Sydney Carline

Category
ARTS - PHOTOGRAPHY - ARCHITECTURE

Language
ENGLISH

In January 1919 both the Carline brothers were sent to the Middle East by the Imperial War Museum, IWM, as official war artists for the Royal Air Force, RAF, with a brief to depict aerial combat.[8][9] The brothers arrived in Port Said in January 1919 and then travelled to Ramleh where they were based with No. 1 Squadron of the Australian Flying Corps. From there they moved to Jerusalem and began to travel around the region, often visiting historical and archaeological sites, alongside their military duties. Near Aleppo they sketched the results of the RAF bombing raids on the Turkish airbase at Rayak. At Wadi Fara Sydney made a set of studies which eventually became the painting The Destruction of the Turkish Transport in the Gorge of the Wadi Fara, Palestine, which depicted an RAF attack on a Turkish column in a steep gorge. After some time in Beirut the brothers returned to flying duties, with Sydney making several flights over Wadi Fara and the Sea of Galilee. The brothers stayed in Cairo before moving to Baghdad where they remained until the middle of July when they went to Mosul from where the RAF were planning bombing raids against the Kurdish uprising. Before that action they were recalled to England for demobilisation and arrived home in November 1919.[5] Although between them the brothers had enough sketches for twenty-five major paintings, the RAF Section of the IWM had no funds left to acquire new paintings. Eventually the Museum paid Sydney for four finished paintings and bought three from Richard. The brothers were allowed to keep the 300 plus sketches they had made in the Middle East and these formed the basis of their successful Goupil Gallery exhibition in March 1920.[5]

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