The works in the National Portrait Gallery’s show of paintings from WWI put faces to the figures, but also let you make a connection to those tragedies – they help you grasp humanity a bit better. Like the war itself, the exhibition starts with royalty. King George V and Kaiser Wilhelm face forward with pompous pride and arrogance. We then encounter the commanding officers: stout men with steely eyes. There’s a constant divide here between power and its consequences. William Orpen’s depictions of generals and field marshals sit alongside the faceless corpse of a medic by Gilbert Rogers and CRW Nevinson’s brutal futurist machine gunners. It’s a contrast between the men in power, and the men who gave their lives.
