Royal Artillery Memorial - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

The Royal Artillery Memorial has continued to be the subject of much critical discussion. After the unveiling, a vigorous debate occurred in the British newspapers about the memorial. The Times was critical, comparing it unfavourably to the Cenotaph, whilst The Daily Mail highlighted the cost of the monument, and argued that the money could have been better spent on directly caring for injured veterans. Both the dead soldier and the howitzer drew particular comment; art critic Selwyn Image complained about having any sort of artillery gun on the monument, whilst Lord Curzon was quoted as describing the howitzer as "a toad squatting, which is about to spit fire out of its mouth...nothing more hideous could ever be conceived". Modernists, such as Roger Fry, critiqued the conventional, secure structure that underpins the memorial.

Other opinions were more positive. The Manchester Guardian noted that the frankness of the portrayal was a "terrible revelation long overdue", and hoped that veterans would be able to show the monument to their wives and children as a way of explaining the events of the war. Ex-servicemen were quoted by the newspaper as reminiscing about the war as they examined the statue, and remarking on how the bronze figures had captured the reality of their time in the artillery. The Illustrated London News reported how, two days after the official ceremony, a crowd had gathered in the rain just before dawn to conduct a small ceremony at the memorial; the newspaper felt that this said more about the quality of the memorial than the more negative writings of art critics. These voices eventually held sway, and the memorial came to be popularly termed "the special Cenotaph of the Gunners", with Lord Edward Gleichen praising it in 1928 as "a strikingly imaginative and most worthy representation". By the 1930s, it was one of the best known monuments in Europe.

In later years, the reputation of the work diminished. The art critic Geoffrey Grigson echoed the comments of Lord Curzon, when he complained in 1980 that the memorial was a "squat toad of foolish stone". A renewed focus on Jagger's works, including the Royal Artillery memorial, in the 1980s has led to a fresh reappraisal of the piece; the most recent critical work on the memorial has described it as a "work of the highest quality and distinction".