Peter McIntyre OBE NZ Anti-Tank Aldershot
In 1939 he enlisted in England, trained with the NZ Anti-Tank Battery (later numbered the 34th) at Aldershot, and served as an anti-tank gunner with the 2NZEF in Egypt.
He was appointed Official New Zealand War Artist and promoted to the rank of captain by Major General Bernard Freyberg in January 1941.
He was awarded the OBE in 1970.
(the above sketch is one of his)
Quote:
PETER McINTYRE: WAR ARTIST
Dr. Warren Feeney
Peter McIntyre was appointed war artist for the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Forces (2nd NZEF) by General Bernard Freyberg on 1 January 1941.
McIntyre’s earliest drawings are of the New Zealand soldier’s life in Maadi Camp. Reproduced in the army publication, Parade, Freyberg also valued and encouraged the comradeship that McIntyre captured in these works. Just as war artist Christopher Nevinson had revealed the distinctive personality of the British soldier, McIntyre rose to the challenge in sketches of New Zealanders often brewing tea or playing cards. In these and other drawings, McIntyre also rediscovered his identity.
He later recalled his experience of meeting the first New Zealander he had seen in nine years absence, on the train to Aldershot in 1940: "His hair was cut short above the ears with crisp waves on top... His face was drawn as if he had been looking into the sun... 'Gidday, how’s she going?' he said, and my nine years of exile melted away."
As war artist McIntyre also rapidly learnt the most practical methods of gathering information in battle, making short hand notes and tonal sketches for finished paintings back at army camp. When he arrived in Crete on 14 May 1941 the German Luftwaffe had begun bombing the New Zealand camp and McIntyre’s sketch of the terrain provides the sort of topographical detail that informed paintings such as General Hospital Crete
McIntyre was equally adept at summarising the changing light of the North African and Italian landscape. The working study for Mobile Showers Beside an Ancient Well, Tunisia 1943 records the NZEF’s camp in a confident and summary tonal sketch. Similarly, his drawing An Italian Village Under Shellfire, May 1944 provides an insight into his painting, with the composition for the finished work already formed in the drawing .
In 1976 McIntyre reflected on his time as war artist: "I think my two and a half years in the Western Desert with the New Zealand Division were the best times in my whole life in the company of men... To me the New Zealand Division in those days was a superb thing. Men at their best in extraordinary circumstances."
Over the period in which he served with the 2nd NZEF, McIntyre’s paintings and sketches perceptively conveyed the routine and harsh reality of war. Testimony to the authority of these familiar and dramatic narratives of the New Zealand soldier, his sketches and paintings continue to define New Zealand’s memory and experience of the Second World War today.
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http://www.artis-jgg.co.nz/exhibition.asp?exb=95
And here is a link to a collection of Peter's war art
http://warart.archives.govt.nz/taxonomy/term/184/
Jock