Posts in Category: Vimy
Canadian War Museum
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge unveiled the painting The Canadians Opposite Lens by celebrated artist Augustus John 1878–1961.
The impressive painting, 12 metres 40 feet wide and 3.7 metres 12 feet high, is one of the key works originally commissioned by Lord Beaverbrook, the founder of the Canadian War Memorials Fund. The work is also the last of these original commissions to return to Canada.
via Canadian War Museum.
The Architect of Vimy Ridge
Lane Borstad, Grande Prairie Regional College
With the recent 90th anniversary of the Canadian Battle at Vimy Ridge there has been a renewed interest in the Vimy Ridge Memorial monument. Much of this attention has focused on the history, interpretations and myths surrounding both the battle and the monument. This paper looks at the life of the architect and sculptor of the Vimy Ridge Monument – Walter Seymour Allward. Allward received his first public commission at the age of 18 and by the time of the Canadian Battlefields Memorials Commission’s competition for memorials in France and Belgium in 1920, he was one of the most successful sculptors in Canada. Vimy was to become the culmination of his life work. In 1938 when he reestablished his studio in Toronto, Allward was 63 years old and Canada was once again on the brink of war. Devastated by WW II he only completed one last commission prior to his death in 1955.
Allward’s public sculpture is well know but it is his drawings which reveal his personal response to war which underlies the Vimy memorial. Through the examination of his drawings we may understand how his personal response becomes a universal statement at Vimy.
Allward’s Figures and Lutyens’s Flags
Dr. Pierre du Prey, Queen’s University
The architects of the World War I Imperial War Graves Commission shared a prevalent bias against the use of sculpture on the monuments they were about to erect. This explains the architectural quality of most of them, notably those by Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869 – 1944) at Étaples, Villers-Bretonneux, and Thiepval. Unconstrained by such guidelines, the Toronto-based architect/sculptor Walter Allward worked independently for the Canadian Battlefields Memorials Commission. His imposing sculptural groups on the Vimy Memorial contrast markedly with Lutyens’s more abstract use of flags and wreaths to communicate the same poignant message. This paper explores their individual approaches; at the same time it sheds light on the different ways they allied the sister arts of architecture and sculpture under one somber banner.
The Canadian Memorial at Vimy Ridge: Public and Private Response to War
Lane Borstad, Grande Prairie Regional College
A great deal of attention has been given over the past year to the 90th anniversary of many of the horrific battles of WW I.1 No doubt this will reach a peak in 2008 with the anniversary of the November 11, 1918 armistice treaty between the Allies and Germany which ended WW I. In Canada much of this attention has focussed upon the Canadian Memorial at Vimy Ridge in France. Most of what has been written does little to our understanding of the monument and its place in Canadian History. This paper will apply a Constructionist approach to discussing the Vimy Ridge Memorial in an attempt to understand why the a monument in France, seldom visited by most Canadians, has retained its significance in Canada. Understanding Walter Allward’s personal response to the horrors of war will also give a greater understanding how this memorial has withstood the revisions and repositioning of 90 years.
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