Editing Vorticism (section)

== War artists ==
[[File:Dazzle-ships in Drydock at Liverpool.jpg|thumb|160x440px|left|''Dazzle-Ships in Drydock at Liverpool'' by Edward Wadsworth, 1919, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa]]
There was almost no opportunity for the rebel artists to work creatively while on active service.<ref>See William Roberts, [http://www.englishcubist.co.uk/howitzer.html ''Memories of the War to End War 1914–18''] (London, 1974) for an account of life on the front line and the commissioning processes for war artists.</ref> However, Wadsworth, unexpectedly, was able to pursue his artistic interests through the supervision of the [[dazzle camouflage]] being applied to over two thousand ships, largely at Bristol and Liverpool.<ref>Richard Cork, ‘Wadsworth and the Woodcut’, in Jeremy Lewison (ed.),  ''A Genius of Industrial England: Edward Wadsworth 1889–1949'' (Bradford: Arkwright Arts Trust, 1990), p. 20.</ref>

Towards the end of the war the journalist [[Paul Konody]], now art adviser to the Canadian War Memorials Fund (and someone who had been blatantly anti-Vorticism), commissioned Lewis, Wadsworth, Nevinson, Roberts, [[Paul Nash (artist)|Paul Nash]] and Bomberg to produce monumental canvases on subjects relating to the Canadian war experience for a projected memorial hall in Ottawa. The artists were warned that only 'representative' work would be acceptable, and indeed Bomberg's first version of his ''Sappers at Work''<ref>The rejected ''[https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/bomberg-study-for-sappers-at-work-a-canadian-tunnelling-company-hill-60-st-eloi-t00319 Sappers at Work]'' study is in the Tate Collection.</ref> was rejected as being 'too cubist'. Despite these restrictions, the extraordinary canvases feel uncompromisingly modernist, and certainly drew from pre-war avant-garde practices.<ref>See David Cleall, [http://www.englishcubist.co.uk/gasattackessay.html 'The First German Gas Attack at Ypres'], in ''William Roberts Society Newsletter'', October 2014.</ref>