page_title: World War I in popular culture
section_title: Charles Webb Gilbert
hierarchical_section_title: World War I in popular culture / Art / Sculpture / Charles Webb Gilbert
caption_attribution_description: Sculpture by Charles Web Gilbert - the figure of an AIF soldier designed as a part of the Mont St. Quentin, France, AIF Memorial. AWM caption: Mont St Quentin, Peronne, France. c. 1925. The original Memorial to the men of the 2nd Australian Division, featuring an heroic bronze statue of an Australian soldier bayoneting a German eagle. A bronze plaque on the pedestal of the monument reads: 'To the officers, non-commissioned officers and men of the 2nd Australian Division who fought in France and Belgium in the Great War 1916, 1917, 1918.' Several wreaths have been laid at the base of the memorial, including one from Le Conseil Municipal and another with a ribbon that reads: 'To our comrades of the Second Australian Division from the British Army.' The statue on top of the memorial and the bas reliefs on its sides, which were sculpted respectively by Lieutenant Web Gilbert and May Butler-George, were removed by the occupying German Army in 1940. They were later replaced with a new statue and new reliefs.
context_page_description: The years of warfare were the backdrop for art which is now preserved and displayed in such institutions as the Imperial War Museum in London, the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, and the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. Official war artists were commissioned by the British Ministry of Information and the authorities of other countries.
  After 1914, avant-garde artists began to consider and investigate many things that had once seemed unimaginable. As Marc Chagall later remarked, "The war was another plastic work that totally absorbed us, which reformed our forms, destroyed the lines, and gave a new look to the universe." In this same period, academic and realist artists continued to produce new work. Traditional artists and their artwork developed side by side with the shock of the new as culture reinvented itself in relationships with new technologies.
  Some artists responded positively to the changes wrought by war. C. R. W. Nevinson, associated with the Futurists, wrote that "This war will be a violent incentive to Futurism, for we believe there is no beauty except in strife, and no masterpiece without aggressiveness."
context_section_description: This heroic sculpture was designed as a part of the Mont St. Quentin Memorial which was dedicated in the mid-1920s at Mont St. Quentin, France. The original memorial to the men of the 2nd Australian Division features an heroic bronze statue of an Australian soldier bayoneting a German eagle.
  A bronze plaque on the pedestal of the monument reads: 'To the officers, non-commissioned officers and men of the 2nd Australian Division who fought in France and Belgium in the Great War 1916, 1917, 1918.'
  The statue on top of the memorial and the bas reliefs on its sides, which were sculpted respectively by Lieutenant Charles Web Gilbert and May Butler-George, were removed by the occupying German Army in 1940. They were later replaced with a new statue and new reliefs.
caption: The Mont St. Quentin memorial (c. 1925) commemorates the men of the Australian Imperial Forces (AIF) and their contribution in the battle which was fought in this area.
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