Range-finder painting
A range-finder painting, sometimes called range-finding painting,[1] is a large landscape painting produced as a training device to help gunners improve their accuracy. Historically, the best-documented use of such paintings was in the United States during World War I.
History
During World War I, some military gunnery training was carried out indoors.[2] While it is relatively simple to train gunners in range-finding (that is, estimating the correct distance for their shots) outdoors, it is difficult to train them in long-range gunnery indoors.[2] To solve this problem, the British[1] and U.S. militaries tested the use of large landscape paintings showing distant sites for range-finding and target-sighting in indoor gun ranges.[2] These so-called range-finder paintings proved so successful that a program was organized in the United States to produce them in larger numbers.[2] They were also used to teach soldiers how to draw military maps in the field and how to identify points of military importance such as zones of good cover.[2]
In 1918, the Salmagundi Club in New York spearheaded the effort to produce range-finder paintings for the U.S. military, providing canvas and painting materials.[2] The program resulted in dozens of landscape paintings of various French and Belgian sites that were roughly 50 by 70 inches (1.3 m × 1.8 m).[3][4] Most showed towns and villages in the near or middle distance, along with other militarily important features such as roads, bridges, canals, fields, forests, and hills.[2]
The painter
Artists who participated besides Blumenschein included
References
- ^ a b Walter, Paul Alfred Francis, and Lansing Barlett Bloom. "New Mexico in the Great War", part VII. New Mexico Historical Review 1:4 (October 1926), p. 418.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Walter, Paul A.F. "Art in War Service". Art and Archaeology 7 (January—December 1918), pp. 395–403, 409.
- ^ a b c Hassrick, Peter H., Elizabeth J. Cunningham, and Ernest Leonard Blumenschein. In Contemporary Rhythm: The Art of Ernest L. Blumenschein, p. 113. University of Oklahoma Press, 2008.
- ^ a b c Larson, Robert W., and Carole B. Larson. Ernest L. Blumenschein: The Life of an American Artist. University of Oklahoma Press, 2013.