I first came to hear about Richard and Sydney Carline in an article of The Guardian about a current exhibition about their work.
"British Scouts leaving their Aerodrome on Patrol, over the Asiago Plateau, Italy" 1918
I confess I never heard about their work before and when thinking about it, I could not even remember any famous painting depicting planes… let alone war planes! That’s what attracted my attention and pushed me to find more examples of his art.
Richard and Sidney Carline were war pilots, who fought in France, in Italy and in the Middle East in the Royal Flying Corps during and after the First World War. Thanks to their artistic skills they received an official war artist commission in order to document aerial warfare.
" The Sea of Galilee: Aeroplanes Attacking Turkish Boats, 1919 " by Sydney Carline.
It’s worth remembering that it was the first time planes were used extensively on the front. In the middle of that bloodbath that was WWI, the dogfights between the German and Allies pilots were probably the only heroic deeds worth remembering of that period.
"Flying Over the Desert at Sunset, Mesopotamia, 1919" by Sydney Carline.
As evidenced by their long and descriptive titles, these paintings were primarily designed to serve as a historical testimony of a precise moment of the war. They emphasize the fact that they are not (totally) imaginary and that they are representing (as best as is possible) a real slice of a pilot life.
' The Destruction of the Turkish Transport in the Gorge of the Wadi Fara, Palestine ' by Sydney Carline.
Since the Carlines probably didn’t have time to sketch from their cockpit, we can assume that they painted and drew from memory and their paintings have that dreamlike naive quality of a dream. There is no blood, there is barely a human in sight…
"Camel Scouts on Patrol over the Italian Alps, 1918" by Sydney Carline.
To finish, maybe it's a stretch but I really think that there is a link between their work and the great japanese director Hayao Miyazaki. I’m pretty sure that Miyazaki knew of Richard and Sydney Carline and that he drew inspiration from their paintings for his movie Porco Rosso. Just saying!
"Mount Hermon and Mount Sannin above the Clouds, 1920" by Richard Carline
Sources and credits:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Carline
http://www.iwm.org.uk/history/stunning-aerial-artwork-of-the-first-world-war