The Artists Rifles Introduction

I am now an Artist in a wider sense! having joined the Artists London Regiment of Territorials, the old Corps which started with Rossetti, Leighton & Millais as members in 1860. Every man must do his bit in this horrible business so I have given up painting & bid it adieu for who knows how long, to take up the queer business of soldiering. Thus wrote Paul Nash in September 1914. As a young man he had been greatly inspired by the Pre-Raphaelites, and unlikely as it seems, they too had answered their countrys call in a time of crisis half a century earlier. Unlike Nashs generation, those Victorian artists would never see action, but from their patriotic zeal the Artists Rifles were born. Accounts of the original recruits attempts at soldiering may have a touch of Dads Army. Yet enthusiasm was eventually tempered with sound organisation and training to create a unit of such repute that, in the end, it was quite logically amalgamated with one of Britain's elite forces the S.A.S. This exhibition tells the story of The Artists Rifles from their foundation in 1860, through two world wars and on to amalgamation in 1947. Artist members are represented with paintings, drawings and sculpture. Military activities are revealed by much previously unseen material from the collection of The Artists Rifles Association.
New recruits at Tavistock Square in 1914. A member of the 20th Middlesex (Artists) Rifle Volunteers towards the end of the 19th century.