The Bersaglieri, 1918

Shortly after the United States entered World War I on April 6, 1917, a series of Liberty Loan drives were organized in major American cities to encourage citizens to help the federal government defray its wartime expenses by purchasing bonds. In New York, elaborate parades were held on the city’s main thoroughfare, Fifth Avenue, which was specially decorated with flags of the Allied forces. The city’s artists contributed to such patriotic events by designing war posters and various forms of propaganda or by painting pictures of the parades. The most famous examples of the latter are the approximately 30 paintings of Fifth Avenue bedecked with flags by Childe Hassam (American, 1859 - 1935), represented by Allies Day, May 1917 at the National Gallery of Art.[1]  [1]
For an extensive discussion of artists’ contributions to the war effort in New York and Hassam’s flag paintings, see Ilene Susan Fort, The Flag Paintings of Childe Hassam (Los Angeles, 1988), 198.

George Luks’s first Fifth Avenue parade subject, Blue Devils on Fifth Avenue [fig. 1]   [fig. 1] George Luks, Blue Devils on Fifth Avenue, 1918, oil on canvas, The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, acquired 1918, represents a regiment of French soldiers marching past Delmonico’s restaurant at the intersection of 45th Street and Fifth Avenue during a Liberty Loan drive parade on the morning of April 30, 1918.[2]  [2]
Blue Devils on Fifth Avenue was specifically painted for an exhibition of patriotic art that Phillips co-organized with A. E. Gallatin for the National Arts Club that was ultimately held at the Kraushaar Galleries in June 1918. A measure of the painting’s success can be judged by its appearance as the frontispiece for Gallatin’s Art and the Great War (New York, 1919) and as an illustration in his Allied War Salon (New York, 1918). The festive painting, which was based on sketches that Luks made while observing the event, was greeted with critical acclaim and acquired by Duncan Phillips, who pronounced it a “masterpiece of impressionistic painting, an important canvas which would have value for its technical qualities alone.”[3]  [3]
Erika D. Passantino, ed., The Eye of Duncan Phillips: A Collection in the Making (Washington, DC, 1999), 324–326.

Luks’s lesser-known Bersaglieri represents a regiment of Italian sharpshooters who had been sent to the United States in 1918 to stimulate interest in the fourth Liberty Loan drive. Introduced into the Sardinian army in 1849, they had served heroically in numerous military engagements and were noted for their endurance and ability to march at a speed of four miles an hour. When Italy entered World War I in 1915, 12 regiments of Bersaglieri were in the regular army and 20 battalions in the mobile militia. On October 12, 1918, they marched at the head of a procession led by President Woodrow Wilson from East 72nd Street down Fifth Avenue to Washington Square. The event was described in the New York Times:

First in order came the Bersaglieri of Italy in their blue uniforms and brown “tin hats.” Every man was a veteran who had helped stem the Austro-German torrent that once upon a time threatened to overwhelm Italy. The Italians came by at a “turkey trot” and as it was Italy Day at the Altar of Liberty as well as the anniversary of the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, the veterans got a double sized tribute. They were still “turkey trotting” when they disappeared down the avenue.[4]  [4]
“Acclaim Wilson as He Marches in Big Loan Parade,” New York Times, October 13, 1918, 20.

Luks’s painting of the parade is remarkably similar to the photograph of the event that accompanied the New York Times article [fig. 2]   [fig. 2] Paul Thompson, “Italy’s Famous Alpini and Bersaglieri who have come to New York especially help in putting the Fourth Liberty Loan ‘Over the Top’,” New York Times, October 13, 1918, p. 58. Image courtesy the Library of Congress.

The Bersaglieri is an effective piece of wartime propaganda. A critic had noted how Blue Devils on Fifth Avenue conveys a sense of “the electric feeling that seems to float from the crowd and through the crowd on especially sympathetic occasions.”[5]  [5]
Henry McBride, “Views and Reviews in the World of Art,” The Sun, June 2, 1918, George Benjamin Luks papers, 1902–1961, reel 95, frame 154, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Here the artist also captured the soldiers’ martial prowess, the din of the crowd, and the excitement of the occasion. Wearing their distinctive green-gray uniforms and steel helmets decorated with flowing feathers, the Bersaglieri march in unison down a flag-draped Fifth Avenue. The tuba players at the head of the column dramatically step out of the shadows cast by the tall buildings on the avenue into the light-drenched cross street as Italian and Red Cross flags billow in the wind. The viewer is immersed in the scene at street level, creating a sense of immediacy. Luks’s success in enlivening the scene was indebted to his experience as a newspaper illustrator covering the Cuban revolt against Spain in 1895.

Shortly after World War I ended, Luks painted two other military processional subjects, Armistice Night [fig. 3]   [fig. 3] George Luks, Armistice Night, 1918, oil on canvas, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, gift of an anonymous donor, 54.58 and Czechoslovakian Army Entering Vladivostok, Siberia, in 1918 [fig. 4]   [fig. 4] George Luks, Czechoslovakian Army Entering Vladivostok, Siberia, in 1918, 1918, oil on canvas, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Mr. and Mrs. William Preston Harrison Collection.[6]  [6]
The latter subject, which may have been executed around October 1918 following the Czech Day celebrations of the Fourth Liberty Loan drive, was painted with the aid of an eye witness to the event. See Ilene Susan Fort and Michael Quick, American Art: A Catalogue of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Collection (Los Angeles, 1991), 278–279. He also painted two other war-related subjects that were on display during the Fourth Liberty Loan drive: In the Service (1918), depicting a Red Cross nurse in front of a billowing American flag, and Fight to Buy or Uncle Sam (1918), an unorthodox image of the legendary figure as a long-haired politician.[7]  [7]
In the Service and Fight to Buy are discussed in Stanley L. Cuba, Nina Kasanof, and Judith O’Toole, George Luks: An American Artist (Wilkes-Barre, PA, 1987), 35–36. Finally, Knitting for the Soldiers: High Bridge Park (c. 1918, Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago) was exhibited alongside Blue Devils on Fifth Avenue at the Kraushaar Galleries in June 1918.

Robert Torchia

July 24, 2024