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Robert Torchia, “George Luks/The Bersaglieri/1918,” American Paintings, 1900–1945, NGA Online Editions, https://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/37626 (accessed October 11, 2024).

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Overview

Shortly after the United States entered World War I on April 6, 1917, a series of Liberty Loan drives were organized in major American cities to encourage citizens to help the federal government defray its wartime expenses by purchasing bonds. In New York, elaborate parades were held on the city’s main thoroughfare, Fifth Avenue, which was specially decorated with flags of the Allied forces. Like many American artists, George Luks contributed to the war effort by representing some of these festive occasions.

The Bersaglieri shows a regiment of Italian sharpshooters who had been sent to the United States in 1918 to stimulate interest in the fourth Liberty Loan drive. Introduced into the Sardinian army in 1849, they had served heroically in numerous military engagements and were noted for their endurance and ability to march at a speed of four miles an hour. When Italy entered World War I in 1915, 12 regiments of Bersaglieri were in the regular army, and 20 battalions in the mobile militia. On Columbus Day, October 12, 1918, they marched at the head of a procession led by President Woodrow Wilson from East 72nd Street down Fifth Avenue to Washington Square. Luks’s painting successfully conveys the soldiers’ martial prowess, the din of the crowd, and a sense of the excitement generated by the event.

Entry

Shortly after the United States entered World War I on April 6, 1917, a series of Liberty Loan drives were organized in major American cities to encourage citizens to help the federal government defray its wartime expenses by purchasing bonds. In New York, elaborate parades were held on the city’s main thoroughfare, Fifth Avenue, which was specially decorated with flags of the Allied forces. The city’s artists contributed to such patriotic events by designing war posters and various forms of propaganda or by painting pictures of the parades. The most famous examples of the latter are the approximately 30 paintings of Fifth Avenue bedecked with flags by Childe Hassam (American, 1859 - 1935), represented by Allies Day, May 1917 at the National Gallery of Art.[1]

George Luks’s first Fifth Avenue parade subject, Blue Devils on Fifth Avenue [fig. 1], represents a regiment of French soldiers marching past Delmonico’s restaurant at the intersection of 45th Street and Fifth Avenue during a Liberty Loan drive parade on the morning of April 30, 1918.[2] The festive painting, which was based on sketches that Luks made while observing the event, was greeted with critical acclaim and acquired by Duncan Phillips, who pronounced it a “masterpiece of impressionistic painting, an important canvas which would have value for its technical qualities alone.”[3]

Luks’s lesser-known Bersaglieri represents a regiment of Italian sharpshooters who had been sent to the United States in 1918 to stimulate interest in the fourth Liberty Loan drive. Introduced into the Sardinian army in 1849, they had served heroically in numerous military engagements and were noted for their endurance and ability to march at a speed of four miles an hour. When Italy entered World War I in 1915, 12 regiments of Bersaglieri were in the regular army and 20 battalions in the mobile militia. On October 12, 1918, they marched at the head of a procession led by President Woodrow Wilson from East 72nd Street down Fifth Avenue to Washington Square. The event was described in the New York Times:

First in order came the Bersaglieri of Italy in their blue uniforms and brown “tin hats.” Every man was a veteran who had helped stem the Austro-German torrent that once upon a time threatened to overwhelm Italy. The Italians came by at a “turkey trot” and as it was Italy Day at the Altar of Liberty as well as the anniversary of the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, the veterans got a double sized tribute. They were still “turkey trotting” when they disappeared down the avenue.[4]

Luks’s painting of the parade is remarkably similar to the photograph of the event that accompanied the New York Times article [fig. 2].

The Bersaglieri is an effective piece of wartime propaganda. A critic had noted how Blue Devils on Fifth Avenue conveys a sense of “the electric feeling that seems to float from the crowd and through the crowd on especially sympathetic occasions.”[5] Here the artist also captured the soldiers’ martial prowess, the din of the crowd, and the excitement of the occasion. Wearing their distinctive green-gray uniforms and steel helmets decorated with flowing feathers, the Bersaglieri march in unison down a flag-draped Fifth Avenue. The tuba players at the head of the column dramatically step out of the shadows cast by the tall buildings on the avenue into the light-drenched cross street as Italian and Red Cross flags billow in the wind. The viewer is immersed in the scene at street level, creating a sense of immediacy. Luks’s success in enlivening the scene was indebted to his experience as a newspaper illustrator covering the Cuban revolt against Spain in 1895.

Shortly after World War I ended, Luks painted two other military processional subjects, Armistice Night [fig. 3] and Czechoslovakian Army Entering Vladivostok, Siberia, in 1918 [fig. 4].[6] He also painted two other war-related subjects that were on display during the Fourth Liberty Loan drive: In the Service (1918), depicting a Red Cross nurse in front of a billowing American flag, and Fight to Buy or Uncle Sam (1918), an unorthodox image of the legendary figure as a long-haired politician.[7] Finally, Knitting for the Soldiers: High Bridge Park (c. 1918, Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago) was exhibited alongside Blue Devils on Fifth Avenue at the Kraushaar Galleries in June 1918.

Robert Torchia

July 24, 2024

Inscription

lower left: George Luks

Provenance

The artist; purchased by Arthur F. Egner, South Orange, New Jersey, by 1934;[1] (his estate sale, Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 4 May 1945, no. 116). (Knoedler and Co., New York), by 1947;[2] purchased 16 May 1950 by NGA.

Exhibition History

1934
The Works of Benjamin Luks, Newark Museum, New Jersey, 1934-1935, no. 36.
1946
American Painting, Person Hall Art Gallery, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1946, no. 27.
1947
Fiftieth Anniversary Exhibition: Paintings by American Artists 1896-1930, Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts, 1947, no. 23.
1949
The Turn of the Century: American Artists 1890-1920, Des Moines Art Center, 1949, unnumbered catalogue.
1954
Extended loan for use by Blair-Lee House, Washington, D.C., 1954-1956.
1973
George Luks: An Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings Dating from 1889 to 1931, Museum of Art, Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, April-May 1973, no. 47, repro.
1973
The City in American Painting, Allentown Art Museum, Pennsylvania, January-March 1973, unnumbered catalogue, repro.
1988
Extended loan for use by Secretary Frank Carlucci, U.S. Department of Defense, Washington, D.C., 1988-1989.
1991
Extended loan for use by Secretary Lynn Martin, U.S. Department of Labor, Washington, D.C., 1991-1993.
1993
Extended loan for use by Secretary Robert Reich, U.S. Department of Labor, Washington, D.C., 1993-1995.
2001
Extended loan for use by Ambassador William Stamps Farish III, U.S. Embassy residence, London, England, 2001-2002.

Technical Summary

The coarsely woven plain-weave fabric support has been relined with wax and remounted on a new stretcher.[1] All of the tacking margins have been removed. X-radiographs reveal the presence of two superimposed full-length portraits beneath the present composition. They are both perpendicular to the present orientation, but the figures are head-to-toe, suggesting two different portrait campaigns. The present image was thickly painted in the wet-on-wet method, with heavily textured, pastose paint in some areas. In other passages, the paint is thinned to a watery consistency and drawn over the support so that drips of liquid paint run down the canvas. Color blending is often done on the picture surface. Other than the deep cracks that have developed in the thick paint and a record of minor flaking, the painting is in good condition. The surface is coated with a fairly even, glossy layer of damar varnish.[2]

Michael Swicklik

July 24, 2024

Bibliography

1970
American Paintings and Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1970: 80, repro.
1980
American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 196, repro.
1980
Wilmerding, John. American Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1980: no. 52, color repro.
1981
Williams, William James. A Heritage of American Paintings from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1981: 207, color repro. 219.
1988
Wilmerding, John. American Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art. Rev. ed. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1988: 162, no. 58, color repro.
1992
American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 229, repro.

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