Richard Carline
| Richard Carline | |
|---|---|
Self-portrait in uniform (1918)
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| Born |
9 February 1896 Oxford |
| Died | 18 November 1980 (aged 84) Hampstead |
| Nationality | British |
| Education | Academie de Peinture |
| Known for | Painting |
| Spouse(s) | Nancy Carline |
Richard Cotton Carline (9 February 1896 – 18 November 1980) was a British artist, arts administrator and writer. During the First World War, Carline served on the Western Front and in the Middle East, where he travelled extensively through Palestine, Syria, India and modern day Iran and Iraq. Although known for his depictions of aerial combat painted during World War One, from the mid-1930s, his output as an artist was overshadowed by his numerous roles in local, national and international artists' organisations. Carline held strong anti-fascist beliefs and also worked to gain appreciation for African art, naive art, child artists and even promote the artistic merits of postcard art.
Richard Carline was born in Oxford, the youngest of the five children born to the artist George Francis Carline and Anne Smith (1862-1945). His brother, Sydney Carline and his sister Hilda were also artists, as was his brother-in-law, Stanley Spencer. Richard Carline was educated at the Dragon School and at St Edward's School in Oxford before studying art under Percyval Tudor-Hart at the Academie de Peinture in Paris and then in London throughout 1913.
During the First World War, Carline joined the Middlesex Regiment of the British army in 1916, before transferring to the Royal Flying Corps, RFC, in 1917. He worked on wireless communications before he was tasked with developing camouflage designs for aeroplanes. From September 1917 until the spring of 1918 he was employed by the Air Ministry to paint large surveys of the front lines in France onto canvas, for which he established a studio close to the family home in Hampstead. After completing a course in aerial gunnery Carline was based, from July 1918, on the Western Front at Hesdin for six months. During this time Carline flew Bristol fighters in combat over the front lines.
Carline was asked to nominate artists to work as official war artists for the RFC. He nominated his own brother, Sydney, who was also in the RFC and had already been shot down once. In January 1919 both brothers were sent to the Middle East by the Imperial War Museum, as official war artists for the Royal Air Force with a brief to depict aerial combat. The brothers arrived in Port Said in January 1919 and then travelled to Ramleh where they were based with No. 1 Squadron of the Australian Flying Corps. From there they moved to Jerusalem and began to travel around the region to visit other historical and archaeological sites, alongside their military duties. Near Aleppo they sketched the results of the RAF bombing raids on the Turkish airbase at Rayak. After some time in Beruit they returned to flying duties, with Richard making several flights over Jerusalem and Gaza which became the basis for his painting Jerusalem and the Dead Sea From an Aeroplane. In several of his aerial paintings, Carline showed the influence of the Cubist artworks he had seen in Paris before the war as he adopted unconventional perspectives to depict the ground below as two-dimensional and abstracted.
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