![]() In her autobiography, she admitted her “own of war-that mysterious inevitable recurrence throughout the sorrowful history of our world-is that it calls forth the noblest and basest impulses of human nature.” The soldiers’ personal wartime experiences were compelling to Thompson, both in reading and conversation with veterans hired as studio models for her composition sketches. Throughout her art education in Italy and her emergence on the British art scene, her interest in military history and famous campaigns influenced her choice of subjects and sketches. She was deeply passionate about the exploits of British forces and leadership during the campaigns against Napoleon Bonaparte, especially the British victory at Waterloo. At a young age, she demonstrated a keen skill at military figure painting and was strongly influenced by French military painters such as the famed battle artists Eugene Delacroix and Ernest Meissonier. She was two things not typically found in a painter of warfare: a civilian and a woman. Art provides a unique possibility for defense professionals to examine what inspires a society to change regarding their military endeavors at home and abroad.ĭespite having no military experience in her family, Elizabeth Thompson was a pleasant anomaly to the British Victorian era’s more familiar martial artists. Dissecting a single artwork, or an artist’s greater body of work, provides a rare glimpse of a nation’s policies through artistic imagery. Her art, influenced by her passion as an amateur military historian, joined a greater effort to change the actions and future of the British Empire. In the British colonial era, Lady Elizabeth Southerden Thompson Butler’s battle art engages a rising national dialogue about the aristocracy, the dangers of military adventurism, and the honorable lives of the regular soldiers of Great Britain. Additionally, the display of-and spectator reaction to-an artwork indicates as much about current events and politics as the piece itself. ![]() Strategists can understand a social and political dynamic by examining a cross-section of military art at a specific moment in a nation’s history. Art is a window into a society’s psyche, revealing an on-going dialogue about how a nation views itself. ![]()
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