nature of war

Rae Smith's superb designs for War Horse are now on show at the National.

The designs capture the journey of Captain Nicholls as he goes from the Devon countryside to Calais to the Western Front by showing how his sketches changed over that time.

As I wrote in the the NT programme for War Horse his drawings start out 'conservative, detached, genteel', and then, when he's on the move, they become 'rough and half-finished'. After his first calvary charge, we see how his world is blown to pieces,

'His sky has now broken down into cubist panels and the rain falls in straight lines like nails. Even nature has turned against him.'

Pic: 'Bombardment' by Rae Smith