In the Reframing Remembrance project, we have been examining how memorials and spaces of remembrance serve as both political and cultural landscapes. As part of this exploration, Mark Connelly, Professor of Modern British History at the University of Kent, took the Young Producers on a walking tour of memorials around Whitehall, beginning with the Cenotaph, to analyse the symbolism embedded in these sites.
During this tour, we visited several memorials, including the Wellington Arch (1825), the Guards Crimean War Memorial (1853), and the Cenotaph (1920), all of which are maintained by English Heritage. Although I studied art and architectural history at university, I had never given much thought to the stylistic aspects of memorials until this tour. I was struck by how their architectural designs engaged with major art-historical movements of the 19th and 20th centuries, many of which I recognised from my academic learning. The contrasts between the memorials underscored broader shifts in how war and commemoration were understood politically and culturally during this era, evolving from expressions of national patriotism to sources of national grief.
Wellington Arch
19th-century depictions of the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) celebrated Britain’s victory over France, heavily focusing on naval hero Lord Nelson and army commander the Duke of Wellington. In the visual arts, works like Benjamin West’s The Death of Nelson (1806) immortalised Nelson’s death on board the ‘Victory’ at the Battle of Trafalgar (1805), and Robert Alexander Hillingford’s Wellington at Waterloo (1881), portrayed the duke rallying his infantry before his victorious fight against Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo (1815).
These paintings exemplify the tradition of ‘history painting,’ a genre established by the French Royal Academy in the seventeenth century to depict scenes from ancient Greek and Roman history and mythology with narrative and allegorical themes. History painting was considered the highest form of art, above portraiture, genre scenes, and landscapes. By the end of the eighteenth century, it expanded to include contemporary historical subjects, including depictions of conflict.
Even though over 300,000 British soldiers and sailors died during the Napoleonic wars, most from harsh conditions like disease, malnutrition, and exposure rather than heroic combat, artworks portrayed the conflict with romanticised, grand narratives that served as governmental propaganda.
War memorials commemorating the Napoleonic Wars also followed the traditions of history painting in their design and symbolism, as seen in the Wellington Arch on Hyde Park Corner. Situated opposite the Duke of Wellington’s former residence, Apsley House, the Arch features the largest bronze sculpture in Europe, cast from cannons captured from the French at Waterloo. Designed by Decimus Burton (1800–1881), the sculpture depicts the Angel of Peace descending on the Chariot of War, also known as the Quadriga – an ancient Roman four-horse chariot. Drawing on classical motifs and inspired by the triumphal Arch of Constantine in Rome, the Wellington Arch presents the Napoleonic conflict in grand terms to foster national pride and uses Wellington’s name to reinforce a sense of British exceptionalism. To distract from the heavy wartime taxes imposed on the working class, which had led to labour unrest and stoked fears of revolution, the monument’s patriotic intentions are underscored by its prominent location on the tree-lined approach to Buckingham Palace, the residence of King George III, the reigning monarch during the Napoleonic wars.
The Guards Crimean War Memorial (1859), located at Waterloo Place in St James’s, marks a shift in how conflict was depicted in the 19th century. Often called the first modern war, the Crimean War (1854–1856) saw the development of war photography, which brought images of conflict directly to the public through publications such as the Illustrated London News and Punch. British photographer Roger Fenton, for instance, travelled to the Crimea in 1855, capturing images that documented military life, camp conditions, and desolate battlefields as evident in his photograph The Valley of the Shadow of Death (1855).
Guards Crimean War Memorial
The Crimean conflict coincided with the rise of the Realism movement in art, which rejected the idealised classicism of academic painting in favour of direct observation and honest depictions of contemporary life. Artists responded by portraying the realities of the conflict through paintings of exhausted soldiers and wounded veterans, as seen in Lady Elizabeth Butler’s The Roll Call (1874).
Designed by sculptor John Bell (1811–1895) and unveiled in 1861, the Guards Crimean War Memorial reflects an evolving public perception of war. Its tall granite pedestal supports three bronze statues of Guardsmen: a Grenadier, a Fusilier, and a Coldstream Guard, each depicted with distinct features and uniform, emphasising the individuality of the soldiers over a faceless collective.
On the monument is a plaque reading: ‘To the memory of 2152 Officers. Officers and Privates of the Brigade of Guards who fell during the war with Russia in 1854–56. Erected by their Comrades.’ This inscription reflects an increased public recognition of war’s true cost, shifting the focus from glorifying victory to mourning the lives lost. Above the Guardsmen, however, is an allegorical female figure representing Honour, holding laurel wreaths, a classical symbol of victory. This figure evokes the tradition of history painting and shows that, despite the sombre depiction of the soldiers, an enduring expectation of heroism persisted. Like the Wellington Arch, the bronze sculptures were cast from cannons captured at the siege of Sevastopol, further underlining the theme of military triumph.
At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, official war artists were commissioned by government schemes to document and support the war effort. While some artists continued 19th-century traditions, depicting romanticised and allegorical scenes reminiscent of the Napoleonic and Crimean Wars, many felt that this tradition of painting could no longer capture the scale or brutality of modern conflict.
The mechanised, industrial nature of the Great War prompted new artistic approaches, with artists such as Paul Nash creating surreal landscape paintings of the Western Front, as in The Menin Road (1919), while C.R.W. Nevinson responded to the mechanised nature of warfare through abstracted Futurist works like La Mitrailleuse (1915). Meanwhile, Anna Airy depicted the realities of munitions production in genre paintings such as Shop for Machining 15-inch Shells (1918).
Despite this diversity, the trauma of the Great War ultimately led to a widespread ‘return to order,’ a movement that rejected the fragmentation of reality evident in avant-garde movements in favour of more traditional, classical styles, mirroring post-war society’s longing for stability and harmony.
The Cenotaph on Whitehall in Westminster stands as an architectural embodiment of the ‘return to order.’ Designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944), the memorial is a tapering rectangular tower made of white Portland stone. Lutyens employed the classical Greek technique of entasis, subtly curving the surfaces to draw the eye upward toward the empty stone coffin. References to classicism appear further in the sculpted laurel wreaths at either end, and even in the memorial’s name, ‘Cenotaph’ which means ‘empty tomb’ in Greek. The monument bears no names; rather, the words ‘The Glorious Dead.’ The monument allowed mourners to project their own meanings onto it and provided a commemorative space for those who had lost loved ones but had no grave to visit. Initially commissioned as a temporary wood-and-plaster structure for the 1919 Peace Day parade, its austere design resonated deeply with the public for its emphasis on collective grief rather than military triumph, and it was therefore rebuilt in stone for Armistice Day in 1920, continuing to serve as the central national memorial over 100 years later.
The Reframing Remembrance project profoundly changed my understanding of memorials. Before participating, I was most familiar with local village memorials commemorating World War One soldiers. These memorials typically feature a stone cross or obelisk engraved with the names of local fallen soldiers, giving them a distinctly localised and period-specific character. Although not directly linked to a single 20th-century artistic movement, I had always associated these memorials with the Arts & Crafts movement. Their use of local materials and craftsmanship creates a handcrafted aesthetic that reflects the movements’ reaction against mass production and industrialisation, which in part contributed to the horrors of the First World War. This strong sense of localisation, however, also left me feeling removed from the act of commemoration, as I did not personally know those memorialised in stone.
By contrast, visiting the national memorials in Whitehall, particularly the Cenotaph, revealed how architectural design can foster a sense of collective and national grief. Whilst the Cenotaph’s ‘emptiness’ was initially intended to serve as a surrogate grave for families with no burial site to visit, its design, untethered to a specific place or era, allows it to function as a timeless monument onto which individuals can continue to project personal meanings of loss and remembrance. Although I do not have a personal connection to any soldiers who died in the First World War, I can look upon the Cenotaph with an understanding of their sacrifice and participate in the shared gratitude for the service they, and countless others, have given.