A Taube

image: The body of a small French schoolboy lies on the pavement outside a house. The corpse is surrounded by broken cobblestones from a hole blown in the street during an air raid.

The Taube (Taube translates as ‘Dove’, taub as ‘death’) was a German reconnaisance plane but carried bombs that could be thrown from the cockpit. The casual violence of the scene marks the increasing vulnerability of the civilian population. Both the title and the evidence of an explosion imply that this was the cause of death of the child. The assailants are deliberately excluded from the painting frame, the point being that they are out of sight and far removed both physically and emotionally from the scene, unable to control their attack or witness its ends. At first sight, the artist appears to simply demand an emotional response to the death of the Belgian child. Spread-eagled on the pavement, he is completely unprotected and his death incidental to the attack and to the war. However, the title raises other questions. As war demanded the efforts of entire nations and as the technology of the First World War developed, almost any target could be hit and its legitimacy justified. Judgement is not specifically against the individual pilots but against the means and methods of war. In his autobiography, 'Paint and Prejudice', Nevinson describes the scene: 'Dunkirk was one of the first towns to suffer aerial bombardment, and I was one of the first men to see a child who had been killed by it. There the small boy lay before me, a symbol of all that was to come.'

The Belgian child is the casualty of an attack made from a German aircraft. The Taube was primarily a reconnaissance plane but carried bombs that could be thrown from the cockpit. The casual violence of the scene marks the increasing vulnerability of the civilian population. In his autobiography, Paint and Prejudice, Nevinson described the scene he witnessed: 'There the small boy lay before me, a symbol of all that was to come.'

C.W.R. NEVINSON