Canadian Military History Volume 5 Issue 1 Article 6 1996 Women Making Shells: Marking Women’s Presence in the Munitions Work 1914–1918: The Art of Frances Loring, Florence Wyle, Mabel May, and Dorothy Stevens Susan Butlin Canadian War Museum Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh Part of the Military History Commons Recommended Citation Butlin, Susan "Women Making Shells: Marking Women’s Presence in the Munitions Work 1914–1918: The Art of Frances Loring, Florence Wyle, Mabel May, and Dorothy Stevens." Canadian Military History 5, 1 (1996) This Canadian War Museum is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Canadian Military History by an authorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Butlin: Women Making Shells: Marking Women’s Presence in the Munitions Wo Women Making Shells Marking Wo111en's Presence in Munitions Work 1914-1918 The Art of Frances Loring, Florence Wyle, Mabel May, and Dorothy Stevens Susan Butlin n 1915, while working as a volunteer by Canadian women artists during the I in a munitions factory canteen, First World War, but is also significant Canadian artist Florence Carlyle as powerful expressions of Canadian described the munitions factory in home front activity during the war. 2 letters to her family as a "systematized This paper will examine this artistic hell." However, the atmosphere of the production with consideration of the factory made a deep impression on her, social context of the time, and in the for she continued: "what a picture for light of the contemporary critical an artist. .. an artist with a fifty foot reception. canvas and tubs of paint."' The Canadian War Records This paper will focus on the art Office was established in 1916 commissioned from Canadian thanks largely to the efforts of Sir women artists during the First Max Aitken, later Lord World War by the Canadian War Beaverbrook, a wealthy expatriate Memorials Fund (CWMF), and Canadian and member of the specifically upon art which depicts British House of Commons. Initially the subject of women working in collecting materials such as Canadian munitions factories. photographs, maps, and diaries, These works of painting, sculpture Aitkin soon realized that in order to and printmaking were executed by fully document Canada's partici­ four of Canada's premier women pation in the war, and to fully express artists: Frances Loring (1887- the experience of war, the Canadian 1968), Florence Wyle ( 1881-1968), War Records Office would also have Henrietta Mabel May ( 1884-1971 ), to commission artists to record the and Dorothy Stevens ( 1888-1966) war effort. This Canadian war art between 1918 and 1920. These scheme was established as a war commissions garnered significant charity fund on 17 November 1916. critical acclaim, and were hailed as Notable Canadian artists among the most successful works commissioned in the overseas in the Canadian War Memorials program included A.Y. Jackson, (CWM) exhibitions that toured James Kerr-Lawson, and David between 1919 and 1924. The art Milne. Only two Canadian women, created by these women not only Frances Loring forms the nucleus of official war art The Shell Finisher (ca.l918) (CWM CN #850 1) ©Canadian Military History, Volume 5, Number l. Spring 1996, pp.4l-48. 41 Published by Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 1996 1 Canadian Military History, Vol. 5 [1996], Iss. 1, Art. 6 May, Frances Loring, Florence Wyle and Dorothy CANADIAN Stevens. WAR. MEMORIALS During the 1914-1918 conflict. Canadian women were not recruited as official war artists. EXHIBITION They were, however, commissioned to do ,-~-~~--------------- portraits, to record "home front" work and, in particular, to record the contributions of women engaged in war work. 5 In contrast to their male contemporaries, who were commissioned as official war artists and had a significantly broader range of subject matter available to them, women artists were employed for restricted and specific commissions. 6 Clearly adopting a protective attitude. in keeping with societal conventions, women artists' choice of subject matter was restricted to that which CWMF officials deemed appropriate for women to witness. Male artists recorded overseas and home front activity; women artists alone were restricted with regard to subject matter. The significance of women artists being assigned to record munitions activity becomes clear when examined in the context of contemporary social expectations. Prior to World War One appropriate subject matter for women Canadian War MemOTials Exhibition Poster. artists was deemed by social convention to be (CWM 95-03763 AN19870226-001) centred on the domestic world. Domestic interior scenes, still life studies, and portraiture had Florence Carlyle and Caroline Armington, were traditional connotations as "women's" subjects.7 chosen to participate in the overseas program. 3 Restrictions on the art practice of women artists, In 1918 the Canadian War Memorials Fund which included society's questioning of the very expanded its coverage of the First World War to suitability of the profession for a woman. include the Canadian home front. The home front remained in place in Canada well into the first program was overseen by Sir Edmund Walker, decades of this century. Social upheaval brought president of the Toronto Art Museum and about by the First World War. with an champion of Canadian art. However, Eric Brown, accompanying loosening of many of the strict the Director of the National Gallery of Canada, social mores of the previous century. gradually played a pivotal role in the commissioning of resulted in great changes in women's roles in artists to record home front activity. Brown, who the cultural community. Thus, while the CWMF had misgivings as to the "pictorial qualities of rulings that confined women artists to painting modern warfare" was, however, much in favour home front activities were restrictive. these of the home front as a subject for art, writing commissions facilitated the expansion of that it "had vastly more pictorial possibilities than acceptable subject matter for women to include the front line trenches. "4 Eric Brown was soon non-traditional areas such as industry and actively promoting the importance of this armaments. Despite restrictions which kept homefront artwork to the overall CWM scheme. women artists from the areas of combat, the War Memorials commissions represented a significant Walker and Brown employed more than 20 opportunity for Canadian women artists to artists to document the war effort in Canada, participate in an unprecedented national artistic and of this number, four were women: Mabel scheme. In addition, those commissions presented an opportunity for them to exhibit their 42 https://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh/vol5/iss1/6 2 Butlin: Women Making Shells: Marking Women’s Presence in the Munitions Wo work to a broad national audience and to gain artists received commissions to record the image national exposure. of the woman munitions worker. In total, it is estimated that 35,000 women While war gradually loosened social were employed in munitions production in restrictions on women, this was thought at the Canada during World War One.8 In addition to time to be only a temporary state of affairs for presenting professional opportunities for women the duration of the war. In 1919, one Toronto artists, the employment of women in munitions critic observed of Loring and Wyle's bronze manufacturing from 1914-1918 helped to sculptures of women munitions workers that "it establish a new and unconventional female image was a happy thought to preserve these figures of that was in direct contrast to accepted definitions the working women who were so peculiarly the of femininity. This emerging role for women creation ojthe great war." 12 The implication was encompassed many of the characteristics of the clearly that women in the working role were a socially emancipated "New Woman." a concept temporary aberration. that emerged during the late 19th century and presented a modern, alternative image of In 1918, when commissioned by the CWMF femininity. 9 Wages in munitions factories to paint "studies and [a] picture of women's compared favourably with those of domestic munition work," Henrietta Mabel May was a service and with the other limited career options successful Canadian artist at the beginning of a for women prior to 1914. Significantly, in the long and critically acclaimed career. 13 In an article munitions industry women were paid the same entitled "Women and Art in Canada" published rate as men for the same work. Thus, the woman in 1914. May was included as "amongst the more who worked in munitions had economic freedom recent lights in art in Canada." 1 ~ In September and independent purchasing power. 10 Because 1918 May received a letter of confirmation from of the dress requirements that had many women Sir Edmund Walker and a photostat permit from munition workers wearing trousers for the first the Imperial Munitions Board which allowed her time in their lives. a new body image was access to munitions factories to record the work presented for women. As with the concept of the of women engaged in munitions work. Her chosen "New Women," the image of the female munitions sites were in Montreal at the CPR Angus Shops worker was that of a strong, healthy, and athletic and also, after further negotiation of "much red woman, wearing comfortable. less restrictive tape," at the Northern Electric plant in Montreal. 1 ~ clothing, and performing physically demanding The three studies and one large oil painting, work on a daily basis. entitled Women Making Shells (1918) (see front cover), completed by the following September, This new image of women was in conflict with were shown in the Home Work Section of the traditional definitions of socially acceptable Canadian War Memorials exhibitions that toured behaviour.