schenectady, New York, in 1870, Walter L. Greene studied drawing and illustration at Massachusetts State Normal School Academy of Art in Boston (now called Massachusetts College of Art and Design). After continuing his education in Europe, he returned to the states and in his 30s became the board artist first for General Electric and then for the New York Central Railroad.
Over the next several decades, he specialized in railway and maritime art for publication by his companies, producing posters, calendars, post cards, magazine ads and the like that had an eye for blending the most modern machines of the day with the mysteries of old to give the impression that industry was magical.
Eastward, Westward
One of several original oil paintings by Schnectady artist Walter L. Greene commissioned by the New York Central Railroad to be reproduced as a travel poster advertising passenger service to the Adirondacks and Lake Placid, New York.
S.S. President Hoover on the Yangtze River,Shanghai
Although his military work was limited, he did create an amazing set of paintings of the most modern warships of their day, to include the turbine-electric USS Saratoga (CV-3) and the USS New Mexico (BB-40)
Saratoga by Walter green 1927
The Electric Ship, New Mexico (BB-40), painting by Walter L. Greene.
GE ad from the Electric Ship painting, published 1920
Greene passed in 1956, long after Saratoga was obliterated and sunk in the A-bomb tests at Bikini Atoll and New Mexico broken up for scrap in Newark.
Today his industrial work is celebrated by train enthusiasts while a number of his paintings are in the Navy Art Collection and on display at the Albany Institute of History and Art, New York, Arkell Museum at Canajoharie, New York, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum National Art Inventories.
Thank you for your work, sir.
Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sundays (when I feel like working), I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, and the like that produced them.
Combat Gallery Sunday : The Martial Art of Noriyoshi Ohrai
Born in 1935 in Akashi, Hyogo prefecture in what then was Imperian Japan, Ohrai (Ōrai) lived through the brutal firebombing of his country with B-29s flying overhead to blitz the Kawasaki Aircraft Industries factory outside of town and the shadow of old Akashi Castle looming. This intermingling of old and new in a traditional yet rapidly becoming dystopian society in his early development can be seen in Ohrai’s work.
Studying oil painting briefly at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, by 1962 he was hard at work in the Japanese film industry making movie posters which led to novel covers, illustrations for games and finally art collections of their own right.
He shot to international acclaim with the overseas poster for Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back in 1980 which of course led to a string of Gozilla posters, the Goonies poster, Japanese re-releases for the Star Wars series and others.
?????????????
His martial work included his Zombie Hunter, Pacific Theater of Operations, a volume on Miyamoto Musashi, a drawing collection of the battleship Yamato and much of the manga art for Kazumasa Hirai’s books. Finally, his MGS, the Snake imagery for the Metal Gear series is superb.
?????????????
This
Miyamoto Musashi
Yamoto
Ōrai was awarded the Film Award in 2014, which includes the Distinguished Services Award for his achievements in film visuals by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan and Columbia University’s film school has an extensive collection of his work.
Kazumasa Hirai died himself in January at age 76, while the artist Ohrai passed last month on October 27, age 79.
The Noriyoshi Ohrai Exhibition and Ohrai.net has an extensive collection of his work online.
Thank you for your work, sir.
Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sundays (when I feel like working), I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, and the like that produced them.
Combat Gallery Sunday : The Martial Art of Claus Bergen
Born 18 April 1885 in Stuttgart, Claus Friedrich Bergen was a product of Kaiserian Imperial Germany. Studying at the at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, under the American-born master Carl von Marr, young Claus shined.
By his 22nd birthday had been selected to illustrate Karl May’s classic Teutonic fiction novels about Winnetou, the wise chief of the Apaches and Old Shatterhand, Winnetou’s white blood brother in the American Old West and Kara Ben Nemsi and his manservant Hadschi Halef Omar in the Sahara and Far East.
As May’s works were sold in upwards of 200 million copies, the more than 400 illustrations that Bergen did between 1907-14 for these books have been seen world wide.
When the war came, Bergen was appointed as a naval artist to the Kaiserliche Marine and, in the weeks and months following the pivotal Battle of Jutland, created some of his best work.
High Seas Fleet setting sail 31 May 1916
German battleships passing Heligoland
SMS-Grosse-Kurfurst-
German battleships in action
Bridge of SMS Markgraf
Hipper leaving Lutzow for SMS Moltke
Inside a battleship main turret
German destroyers attack the British battleship line at Jutland 31 May
SMS-Seydlitz seeing what hell looks like
Night action
SMS Thuringen lighting up HMS Black Prince
The Kaiser addressing the High Seas fleet after Jutland
In 1917, Bergen embarked on tiny SM U-53, a 213-foot Type 51 unterseeboot conned by legendary Fregattenkapitän Hans Rose, who won both the Pour le Mérite and the Ritterkreuz for sending a staggering 79 Allied ships to the bottom of the Atlantic (including six while bobbing off the Nantucket Lightship in 1916) and went to sea on a two month war cruise. The images he saw in the heavy seas were burned into his memory and he committed them to canvas for posterity.
In den Wellenbergen
U-53 in the summer of 1917
During WWII, Bergen, then in his 50s, was a party member and one of the Reich’s favored painters. He continued working, composing military subjects on the list of those approved by Berlin.
Battleship Schlesig-Holstein on 1st-September 1939 fires the first naval shots of the War at Danzig
1942 U-boot Type IX
Prinz Eugen at Denmark Strait Painting by Claus Bergen
Dornier Flugboot X
After the war, he escaped his Nazi party associations and, living in West Germany at 8172 Lenggries/OBB, painted simple sea scenes and landscapes…
Mit Wind und Wellen
Though he did paint the cover of the 1950s board-game Bismarck, one of the most popular in the U.S. at the time.
He donated several large pieces to U.S. and British public museums and the Admiralty after the Second World War, many of which are on display around the UK. He is also celebrated, of course, by the Karl May Society and others. The Hellmann Art Gallery in Munich contains a large body of his more famous works.
Dr. Bergen was impressed with the President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 visit to Germany (Ich bin ein Berliner) and wanted to present him with one of his paintings because of the President’s love of the sea and maritime art. His gift, The Atlantic, shows the windswept Atlantic at twilight and hung in the Atlantic Room of the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum for years, making Bergen possibly the only artist to have presented canvas to Kaiser Wilhelm, Hitler and JFK.
Bergen died 4 October 1964 in Lenggries, Bavaria at age 79.
For more Bergen pieces on Jutland, see British Battle’s excellent series of articles on the clash.
Thank you for your work, sir.
Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sundays (when I feel like working), I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, and the like that produced them.
Combat Gallery Sunday: The Martial Art of Augusto Ferrer-Dalmau
Born in Barcelona in 1964, Augusto Ferrer-Dalmau Nieto is a hyper-realist painter whose work is haunting. Completing his national service with the Spanish Army in 1984, he has been a painter to the Spanish Ministry of Defense in recent years as well as a well-known military illustrator.
U Boot, by Augusto Ferrer Dalmau u-boat
Trooper, Alcantara Chasseurs Regiment, 14th Cavalry, 1921
Spanish Royal Guard Tiradores de la Guardia Real, 1838 by Augusto Ferrer-Dalmau
LTC. Fernando Primo De Rivera, commanding officer of Alcantara Cavalry Regiment in the summer of 1921
Don Quijote de la Mancha in his uniform carlista y Sancho Panza Augusto Ferrer-Dalmau
Don Quijote de la Mancha coracero y Sancho Panza
Cazador a caballo de la Guardia Imperial Chasseur à cheval de la Garde Impériale Augusto Ferrer-Dalmau
Bourbon Regiment, 5th Line Cavalry, Army of the Center. In Cuenca, at the end of December 1808, during the Peninsular War.
Agustina de Aragon, by Augusto Ferrer Dalmau
Rocroi, the last Tercio, 1643 – Augusto Ferrer-Dalmau
In addition to his historical works, he has gone downrange and sketched modern military conflict in Afghanistan.
The Spanish government has awarded him La Orden del Mérito Civil for his work.
An excellent interview with the artist via the Fundación Universitaria San Pablo CEU Instituto de Estudios Históricos:
He maintains an extensive sample of his art online at his Facebook page which is worth following as is his blog as is his website.
Thank you for your work, sir.
Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sundays (when I feel like working), I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, and the like that produced them.
Combat Gallery Sunday : The Martial Art of Albert Brenet
Born June 25, 1903 at Harfleur, a small coastal town on the Normandy Coast, Albert Victor Eugene Brenet was almost delivered into saltwater. As a youth, he sketched the fishing boats and coastal craft that frequented his city and by 1920 at age 17 had earned a place at the École des beaux-arts in Paris.
However, the young rake soon left school and arranged passage on the leaky old three-masted barque Bonchamps, one of the last French sailing ships in commercial service, and spent several months aboard her on the Australian run with an extended stay in the French West Indies.
Bonchamp, as she looked in 1902
This undoubtedly influenced his paintings even more. More travel was offered him when he ventured to equatorial Africa with a prize funds from awarded by the Salon des Artistes Français.
By the late 1920s he was a regular with the magazine L’Illustration and soon took to other commercial work than included much travel advertising for Air France, Imperial Airways and Air Algeria in the 1930s.
1935.
By 1936 he was named an official illustrator of the French Department of Marine and in that line painted French warships, sailors, aircraft and Marines.
Le Bouvet aux Dardanelles
Le Bougainville arrivant à Tahiti
Early French predreadnought battleships Amiral Duperré, in the center is the Redoutable and to the right is the Formidable
Bréguet 521 Bizerte en panne va être remorqué par torpilleur
Caught in London in June 1940 on business, he was effectively exiled from France for the war but contributed to the war effort through illustration.
SPITFIRE XIV au décollage
Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of Dunkirk
Hydravion survolant un convoi maritime
charge of the spahis la bataille de La Horgne le 15 mai 1940
CHANCE VOUGHT V.156 à l’attaque
Avro Lancaster
In 1946 he was awarded the Legion of Honor for his service to the country and was made an official artist to all three service branches.
French military gendarmes. Note the breech cover on the MAS rifle
French Marins commandos, 1960s, note MAT-49 subguns
He continued his work, specializing in Gouache board, and moved into illustrations for books (illustrating a release of Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days, in 1976), models, and continued his duties to the Republic, venturing out on the carrier Foch as late as the 1991.
SS France at Saint-Nazaire, 1961
Super Etendard launching, 1991, Foch
Mural for the 8th Cavalry regiment, 1993
He died in 2003.
A number of his works are at the Musee National de la Marine at Toulon, the Musée portuaire de Dunkerque, the Gallimard National Maritime Museum, and elsewhere and are available on the Portail des collections des musées de France (for example here) and there are numerous online galleries that host his images.
Thank you for your work, sir.
Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sunday, I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, and the like that produced them.
Combat Gallery Sunday: The Martial Art of Manuel García García
Spanish maritime artist Manuel García García specializes in taking period black and white photographs and plans of ships that have long-since sailed their last and transforming them into fully-fleshed out paintings.
Barcelona-based Garcia specializes in ships of the Spanish Navy and several of his superb watercolors have been turned into postage stamps both in Spain and abroad.
August 7, 1889, at Dock No. 1 Arsenal Cádiz, where the submarine Peral appears there with 6 crew members. She was actually the world’s first modern electric-powered torpedo armed military submersible and is currently preserved at the Naval Museum of Cartagena.
Knox-class FRAGATA CATALUNA F 73 by Manuel García García. Commissioned in 1975, she was sunk as a target in 2007.
This 9500-ton light cruiser was the head of her class, served on the Nationalist side in the Civil War and was present in most of the major battles. She was one of the last unaltered WWII-era all-gun cruisers in NATO service when she was stricken 31 August 1965.
Archives of his work are available here, and please take the time to visit his website and blog (Spanish) here.
Thank you for your work, sir.
Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sunday, I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, and the like that produced them.
Combat Gallery Sunday : The Martial Art of Mel Crair
Melvin “Mel” Crair was born in Brooklyn on August 17, 1923 to Russian emigrants. Graduating from LaGuardia High School of Music & Art as a budding artist, instead he was drafted into the Army as there was a war on. Serving overseas and seeing hot action, he continued his art education via the GI Bill after the war and joined the ranks of Bruce Minney, Norm Eastman, Gil Cohen, Norman Saunders, Basil Gogos, and Vic Prezio in creating covers and story illustrations for men’s adventure magazines such as Big Western, Man’s, Blue Book and others.
Man’s 1968 March
MEL CRAIR (American, 20th Century). Men’s adventure magazine illustration
Bluebook
Man’s Magazine – 1964 10 Oct
Man’s 1966 March
The Submarine that sank twice!
Man’s cover
He also did paperback cover art for Pyramid, Berkeley, Pocketbooks, Signet, Bantam, and Dell Paperbacks as well as a series of portraits for the same.
Rommel portrait for cover of Fighting Generals by Phil Hirsch 1960
Original Mel Crair portrait, front cover of the Newsweek May 2, 1960, for which it was painted
Colditz
1878 — A novel of the Bannock Indian Wars
He continued working right up until his death at age 83 in 2007.
Archives of his work are available at the American Art Archives, Pulp Covers and Pulp Artists.
Thank you for your work, sir.
Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sunday, I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, and the like that produced them.
Combat Gallery Sunday : The Martial Art of Herbert Knotel
Born in 1893 in Berlin, then the capital of old Hohenzollern Prussia and that of Imperial Germany as a whole, Herbert Knotel was the son of renowned uniformologist and military historian Richard Knötel (1857-1914). The elder Knotel pioneered uniform art and in many cases drew from preserved examples whenever possible.
His father’s uniform books are classics that endures to this day as is his massive 1,000-plate Große Uniformkunde, which young Herbert assisted with.
Herbert found himself as a officer in the Prussian Army and, assigned to Hindenburg’s 1st Army was wounded at Tannenburg during WWI. He finished the war as a Hauptmann in a horse cavalry unit on the Eastern Front.
With the world turned upside down in 1919, he returned to Berlin and took up the family business, both expanding and preserving his father’s inherited work and producing original plates of his own while helping run the Berlin Zeughaus Museum.
He was meticulous, first sketching his art, then using watercolors for shading and fill work and finishing with acrylics.
Lancer of Berg by R. Knötel for reference (From the Library of Tony Broughton)
When the Soviets occupied Berlin in 1945, Knotel was commissioned to cover the uniforms of that force in an epic 50-plate set, drawing many from officers and enlisted he met from Zhukov’s Red Army. These were later combined with over 100 images of the Tsarist army uniforms to create a single volume.
“The woman, seen on theatricals event in January 1946, probably frontline Artist”
“The commander of the Special Operations Group, who selected the watch for me and my wife”
“The captain of the Polish infantry unit as a part of the Soviet Army – 1945”
(Dig the swim gear on the pioneer)
Knotel died in 1963.
A huge cross-section of his work, including the Soviet set, is maintained online at the Anne S.K.Brown collection.
The modern tome that best covers his (non-Soviet) work is Herbert Knotel’s German Armies in Color: As Illustrated in His Watercolors & Sketches by Andrew Woelflein and Napoleonic uniforms by Col. John Robert Elting.
Thank you for your work, sir.
Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sunday, I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, and the like that produced them.
Combat Gallery Sunday : The Martial Art of Bruce Minney
West Coast artist Bruce Minney was born October 2, 1928 and in 1946 was accepted to the prestigious California School of Arts and Crafts. However, after graduation work as a firefighter left him unfulfilled artistically so in 1955 he packed up the family and moved to the mecca of advertising, paperback and pulp publishing production– New York City.
Soon he began producing cover and illustration art for a number of men’s magazines ranging from Stag, For Men Only, Male, True Action, Man’s World, New Man and later National Lampoon while also churning out a staggering 400 paperback covers over the next 30 years.
His populist hyperrealist style, while similar to that of Mort Knustler and others, is unique although sadly some of Minney’s work has actually become kinda synonymous with 1960s kitschy kink— but in the end has been embraced and preserved, so put that in your politically correct pipe and smoke it!
Voyage to the Forgotten World, Mens magazine cover
Stag cover, June 1959
Cover for “Voyage to Somewhere” 1970 paperback
Last Man on Luzon
The Boston Medic Who Wrecked Germany’s Slave Colony – For Men Only, May 1961
Homestead steel strike STAG-Dec-1965
MALE – 1960
The Wild Raid Of Gibbon’s Lace Panty Commandos, Mans Book cover
Tonight We Hit The Nazis’ Torture Train 3695, New Man cover
Vile Secrets Of Hitler’s Hideous Torture Rites
The winner of numerous awards and the shaper of men and boys for a generation or better, he died on August 5, 2013.
Extensive collections of his work are online at Mens Pulp Mags and Pulp Covers while (Bruce’s son-in-law) Thomas Ziegler’s Bruce Minney: The Man Who Painted Everything book is about the best source of information there is on the man and his works.
Thank you for your work, sir.