Portrait of War: The U.S. Army's First Combat Artists and the Doughboys' Experience in WWI

by Peter Krass

Portrait of War tells the gripping true story of eight graphic artists recruited by the government and sent into combat to create a visual historical record of World War I. Featuring both their stunning illustrations and deep personal reflections, Portrait of War is a moving testament to the bravery of these artist-soldiers and the remarkable record of war they left behind.

352 pages, Hardcover

First published October 27, 2006

About the author

I like to dabble for “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds” as Ralph Waldo Emerson would remind us. Although I’m not sure how far dabbling will get you, I’ve enjoyed working on biographies, business books, newspaper stories, business articles, that all-consuming yet maddeningly elusive arena of fiction, and poetry.

And now my wife and I are Vermont farmers to boot, with a sugar bush that glows in the low winter sun, chickens who lay regularly, a coq who never crows before 7am, honey bees who are sweet as, well, honey, and 2 German shepherds who want more than anything to shepherd the chickens …

Reviews

[archive ☄ · Rating 2 out of 5]

i wanted to like this book so badly but wow did anyone actually read it before it went to print 😭😭😭 enough typos to boggle the mind & errors that would have been caught by even the most casual of glances.... e.g. at one point krass does an interpretation of a painting based on a completely erroneous title ?? hello ??? i'm baffled. truly good writing might have saved this book but the prose is nothing to write home about and the typos border on distracting....

also- this really should have been two different books: 1) an overview of the maneuvers of the aef, and 2) an entirely separate book about the artists. there were times when i completely forgot i was reading about combat artists at all; pages go by in which we hear nothing about them, only to get a letter or diary entry from townsend or peixotto describing whatever battle has just transpired. the second part of that subtitle ("and the doughboys' experience in wwi") feels like it got tacked on at the very end just to justify the fact that SO much of the book isn't about the artists at all. it should be said that krass really isn't bad when it comes to describing the aef experience but his writing on art is so superficial and uninspired.... a real loss considering how fascinating the subject matter is :( i'd like to see another writer take a crack at it; someone with a background in the visual arts would probably be better suited to the task

[Bruce Jenvey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book! Full of illustrations! I read this as part of my research for my next novel and found it to be the best of all the books I purchased for this purpose. But it's NOT some dry history book. It follows 8 men through their time in WWI, except THESE men were ARTISTS, assigned to draw and capture the many images of the war.
The Army thought they would get lots of pictures of heroic charges and tough Doughboys galently fighting the Huns they could then use for recruitment posters and homefront propaganda. These 8 were the first ever, Army assigned artists in a combat zone. What the Army got was realistic scenes of life, death and destruction in Northern France during that time. Where a camera captures a scene, even in the hands of a talented photographer, and ARTIST puts his heart and soul into the image with every stroke. It's not what the Army wanted by any means, but the work (MANY pieces featered in the book) had a heart all it's own and has lived on, still on display today. That's longer than any propaganda would have lasted!
Not so much a war story as a story of stuggling artists.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I selected this for our Arts & Culture Book Club February 2011 read, not having read it previously. It was a fascinating book, quite detailed in its descriptions of war, battlefield tactics and soldiers' experiences. Looking at the realities of WWI through the artists' drawings and written letters, diary entries, etc., was a stark reminder of the horrors of war - and of this war, with its gas attacks, trench warfare, and special brutalities - in particular.

[KOMET]

This book offers starkly vivid perspectives of the real horrors, both in the trenches and in the cities and villages along the Western Front, of what has become for most Americans a largely forgotten war.