Help Needed Identifying Artists
 

I’m hoping that someone in our illustrious community has a copy of DEEDS THAT THRILL the EMPIRE True Stories of the Most Glorious Acts of Heroism of the Empire’s Soldiers and Sailors during the Great War and would be willing to do a quick look up.

I recently acquired the original artwork for two of the illustrations. The first is of Lance-Corporal Parker (1/5th KOSB) holding off the Turks in a mine gallery at Gallipoli. Unfortunately the artists signature is very difficult to read given the medium and color palette. Can anyone help?

The second has no information at all, other than a note on the back (I think from the publisher) indicating “page 181, part VIII”. The artist is Ernest ????, and besides learning his name, I’m curious as to what the incident portrayed is.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Edit:Loaded images in wrong order, of course.

The bottom image won't open. Can you take a close-up of the signature? Otherwise it's too small to see anything.

You could contact the IWM Art Department and see if anyone recognizes it.
David

Attached close ups of signatures.

I was hoping if someone had the book, they might list the artists. Also curious as to what the second painting portrays. There are no s/t to other unit insignia, but I would assume the artist including the primitive anti-gas equipment must have some significance.

NB: With the first signature, that’s not glare! The painting is watercolor, with a pallet of blues and grays, so that’s what it looks like...

I think it could be Ernest Smythe, although for the life of me I can't see the "S" in Smythe.

http://suffolkpainters.co.uk/index.c...ainter&pid=784

This is him too:

I also saw 'Smythe'. The capital 'S' is done with artist's licence and one can detect it by following the horizontal bars of the letter (it's like an inverted 'Z')

GTB

Thanks for the tip on Smythe. While I couldn’t find anything definitive online, I did find some examples of his “cartoon” work where the signature looks similar and there are consistencies in the artistic style.

I still can't see whose signature the first one is, but the second does look like Smythe. The style of the cartoon looks the same as the painting posted by BWEF.

David