Yesterday I caught an episode of Michael Portillo's Great British Railway Journeys in which he visited Plas Newydd on Anglesey, where he duly admired Rex Whistler's magnificent mural in the dining room. The amiable lady showing him around filled him in on the background, and mentioned the fact that Whistler was intending to return and finish a few details after the war, but was killed in action in Normandy. Although I knew Whistler had died in the war, I didn't know the details, so I checked out the story – and desperately sad it is.
At the start of the war, Whistler was too old for immediate conscription (he was 35), but he was determined to join up, believing it was the duty of men of his age to fight, rather than 'young boys'. The extraordinary self-portrait above shows him in May 1940, in his new Welsh Guards uniform, sitting on the verandah of a friend's house overlooking Regent's Park. It's a virtuoso work, and quite unlike any other self-portrait I can think of. When I saw it for the first time (it hangs in the National Army Museum), I was quite astonished at its impact. Inevitably, in view of what came after, it has, for all the gaiety of its detail, something decidedly melancholy about it, as if the shadow falling on the artist is that of his impending death. As it was, Whistler spent the next four years in military training in various parts of England, while at the same time drawing and painting whenever he could. He could have had a headquarters job, but when offered one by his divisional commander, he replied, 'Well, I'm bloody well not going – Sir! I'm going to stay with my troop!' The commander did not press him. Then, in June 1944, Whistler, now a troop commander in charge of three tanks, crossed with his regiment to Normandy. There, on his first day of action, near Caen, he was killed. He had left the safety of his own tank to help some of his men trapped in another tank, and was blown up by the blast from a German mortar. He is buried in the small military cemetery at Banneville-la-Campagne.
My late father knew someone, many years ago, who had stormed the beaches at Normandy on D-Day. He said that the only reason he survived was that he was in the third wave of soldiers to go up the beach instead of the first two waves.
ReplyDeleteYes, a lucky man, and a terrible ordeal, even for the third wave... Whistler's war came a little later, as part of the battle for Caen, which was bad enough. Thanks, Richard.
DeleteMy family and I made a return visit to Plas Newydd last week to see the mural. I never tire of this incredible work. I fell in love with Whistler’s work as a 12 year old reading the Beverley Nichols Thatched Roof trilogy illustrated by him. Such talent. Charmaine
ReplyDeleteThanks, Charmaine. Such talent indeed – and so much achieved in such a short life.
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