The Sketchbook of Percy Matthews

Item

Title

The Sketchbook of Percy Matthews

Identifier

9261.cpd

Creator

Abstract

Percy Matthews trained at the Ramsgate School of Art. During World War I Percy served on the Western Front as a Private in the Kentish Buffs, and later in Salonika as a Lieutenant in the Middlesex Regiment. It was in Salonika that he produced his remarkable sketches of scenes and characters from military and civilian life. His son Peter donated these sketches to the Imperial War Museum in 2007.

List of items:
The Archbishop of the Bosphorus and his chaplain: two of the many civilian subjects of Percy's sketched portraits
Balloon article: a newspaper article about the shooting down of an enemy aircraft, which Percy depicted in the paintings Balloon 1 and Balloon 2.
Balloon 1: see Balloon article
Balloon 2: see Balloon article
Burial at night
Portrait of Chritov: possibly a Bulgarian prisoner-of-war
Circle Militaire: a group of officers from a number of countries, illustrating Salonika as a "melting pot" of nationalities during WWI.
Constantinople at night
Fun in the trenches: an ironic comment on going over the top
60-pound gun
Naval Gun
Infantry activity: another view of going over the top
Limber
Night firing
Night operations
Poilu: allied soldiers
Portrait of a German PoW(?)
Portrait of a young Armenian. His family having been murdered by Turks, he was conscripted into the Bulgarian army and presumably was a PoW.
Portrait of a Bulgarian sergeant (named Georgi Gordanov?)
Portrait of Chisto Yosko Dimov (a Bulgarian PoW?)
Portrait of Panof A Pentoff (a Bulgarian PoW?)
Portrait of a Bulgarian Signal Sergeant (name unclear)
Working in a Quarry
Miscellaneous sketches of soldiers and civilians
Portrait of a Turkish boy

Editor's Comment:
Pte. P S 1707 Percy G. Matthews, Middlesex Regiment, was later comissioned as a Lieutenant into the East Kent Regiment ('the Buffs').

Date

1916 - 1918

Date Created

1916-01-01

Temporal Coverage

1918-12-31

Source

Folio

Medium

Paper

Type

Drawing

number of pages

25

Contributor

Admin
Guy Matthews
Peter Matthews

Publisher

The Great War Archive, University of Oxford