23. James McBey
(1883-1959)
Palestine: “Blue Bonnets O’er the Border”

(click on image to print)
McBey, Palestine: Blue Bonnets

Palestine: “Blue Bonnets O’er the Border”

Etching, 1917, 173 x 312 mm., Hardie 192 published state. Fine impression with light plate tone on laid paper with full margins, signed in ink and numbered from the American edition of 20 (total edition 76). As meticulous and detailed as Muirhead Bone could be, McBey was fluent and spontaneous. Movement and implied depth were everything to him and if a few lines were sufficient to get his point across, he did not overburden them with rework. The image records the first entry of British troops into Palestine in the African campaign of World War I. The artistic point of the picture is the scraggly line of troops extending almost infinitely into the desert distance. McBey came from a poverty-stricken and intellectually nullified background, taught himself to etch from a borrowed copy of Lalanne’s manual, and printed his first etchings with a washing machine mangle for lack of a press. In 1917 he was appointed official war artist to the Palestine Expeditionary Force and, by the Twenties, had become immensely successful. Essentially lost in the maelstrom of the Depression and World War II, his work, bit by bit, is being rediscovered.