Jonathan Black, Art Historian

[ilkley remembers]

Todays ‘Times’ obituary section reported the death of the art critic and historian Jonathan Black , although, he appears to have died back in April. Black was well known for his studies of the works by war artists such as of CRW Nevinson, William Rothenstein and Paul Nash. The Times obituary states:

 “Our sense of what the war was like,” Black once said, “has been ineradicably shaped by paintings and drawings by people such as Paul Nash.” In his own research — on war artists and on other 20th-century painters, sculptors and printmakers — he wanted to highlight how less well-known figures had also shaped popular memory. They had, he felt, suffered unjust academic neglect despite their work in, say, war memorials remaining in the public eye.

Black sought to uncover not only the development of artistic styles, but also the motivation of those creating that art, and their interaction with the authorities as “war art” became a matter of political interest.

He was particularly interested in applying the gender based analysis pioneered by historians like Joanna Bourke which focuses on the more cultural aspects of the war.

Much of his writing can be accessed by rather expensive academic texts but his 2006 Phd thesis awarded by University College London can be read online.

Its title “Neither Beasts Nor Gods But Men was inspired by Frederic Mannings ‘Her Privates We’

https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1383230/1/406520.pdf