Forward!/Enlist Now
Artist
Lucy Kemp-Welch
United Kingdom, 1869 - 1958
Date1915
Dimensions38 1/4 x 58 3/4 in. (97.2 x 149.2 cm)
ClassificationsPoster
Credit LineGift of Peter A. Blatz
Object numberPH.190
DescriptionBy the time this enlistment poster was issued in September 1915 by the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, the traditional functions of the cavalry in the increasingly mechanized European war had changed. During the first months after the war started in August 1914, it had been used for guarding the flanks of the British Expeditionary Force, defending the rear, carrying out reconnaissance, and, like the cavalryman in this poster, charging the approaching enemy. In November 1914, after the First Battle of Ypres, the stalemate of trench warfare set in and the cavalry, now armed with rifles and machine guns as well as sabers and swords, proved to be a swift and mobile reserve, fighting both on horseback and on the ground like regular infantrymen. By 1915, the Allied cavalry force had expanded to included three British, two Indian, and one Canadian division. A smaller version of this poster was issued by the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee as No. 133 in the series. Lucy Kemp-Welch was a British painter and teacher who was among the country’s best-known female artists between the late 1890s and the mid-1920s. She specialized in images of horses; in addition to several posters and paintings of horses in military service during World War I, she illustrated the 1915 edition of Anna Sewell’s novel Black Beauty.On View
Not on view
