John Travers Cornwell, Boy 1st class (1900-1916), 20th century (oil)

Creator: Ambrose McEvoy This painting was part of an intended series of portraits of Victoria Cross holders commissioned from McEvoy, a fashionable society portrait painter who was also a war artist. He worked from photographs but found the task daunting and it was never completed. Cornwell was a 16-year-old gun sight-setter on HMS ‘Chester’. When the ship went into action at the Battle of Jutland, 31 May 1916, all his gun crew were killed or wounded but Cornwell remained at his post despite fatal injuries. His portrait became the icon for this complex and ambiguous battle which, on balance, the British won but of which Churchill remarked that Admiral Jellicoe could also ‘have lost the war in an afternoon’. Cornwell was a perfect example to small boys on how to serve their country, and to those adults who had failed to recognize the importance of duty and self sacrifice at a time of mass unionization, strikes and suffragette protest. According to the Daily Mirror on 22 September 1916 ‘Celebrations were held yesterday in the elementary schools throughout the kingdom in honour of Jack Cornwell, VC.’ The article was accompanied by a photograph of pupils at Walton Road School, Ilford, saluting a portrait of the boy hero who had been a pupil there, while his mother and sister look on. A half-length portrait of Jack Cornwell looking out of the picture space and wearing the uniform of a sailor. He was the sight-setter at one of the cruiser ‘Chester’s’ forward 5.5 inch guns at the Battle of Jutland. When the ‘Chester’ went into action all the gun-crew were killed or wounded including Jack Cornwell, but he stuck to his post to the end. A few days later he died in hospital ashore. He was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross. McEvoy was a fashionable society portrait painter prior to the outbreak of the 1914-18 war. He was engaged as an official War Artist and given the exacting task of re-creating portraits of posthumous VC’s in oils using faded and tinted studio photographs. McEvoy found the task too demanding and although he started several he finished none. This portrait is still squared up and there is something of the photographic quality in the way he has attempted this sensitive portrait. The painting is a loan from a descendant of the artist together with that of Lt Wm E Sanders DSO RN who died in 1917 and was awarded a posthumous VC, see BHC3145. McEvoy trained at the Slade with the maritime artist, John Everett, whose maritime paintings are nearly all in the Collection.