Royal Artillery Memorial - Design and Symbolism

Design and Symbolism

The Royal Artillery Memorial today is located in what Malcolm Miles has termed the "leafy traffic island" of Hyde Park Corner in central London. The memorial is 43 feet long, 21 feet wide and 30 feet high (13 m by 6 m by 9 m); the pedestal and the one-third oversized replica of a BL 9.2 inch Howitzer, modelled on a gun in the Imperial War Museum, that sits on top of it are made of Portland stone. Cast by the A. B. Burton foundry, four bronze figures are placed on each side of the memorial: a driver to the west side, an artillery captain on the east, a shell carrier to the north, and a dead soldier on the south. Carved stone reliefs show various detailed military scenes from the First World War. The memorial's main inscription on the west and east faces reads "In proud remembrance of the forty-nine thousand and seventy-six of all ranks of the Royal Regiment of Artillery who gave their lives for King and country in the Great War 1914—1919".

The memorial forms a sharp contrast with both the earlier monuments of the South African War and most contemporary monuments to the First World War. Memorials of the South African War typically included figures of soldiers, sometimes dying in conflict, but always heroically in a "beautiful death". Classical symbolism was often used to distance the event of death from the observer, as typified in William Colton's work at Worcester. Most First World War memorials reacted to the criticism of this approach by adopting cleaner architectural forms, but still retaining the ideal of a "beautiful death", an approach which can be seen at Lutyens' Southampton War Memorial, the precursor to his more famous Cenotaph in London. These memorials frequently used abstract, beautiful designs intended to remove the viewer from the real world, and focus them on an idealised sense of self-sacrifice. Soldiers in these memorials were still frequently depicted as Homeric warriors, and classical ideals and symbols remained popular, as can be seen at the Machine Gun Corps Memorial by Francis Derwent Wood, displayed close to the Royal Artillery Memorial itself. Where dead soldiers were shown, they were depicted in an image of serenity and peace, often physically distanced from the viewer on a high platform, the entire effect reflected by the silence that traditionally surrounds ceremonies at the Cenotaph.

The Royal Artillery Monument attempted a very different effect. Jagger takes a realist approach to his figures, embracing detailed images of military power with none of the classical symbolism of other monuments, or even Jagger's own pre-war pieces. The art historian Reginald Wilenski likens the memorial to the work of Frank Brangwyn, who focused on depicting the physical labour of soldiers and workers during the war. The memorial shows the three upright bronze figures stood at ease, rather than to attention; the driver even leans back against the parapet, his cape hanging over his outstretched arms, suggesting an attitude of exhaustion or contemplation. The faceless, heavily laden statue of the fallen soldier appears less at rest than tired, pulled down as if by a great weight. At the same time, the sheer size of the memorial, including the over-sized gun and the larger-than-life bronze figures, exudes a sense of strength and power; the figures are stocky, confident and imposing. This strength and power contributes to the sense of masculinity that pervades the work, from the phallic image of the howitzer, to the solid, muscular figures of the gunners.

Despite the realist nature of the bronze statues in the design, commentators have often also noted the dehumanising aspects of the memorial. Its sheer size and bulk of the howitzer serves to distance the observer, dehumanising the soldiers in a similar way to the Cubist war paintings of Wyndham Lewis and Richard Nevinson. Even the carved stone reliefs have an aggressive, hostile quality to them, a consequence of their focus on surface detail at the expense of the humans in the design. When questioned about his lifelike depictions, Jagger remarked to The Daily Express newspaper that the "experience in the trenches persuaded me of the necessity for frankness and truth". Using what historian John Glaves-Smith describes as themes of "endurance and sacrifice, not dynamism and conflict", the memorial can be felt to speak to its audience about the experience of war in a way that the Cenotaph, for example, does not.