Factors Influencing Frontline Artists’ Drawings of the Crimean War

On 21 April 1855, The Illustrated London News (The ILN) published Interior of the Malakoff Bastion [Figure 1], an engraving based on a drawing made by Joseph Crowe, an artist sent to the Crimea by The ILN to produce eyewitness drawings of the war. The illustration shows the aftermath of the French capture of the Russian stronghold. In the foreground, a group of dead Russian soldiers lie in a dishevelled heap with their arms outstretched exposed to the view, at close quarters, of small groups of slim, upright and smartly uniformed French officers. Behind the Russian soldiers are the remains of the bastion, the walls battered and blown apart by the French. The glimpse of landscape in the distance is barren and desolate except for the French flag on a far away hillside. The image feels very still and the only sense of movement is created in the bottom right hand corner where a body is being carried away.