Pageant
Salisbury’s great forte was in his painting of over forty large canvases of historical and national events, a field in which he was virtually unchallenged until 1951. The two most significant of these are The Heart of Empire – the Jubilee Thanksgiving in St Paul's Cathedral 1935 and The Coronation of their Royal Majesties King George VI and Queen Elizabeth 1937.
One of the great ironies of his art is that, although he was to all intents and purposes a pacifist, his introduction to Royalty, the aristocracy and overseas politicians came as a result of his war art, particularly his posthumous portraits of the fallen in the First World War. The large canvas of the Boy Cornwell was followed by The King and Queen visiting the Battle Districts of France. It was Salisbury who was required, by Royal Command, to paint two large images of The Burial of the Unknown Warrior for the first Remembrance Day. War memorials followed on from this. During the Second World War he was required to paint The Signing of the Anglo-Soviet Treaty and one of his most endearing images is The Briefing of an Air Squadron.
A matched pair of his pictures are in Walsall Town Hall's theatre. They were commissioned by Joseph Leckie "to commemorate the never to be forgotten valour of the South Staffordshire Regiments in the Great War 1914 - 1918" and completed in 1920. One shows "the First South Staffordshires attacking the Hohenzollern Redoubt", the other "the 5th South Staffords storming the St. Quentin Canal at Bellingtise Sept 29th 1918".
Read more about this topic: Frank O. Salisbury
Famous quotes containing the word pageant:
“Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air.
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself—
Yea, all which it inherit—shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“No Life can pompless pass away—
The lowliest career
To the same Pageant wends its way
As that exalted here—”
—Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
“What helps it now, that Byron bore,
With haughty scorn which mock’d the smart,
Through Europe to the Aetolian shore
The pageant of his bleeding heart?
That thousands counted every groan,
And Europe made his woe her own?”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)