The Front Line At Night Analysis

Both of the paintings to be described have been selected from the time period of the first World War. The first painting is called The Front Line – At Night by J.A. Churchman (Figure 1), which shows soldiers fighting at nighttime, demonstrated with the use of black paint for the sky, contrasted by the bright white paint of an explosion in the distance and intentional spots of red for fire, flares, and explosives. The brushstrokes of the white explosion are very visible, which add to the effect of its expansion in the background and demonstrate its large size in comparison with the rest of the content. The contrast of the white against the darker colours focuses the viewer’s eyes on the explosion, therefore it acts as the focal point of the …show more content…
This painting is realistic in that it doesn’t fail to account for the deaths and losses of the war. Many of the paintings from that time period often neglected to show the pain and chaos of the war since a lot of them were aimed to inspire Canadians to go and fight in the war, not to fear it. Those other paintings tried to bring out the pride and patriotism in citizens, whereas The Front Line – At Night tries to show Canadians the reality and the turmoil that was World War I. While it was good for the collection to have paintings and artifacts that were inspirational, it’s also very important to show the other side of the war, so that today we can recognize that not only did the courage to go to war bring us to where we are to today, but so did the extreme pain and suffering that they endured during those four years. The second painting, Battle of Courcelette by Louis Alexander Weirter (Figure 2), offers an even more realistic depiction of the war than the first painting. In this one, we can see fiery explosions accompanied by clouds of smoke, along with hundreds of soldiers fighting hand-to-hand and with the help of weapons. We can also see injured soldiers laying down in trenches, as well as some dead, which a