THROUGH the horrors of trench warfare, and the creation of art, may seem incongruous, the Great War inspired many artists, and generated, throughout Europe and in America, more works of art than any earlier or subsequent war.

The previous most important examples, sparked respectively by the Thirty Years War and Napoleon’s campaigns in the Peninsular War, were Jacques Callot’s Miseries of War and Goya’s Disasters of War. Of particular interest in relation to this exhibition of prints of the First World War, is that both were carried out as a series of prints: the graphic arts giving expression to ‘graphic’ scenes.

Because of the initial call for volunteers in the Great War and the subsequent general conscription, artists served as soldiers and fought at the front; being artists they also sketched at the front.

The static nature of entrenched war left time between actions to reflect on and to express their first-hand experiences.

Artists who were printmakers used their leave, or in some instances their convalescence, back at home to transpose their sketches into etchings, lithographs or woodcuts; to avail themselves of studio facilities to print editions; and to organise exhibitions of their work.

Home-based artists found subject matter in anti-zeppelin searchlights, Red Cross and other nursing activities etc.

The selection of prints in this exhibition aims to show the wide range and rich variety of themes which the war evoked and makes reference to most of the defining aspects of the Great War.