Artist     Paul Gough
Title      Catafalque (for Max Aitken)
Date      2003
Media    mixed media
Size      152.5 x 101.5cm
Ref         950

Purchased from the 151st RWA Annual Exhibition in 2003.

Catafalque (for Max Aitken)
This drawing, made with chalks, conte and charcoal on very heavy 460 gm2 black Somerset Satin paper, is one of three in a sequence of images of ‘fictitious’ monuments that I have drawn in the past few years. The other two, one to the architect Lutyens, the other to I.K.Brunel form a three-part image and are similar in scale, tonal intensity and general design. The drawings were informed by research I was doing into British war art and First World War monuments and cemeteries. At the time of making this drawing I was writing about the vexed history of the Bristol Cenotaph. It took over took fourteen years to find a site for this reverential monument in the centre of the city and the process aroused extraordinary passions at all tiers of Bristol society.

The title is a passing reference to the Canadian entrepreneur Max Aitken who created, in 1916, a scheme for the systematic use of artists to record the Canadian contribution to the First World War. With characteristic insight, Aitken recruited the art critic Paul Konody, of the London Observer, to advise him about the choice of artists. They became known as the ‘Konodian army’ and produced so much high quality material that British government propagandists were heard to complain that ‘the Canadians seem to be running this war !’ In 1918 Aitken was appointed to head the British Ministry of Information and later became Lord Beaverbrook.

This may explain the newsprint references, although like most images including the ‘wicket’ at the foot of the monument they owe more to serendipity as they do to any attempt to illustrate historical fact. A catafalque unlike a ‘cenotaph’ which is an empty tomb that honours those buried elsewhere is a temporary raised platform on which a body lies in state before or during a funeral.

Paul Gough

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