Remembrance Day, 11 November
Few have captured this day's meaning better than mariner and amateur artist William Cockell, who painted returning hospital ships in his home port of Wellington, New Zealand, during the Great War.
A pair of contemporary Great War paintings on velvet depicting New Zealand Hospital Ship No. 1, Maheno, and New Zealand Hospital Ship No. 2, Marama, by artist William George Cockell (born 1882, UK, died 1968, Australia).
Depicted under steam at night, with hospital ship insignia clearly shown.
Evocative and richly poignant, emerging into view from darkness, on a black velvet ground, this matched pair of contemporary depictions of New Zealand’s two First World War hospital ships was executed in Wellington, most likely after the artist witnessed them first hand.
When war broke out in 1914, William Cockell was a seaman with years of experience in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. He probably sailed on the Maheno and the Marama when they plied the inter-island and trans-Tasman passenger routes before their requisition and conversion. He lived, worked and painted in Wellington.
In these paintings the no-longer-far-away war takes physical form. Floating hospitals, freighted with cargoes of wounded, sick and damaged men, emerge into moonlight, a half light, not even sunlight. By war’s end His Majesty’s New Zealand Hospital Ships had returned nearly 50,000 injured New Zealand ANZACs from the fighting at Gallipoli and the Western Front.
These naive though beautiful evocations of the ships’ melancholic presence have the quality of a salve: the artist’s own brother and cousin were killed in Northern France in 1917.
Although photographs of the Maheno and Marama as hospital ships do exist, research has found only one other artist - Frank Barnes - depicted them in paint. Cockell himself painted at least the Maheno on another occasion – that painting is in the collection of the New Zealand Maritime Museum (see image below).
More than merely important for their contribution to the historical record, these paintings have a poetic dimension that goes far beyond their unassuming surface: the deep darkness of the unusual velvet background allegorises the unfathomable loss and sadness of the war from whence they have travelled.
Their quiet, honest power makes them among the best anti-war statements I have ever seen.
Images courtesy the Sims Dickson Collection & Archive, except where noted.