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170-807: The Cenotaph is a war memorial on Whitehall in London, England. Designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens , it was unveiled in 1920 as the United Kingdom's national memorial to the dead of Britain and the British Empire of the First World War , was rededicated in 1946 to include those of the Second World War , and has since come to represent the Commonwealth casualties from those and subsequent conflicts. The word cenotaph

340-425: A "reality effect" to maintain its authenticity . Aesthetic realism, which was first called for by French filmmakers in the 1930s and promoted by Andre Bazin in the 1950s, acknowledges that a "film cannot be fixed to mean what it shows", as there are multiple realisms; as such, these filmmakers use location shooting, natural light and non-professional actors to ensure the viewer can make up her/his own choice based on

510-635: A catch-all term for art that was outside Impressionism and later movements of Modernism and also was not academic art . The later periods of the French Barbizon School and the Düsseldorf School of painting , with its students from many countries, and 20th-century American Regionalism are movements that are often also described as "naturalist", although the term is rarely used in British painting. Some recent art historians claimed either Courbet or

680-411: A debate, which was to last several centuries, as to the correct balance between drawing art from the observation of nature and from idealized forms, typically those found in classical models, or the work of other artists generally. Some admitted the importance of the natural, but many believed it should be idealized to various degrees to include only the beautiful. Leonardo da Vinci was one who championed

850-487: A design for a war shrine in Hyde Park , intended to replace a temporary structure erected during the war. Though the shrine was never built, the design started Lutyens thinking about commemorative architecture, and the architectural historian Allan Greenberg speculates that Mond may have discussed the concept of a memorial with Lutyens prior to the meeting with the prime minister. According to Tim Skelton, author of Lutyens and

1020-572: A few days later. On 11 November 2020, the environmental group Extinction Rebellion held a protest at the Cenotaph at a time when no official ceremony could take place due to COVID-19 restrictions ; the protest was condemned by politicians and the Royal British Legion . A group of football supporters and far-right protesters clashed with police at the Cenotaph on Armistice Day 2023, the day before Remembrance Sunday commemorations, claiming to defend

1190-418: A few railway scenes, in painting until the later 19th century, when works began to be commissioned, typically by industrialists or for institutions in industrial cities, often on a large scale, and sometimes given a quasi-heroic treatment. American realism , a movement of the early 20th century, is one of many modern movements to use realism in this sense. The Realist movement began in the mid-19th century as

1360-617: A focal point for their grief. Cenotaphs originated in Ancient Greek tradition, where they were built when it was impossible to recover a body after the battle, as the Greeks placed great cultural importance on the proper burial of their war dead. Lutyens remembered the term when working on Southampton's memorial in early 1919. He broke with the Ancient Greek convention in that his designs for London's and Southampton's cenotaphs contained no explicit reference to battle. The result at Southampton (unveiled

1530-503: A general attempt to depict subjects as they are considered to exist in third-person objective reality without embellishment or interpretation and "in accordance with secular, empirical rules." As such, the approach inherently implies a belief that such reality is ontologically independent of humankind's conceptual schemes, linguistic practices and beliefs and thus can be known to the artist, who can in turn represent this 'reality' faithfully. As Ian Watt states, modern realism "begins from

1700-540: A gun carriage pulled by military horses, for the unveiling. The Cenotaph was shrouded in Union Flags until the king performed the unveiling at the stroke of 11 o'clock. This ceremonial act was followed by two minutes' silence, ending with the sounding of the " Last Post ". The king placed a wreath of roses on the Unknown Warrior's coffin, and the cortege continued its journey—His Majesty, the other royals, Lloyd George, and

1870-489: A highly appropriate monument for the experience of the British public, considering that the vast majority of the British dead were buried overseas. Nonetheless, Moriarty believed that the Cenotaph, "...   although popular, was too abstract in form and generalised in its commemorative allusion to fully satisfy the need for a focus of grief." This, Moriarty felt, was the reason that many local memorials, including some by Lutyens, adopted some form of figurative sculpture, such as

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2040-646: A memorial for both World Wars. It is the main war memorial in Britain and an annual service is held here on Remembrance Sunday , led by the reigning monarch and leading politicians. In 2005, a national Monument to the Women of World War II was erected a short distance north of the Cenotaph in the middle of the Whitehall carriageway. The Royal Tank Regiment Memorial is at the north east end of Whitehall, where Whitehall Court meets Whitehall Place. Erected in 2000, it commemorates

2210-523: A million people visited the site within a week of the parade. Calls for the Cenotaph to be rebuilt in permanent form began almost immediately. After some debate, the government agreed and construction work began in May 1920. Lutyens added entasis (curvature) but otherwise made minimal design alterations. The Cenotaph is built from Portland stone . It takes the form of a tomb chest atop a rectangular pylon , which diminishes as it rises. Three flags hang from each of

2380-607: A permanent replacement was planned. Ormsby-Gore was supported by multiple other members. Mond announced that the decision rested with the cabinet, but promised to pass on the support of the House. The following week, The Times published an editorial calling for a permanent replacement (though the writer suggested that there was a risk of vehicles crashing into the Cenotaph in its original location and that it be built on nearby Horse Guards Parade ); many letters to London and national newspapers followed. The cabinet sought Lutyens's opinion, which

2550-785: A prelude for the popularity of scenes of work in genre painting in the 17th century, which appeared all over Europe, with Dutch Golden Age painting sprouting several different subgenres of such scenes, the Bamboccianti (though mostly from the Low Countries ) in Italy, and in Spain the genre of bodegones , and the introduction of unidealized peasants into history paintings by Jusepe de Ribera and Velázquez . The Le Nain brothers in France and many Flemish artists including Adriaen Brouwer and David Teniers

2720-462: A proposed design for that memorial, but the Royal Artillery rejected it on the grounds that it was too similar to the Cenotaph, and that they wanted a more realist monument, rather than Lutyens's abstract classicism . Whereas Lutyens placed the empty coffin high above the ground, distancing the observer from it, Jagger sculpted a dead soldier and placed it at eye level, confronting the observer with

2890-498: A quasi-scientific basis, playing on the sense of "naturalist" as a student of natural history , as the biological sciences were then generally known. There have been various movements invoking realism in the other arts, such as the opera style of verismo , literary realism , theatrical realism and Italian neorealist cinema . When used as an adjective, "realistic" (usually related to visual appearance) distinguishes itself from "realist" art that concerns subject matter. Similarly,

3060-571: A range of weather conditions and degrees of natural light. After being another development of Early Netherlandish painting, 1600 European portraiture subjects were often idealized by smoothing features or giving them an artificial pose. Still life paintings and still life elements in other works played a considerable role in developing illusionistic painting, though in the Netherlandish tradition of flower painting they long lacked "realism", in that flowers from all seasons were typically used, either from

3230-541: A reaction to Romanticism and History painting . In favor of depictions of 'real' life, the Realist painters used common laborers, and ordinary people in ordinary surroundings engaged in real activities as subjects for their works. Its chief exponents were Gustave Courbet , Jean-François Millet , Honoré Daumier and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot . According to Ross Finocchio, formerly of the Department of European Paintings at

3400-451: A rectangular plan (two long sides and two short ones), with gradually diminishing tiers, culminating in a sculpted tomb chest (the empty tomb suggested by the name cenotaph ) on which is carved laurel wreath . The structure rises to a height of just over 35 feet (11 metres) and is about 15 by 9 feet (4.5 by 2.7 metres) at the base. Lutyens described it as "an empty tomb uplifted on a high pedestal". The pylon's mass decreases with its height;

3570-535: A residential street by the 16th century, and had become a popular place to live by the 17th, with residents including Lord Howard of Effingham and Edmund Spenser . The Palace of Whitehall, to the east of the road, was originally named York Palace, but was renamed during the reign of Henry VIII . The palace was redesigned in 1531–32 and became the King's main residence later in the decade. He married Anne Boleyn here in 1533, followed by Jane Seymour in 1536, and died at

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3740-503: A rival to the Cenotaph, which had no explicitly Christian symbolism, though another historian, David Lloyd, suggests that this was largely unsuccessful—the Church even petitioned for its own ceremonies to be the focus of attention on Armistice Day 1923, rather than those at the Cenotaph, but the proposal was rejected after it met with widespread public opposition. Instead, Lloyd noted that the two monuments became closely linked, and that "Together,

3910-564: A route connecting Charing Cross to Westminster since the Middle Ages ; the 12th-century historian William Fitzstephen described it as "a continued suburb, mingled with large and beautiful gardens, and orchards belonging to the citizens". The name Whitehall was originally only used for the section of road between Charing Cross and Holbein Gate ; beyond this it was known as The Street as far as King Street Gate , then King Street thereafter. It had become

4080-514: A site for both individual commemoration and public ceremonies. The German-American historian George Mosse noted that most countries involved in the First World War eventually adopted the concept of burying an unidentified soldier, but in London the Cenotaph fulfilled the same purpose, despite the tomb in the abbey. Unlike elsewhere, it was the Cenotaph and not an unknown warrior that became the centre of national ceremonies, which Mosse considered

4250-427: A sort of music of the spheres which expressed what they felt about the horrifying destruction [...] both of human life and the shape of society itself." The American historian Jay Winter described the Cenotaph as displaying a "striking minimalism". According to Winter, the Cenotaph "managed to transform a victory parade [...] into a time when millions could contemplate the [...] inexorable reality of death in war," and

4420-486: A statue of a soldier. According to the historian Alex King, the Cenotaph fitted the convention of a shrine , such as the temporary memorials to the dead established across London during the war, including the Hyde Park shrine. King believed that the public response, particularly the laying of flowers, treated the Cenotaph as a shrine—a place for paying respects to the dead. Nonetheless, the austerity and apparent simplicity of

4590-461: A style depicting the unidealized version of the subject, can be used in depicting any type of subject without commitment to treating the typical or every day. Despite the general idealism of classical art, this too had classical precedents, which came in useful when defending such treatments in the Renaissance and Baroque . Demetrius of Alopece was a 4th-century BCE sculptor whose work (all now lost)

4760-415: A torus moulding between the bottom step and the pylon. The coffin lid finishes with a cornice , appearing to be supported by an ovolo (a curved decorative moulding beneath the edge), which casts a shadow over the coffin; it is crowned by a laurel wreath. The bottom of the structure is mounted onto three diminishing steps on an island in the centre of Whitehall surrounded by government buildings. The monument

4930-565: A week before London's permanent Cenotaph) lacks the subtlety of London's monument, but introduces several design elements common in Lutyens's subsequent memorials. The First World War ended with the Armistice of 11 November 1918 , although it was not officially declared over until the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919. The British government planned to hold a victory parade in London on 19 July, including soldiers marching to Whitehall ,

5100-473: A week, was dismantled in January 1920, its condition having deteriorated severely. The work was carried out behind a screen to shield the partially dismantled monument from public view. The top section, along with the flags, was preserved for the fledgling Imperial War Museum (founded in 1917), as part of its exhibition on the war. The acquisition was the idea of Charles ffoulkes , the museum's inaugural curator. It

5270-466: A wreath at the Cenotaph. The accompanying card was removed overnight and the swastika on the wreath was scratched off. The following day, Captain James Sears, a First World War veteran and prospective Labour Party parliamentary candidate, removed the entire wreath and threw it in the river. He described his actions as "a deliberate protest against the desecration of our national war memorial" and against

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5440-547: Is a road and area in the City of Westminster , Central London , England. The road forms the first part of the A3212 road from Trafalgar Square to Chelsea . It is the main thoroughfare running south from Trafalgar Square towards Parliament Square . The street is recognised as the centre of the Government of the United Kingdom and is lined with numerous departments and ministries, including

5610-677: Is also attributed to William Dean Howells and Henry James who served as the spokesmen for realism as well as articulator of its aesthetic principles. The realistic approach to theater collapsed into nihilism and the absurd after World War II. Italian Neorealism was a cinematic movement incorporating elements of realism that developed in post-WWII Italy. Notable Neorealists included Vittorio De Sica , Luchino Visconti , and Roberto Rossellini . Realist films generally focus on social issues. There are two types of realism in film: seamless realism and aesthetic realism. Seamless realism tries to use narrative structures and film techniques to create

5780-428: Is also commonly derogatorily referred as "traditional bourgeois realism". Some writers of Victorian literature produced works of realism. The rigidities, conventions, and other limitations of "bourgeois realism" prompted in their turn the revolt later labeled as modernism ; starting around 1900, the driving motive of modernist literature was the criticism of the 19th-century bourgeois social order and world view, which

5950-458: Is austere, containing very little decoration. At each end, on the second tier below the tomb, is a laurel wreath, echoing the one at the top, and on the sides is the inscription " THE GLORIOUS DEAD ". The only other inscription is the dates of the world wars in Roman numerals—the first on the ends, above the wreath, and the second on the sides. The sculptural work was carried out by Derwent Wood. None of

6120-483: Is based on " objective reality ." It focuses on showing everyday activities and life, primarily among the middle- or lower-class society, without romantic idealization or dramatization. According to Kornelije Kvas, "the realistic figuration and re-figuration of reality form logical constructs that are similar to our usual notion of reality, without violating the principle of three types of laws – those of natural sciences, psychological and social ones". It may be regarded as

6290-455: Is commonly recognized as having made great progress in the representation of anatomy. No original works on panels or walls by the great Greek painters survive, but from literary accounts and the surviving corpus of derivative works (mostly Graeco-Roman works in mosaic ), illusionism seems to be highly valued in painting. Pliny the Elder 's famous story of birds pecking at grapes painted by Zeuxis in

6460-404: Is derived from Greek, meaning 'empty tomb'. Most of the dead were buried close to where they fell; thus, the Cenotaph symbolises their absence and is a focal point for public mourning. The original temporary Cenotaph was erected in 1919 for a parade celebrating the end of the First World War, at which more than 15,000 servicemen, including French and American soldiers, saluted the monument. More than

6630-749: Is far older as demonstrated by the principles of dramatic forms such as the presentation of the physical world that closely matches reality. The achievement of realism in the theatre was to direct attention to the social and psychological problems of ordinary life. In its dramas, people emerge as victims of forces larger than themselves, as individuals confronted with a rapidly accelerating world. These pioneering playwrights present their characters as ordinary, impotent, and unable to arrive at answers to their predicaments. This type of art represents what we see with our human eyes. Anton Chekov , for instance, used camera works to reproduce an uninflected slice of life . Scholars such as Thomas Postlewait noted that throughout

6800-594: Is in the care of English Heritage , which manages historic buildings for the nation. To mark the centenary of the First World War, Historic England conducted research into war memorials with the aim of listing 2,500. As part of the project, they identified 44 freestanding war memorials in England designed by Lutyens, which they declared to be a national collection. All 44 are listed buildings and had their list entries enhanced with new research; five (including Southampton) were upgraded to Grade I on Remembrance Sunday 2014, joining

6970-402: Is intended to draw the eye upwards in a spiralling direction, first to the inscription, then to the top of the flags, to the wreath, and finally to the coffin at the top. Many of these elements were not present in Lutyens's early design, and the progression can be seen in several of the architect's sketches. In his sketch for Lady Sackville, he omitted most of the setbacks , and had the wreaths on

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7140-558: Is one of three purple squares on the British Monopoly board, along with Pall Mall and Northumberland Avenue . All three streets converge at Trafalgar Square. Realism (arts) In 19th-century Europe, "Naturalism" or the "Naturalist school" was somewhat artificially erected as a term representing a breakaway sub-movement of realism, that attempted (not wholly successfully) to distinguish itself from its parent by its avoidance of politics and social issues, and liked to proclaim

7310-463: Is to reproduce nature by carrying it to its maximum power and intensity: it is truth balanced with science". Émile Zola adopted the term with a similar scientific emphasis for his aims in the novel. Many Naturalist paintings covered a similar range of subject matter as that of Impressionism , but using tighter, more traditional brushwork styles. The term "continued to be used indiscriminately for various kinds of realism" for several decades, often as

7480-481: Is unclear, but he was close friends with Sir Alfred Mond and Sir Lionel Earle (respectively the government minister and senior civil servant at the Office of Works , which was responsible for public building projects) and it seems likely that one or both men discussed the idea with Lutyens. Lloyd George summoned Lutyens and asked him to design a " catafalque " as the centre point for the parade. Lloyd George emphasised that

7650-503: The Banqueting House has survived. Whitehall was originally a wide road that led to the gates of the palace; the route to the south was widened in the 18th century, following the destruction of the palace, and the area was largely rebuilt for government offices. As well as government buildings, the street is known for its memorial statues and monuments, including the UK's primary war memorial,

7820-639: The Cabinet Office , and the Department of Health . It ends at the Cenotaph , the road ahead being Parliament Street. Great Scotland Yard and Horse Guards Avenue branch off to the east, while Downing Street branches off to the west at the southern section of the street. The nearest tube stations are Charing Cross at the north end, and Westminster at the south. Numerous London bus routes run along Whitehall, including 12, 24, 88, 159 and 453. There has been

7990-554: The Department of Health since 1987. The building is scheduled to be a temporary debating chamber from 2025, while the Houses of Parliament undergo a refurbishment and modernisation programme. Statues and memorials have been built on and around Whitehall, commemorating military victories and leaders. The Cenotaph was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and erected at the southern end in 1919, commemorating victory in World War I and later used as

8160-528: The Earl Haig Memorial ), Field Marshal Montgomery (commander of the 8th Army , the 21st Army Group and Chief of the Imperial General Staff ), William Slim, 1st Viscount Slim , Commander of the 14th Army and Governor-General of Australia , and Alan Brooke, 1st Viscount Alanbrooke , Chief of the Imperial General Staff . The Whitehall Theatre opened in 1930 at the north west end of

8330-579: The Labours of the Months in late medieval art, of which many examples survive from books of hours , concentrate on peasants laboring on different tasks through the seasons, often in a rich landscape background, and were significant both in developing landscape art and the depiction of everyday working-class people. In the 16th century, there was a fashion for the depiction in large paintings of scenes of people working, especially in food markets and kitchens; in many,

8500-676: The Late Middle Ages , where some painted wooden sculptures in particular strayed into the grotesque in portraying Christ covered in wounds and blood, with the intention of stimulating the viewer to meditate on the suffering that Christ had undergone on their behalf. These were especially found in Germany and Central Europe. After abating in the Renaissance, similar works re-appeared in the Baroque , especially in Spanish sculpture. Renaissance theorists opened

8670-590: The Metropolitan Museum of Art , Realists used unprettified detail depicting the existence of ordinary contemporary life, coinciding with the contemporaneous naturalist literature of Émile Zola , Honoré de Balzac and Gustave Flaubert . The French Realist movement had equivalents in all other Western countries, developing somewhat later. In particular the Peredvizhniki or Wanderers group in Russia who formed in

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8840-867: The Midland Railway War Memorial in Derby . Lutyens also used the design for monuments in several of his cemeteries in Belgium and France for the IWGC, most famously at Étaples. Examples of artworks featuring the Cenotaph include Immortal Shrine (1928) by Will Longstaff (held at the Australian War Memorial ) and The Cenotaph (Morning of the Peace Procession) (1919) by Sir William Nicholson . The latter work by Nicholson sold at auction at Christie's in London in 2018 for £62,500. The Cenotaph also featured on

9010-451: The Ministry of Defence , Horse Guards and the Cabinet Office . Consequently, the name "Whitehall" is used as a metonym for the British civil service and government , and as the geographic name for the surrounding area. The Palace of Whitehall previously occupied the area and was the residence of Kings Henry VIII through to William III , before it was destroyed by fire in 1698; only

9180-810: The Office of the Parliamentary Counsel at No. 36, the Horse Guards , the Ministry of Defence Main Building , Dover House (containing the Scotland Office ), Gwydyr House (containing the Wales Office ), the Cabinet Office at No. 70, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Government Offices Great George Street ( HM Treasury , HM Revenue and Customs and parts of

9350-589: The Parthenon , so that the vertical surfaces taper inwards and the horizontals form arcs of a circle. He wrote to Mond: I have made slight alterations to meet the conditions demanded by the setting out of its lines on subtle curvatures, the difference is almost imperceptible but sufficient to give it a sculpturesque quality and a life, that cannot pertain to rectangular blocks of stone. Lutyens had earlier used entasis for his Stone of Remembrance , which appears in most large IWGC cemeteries. Some religious groups objected to

9520-557: The Provisional IRA fired mortars from a van parked in Whitehall towards No. 10 , one of which exploded in the gardens. Additional security measures have been put in place along Whitehall to protect government buildings, following a £25 million streetscape project undertaken by Westminster City Council . The project has provided wider pavements and better lighting, along with installing hundreds of concrete and steel security barriers. Richmond House , at No. 79, has held

9690-503: The Royal Gold Medal , for his body of work. Presenting the medal, the institute's president, John Simpson , described the Cenotaph as "the most remarkable of all [Lutyens's] creations [...] austere yet gracious, technically perfect, it is the very expression of repressed emotion, of massive simplicity of purpose, of the qualities which mark those whom it commemorates and those who raised it." According to Jane Brown, in her biography of

9860-839: The Royal Institute of British Architects ' drawing library. The Cenotaph is flanked on the long sides by flags of the United Kingdom—the Royal Air Force Ensign , Union Flag , and Red Ensign on one side, and the Blue Ensign , Union Flag, and White Ensign on the other. Lutyens intended the flags to be carved in stone like the rest of the monument. He was overruled and cloth flags were used, though Lutyens went on to use stone flags on several of his other war memorials, painted on Rochdale Cenotaph and Northampton War Memorial (among others), and unpainted at Étaples and Villers-Bretonneux IWGC cemeteries. The memorial

10030-569: The Second Boer War (1899–1902). His first commission for a memorial to the First World War was for Southampton Cenotaph . The word cenotaph derives from the Greek word kenotaphion , meaning 'empty tomb'. Lutyens first encountered the term in connection with Munstead Wood , in Busbridge , Surrey. There he designed a house for Gertrude Jekyll in the 1890s—one of his earliest major commissions. In

10200-519: The University of Liverpool , re-evaluated the Cenotaph at the turn of the 21st century. He compared the diminishing tiers (when viewed from the ground up) to the hilt of a sheathed sword, its blade buried beneath the ground, which he felt resembled the mythical sword Excalibur . The Cenotaph has been contrasted with the Royal Artillery Memorial by Charles Sargeant Jagger . Lutyens submitted

10370-468: The 15th century. In the 19th century, Realism art movement painters such as Gustave Courbet were not especially noted for fully precise and careful depiction of visual appearances; in Courbet's time that was more often a characteristic of academic painting , which very often depicted with great skill and care scenes that were contrived and artificial, or imagined historical scenes. Realism, or naturalism as

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10540-573: The 1820s, which allowed Sir Robert Peel to use it as the main headquarters when forming the police in 1829. It was formally named the Metropolitan Police Office, but became quickly known as Great Scotland Yard, and eventually Scotland Yard. The buildings were damaged in a series of bombings by Irish nationalists in 1883, and an explosion from a Fenian terrorist attack on 30 May 1884 blew a hole in Scotland Yard's outer wall and destroyed

10710-400: The 1860s and organized exhibitions from 1871 included many realists such as Ilya Repin , Vasily Perov and Ivan Shishkin , and had a great influence on Russian art. In Britain, artists such as Hubert von Herkomer and Luke Fildes had great success with realist paintings dealing with social issues. Broadly defined as "the faithful representation of reality", Realism as a literary movement

10880-525: The 18th century, traffic was struggling along the narrow streets south of Holbein Gate, which led to King Street Gate being demolished in 1723. Holbein Gate, in turn, was demolished in 1759. Meanwhile, Parliament Street was a side road alongside the palace, leading to the Palace of Westminster . After the Palace of Whitehall was destroyed, Parliament Street was widened to match Whitehall's width. The present appearance of

11050-501: The 1920s and 1930s, it was customary for men to doff their hats when passing the Cenotaph, even on a bus. The pilgrimage which began with the Cenotaph's unveiling continued on a smaller scale for the rest of the 1920s and into the 1930s. Pilgrimages continued until the outbreak of the Second World War. A particularly large crowd gathered on 11 November 1946, the year after that war ended, but attendance largely fell away thereafter. In

11220-550: The 1950s and '60s, and 1981's satirical Anyone for Denis , written by John Wells and Private Eye editor Richard Ingrams . The venue was Grade II listed in 1996 and renamed the Trafalgar Studios in 2004. Because of its importance as the centre of the British government, several political comedies are based in and around Whitehall. These include the BBC television series Yes Minister and The Thick of It . Whitehall

11390-577: The 1960s and used them to create a politically oriented cinema. French filmmakers made some politically oriented realist films in the 1960s, such as the cinéma vérité and documentary films of Jean Rouch while in the 1950s and 1960s, British, French and German new waves of filmmaking produced "slice-of-life" films (e.g., kitchen sink dramas in the UK). Verismo was a post-Romantic operatic tradition associated with Italian composers such as Pietro Mascagni , Ruggero Leoncavallo , Umberto Giordano , Francesco Cilea and Giacomo Puccini . They sought to bring

11560-408: The 19th century, as private leases ran out on residential buildings, ownership reverted to the Crown, which began to use them as public offices. The name "Whitehall" is now used as a metonym to refer to that part of the civil service which is involved in the government of the United Kingdom . The street's central portion is dominated by military buildings, including the Ministry of Defence , with

11730-520: The 5th century BC may well be a legend. As well as accuracy in shape, light, and color, Roman paintings show an unscientific but effective knowledge of representing distant objects smaller than closer ones and representing regular geometric forms such as the roof and walls of a room with perspective. This progress in illusionistic effects in no way meant a rejection of idealism; statues of Greek gods and heroes attempt to represent with accuracy idealized and beautiful forms, though other works, such as heads of

11900-401: The British armed forces in the First World War. The BBC began broadcasting special radio programming for Armistice Day in 1923, and began broadcasting the events at the Cenotaph live from 1928. Radio broadcasting enabled the silence to be observed simultaneously across the country, and allowed millions of listeners to feel part of the ceremony. The BBC began broadcasting television pictures of

12070-470: The Cabinet Office). Scotland Yard , the headquarters of London's Metropolitan Police Service , was originally located in Great Scotland Yard off the north-eastern end of Whitehall. The buildings had been lodgings for the Kings of Scotland, on part of the old Palace of Whitehall's grounds; by the 19th century, Little and Middle Scotland Yard had been merged into Whitehall Place, leaving only Great Scotland Yard. No. 4 Whitehall Place had become vacant by

12240-543: The Cenotaph . South of the Cenotaph the thoroughfare becomes Parliament Street. The Whitehall Theatre (now the Trafalgar Studios ) was formerly associated with a series of farces . The name Whitehall was used for several buildings in the Tudor period . It either referred to a building made of light stone, or as a general term for any festival building. This included the Royal Palace of Whitehall , which in turn gave its name to

12410-605: The Cenotaph and the Arch of Remembrance in Leicester . The renowned architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner described the Cenotaph as "the chief national war memorial". Gavin Stamp , a British architectural historian and the author of Lutyens's entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , wrote that Lutyens's work commemorating the British war dead (the Cenotaph, his work with

12580-469: The Cenotaph as the procession passed. King Charles III led commemorations on Remembrance Sunday 2022 for the first time as monarch, though he had represented his mother at the Cenotaph since 2017 because of her growing frailty. The Cenotaph is the focal point for the National Service of Remembrance held annually on Remembrance Sunday , the closest Sunday to 11 November. In the Cenotaph's early years,

12750-494: The Cenotaph in response to a pro-Palestinian march through London the same day which was itself a response to the Israel–Hamas war . In 2013, just before the centenary of the First World War , English Heritage carried out £60,000 of restoration work on the Cenotaph. Contractors cleaned the stonework using steam and a poultice to remove dirt and algae and counter the effects of weathering and pollution. Somewhat controversially,

12920-433: The Cenotaph leaves its meaning open to a wide variety of interpretations, not all of which have been in keeping with Lutyens's intentions. Some ascribed imperialistic or nationalistic meanings to the monument, including Haig, who called it "a symbol of the empire's unity". The Catholic Herald called it a "pagan monument" and felt that it was insulting to Christianity, and other traditional Christian groups were displeased by

13090-458: The Cenotaph" (1933) by Siegfried Sassoon , and "At the Cenotaph" (1935) by Hugh MacDiarmid . Laurence Binyon 's " For the Fallen " (1914) is closely associated with the Cenotaph, having been recited at its unveiling, and commonly features in remembrance services, particularly the fourth stanza, which concludes: At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them. According to

13260-483: The Cenotaph's "deceptively simple design and deliberately non-sectarian message ensured that its form would be adopted widely, with local variations". From its unveiling, the Cenotaph proved highly influential on other war memorials in Britain. The art historian Alan Borg wrote that the Cenotaph was the "one memorial that proved to be more influential than any other". Several towns and cities erected war memorials based to some extent on Lutyens's design for Whitehall, though

13430-531: The Cenotaph's location. Another editorial in The Times suggested siting it in Parliament Square , away from traffic, a location that was supported by the local authorities. The issue was again raised in the House of Commons, and Ormsby-Gore led the calls for the Cenotaph to be rebuilt on its original spot, stating, to acclaim, that he was certain that this option was the most popular with the public. Opposition to

13600-488: The Cenotaph, followed by other members of the royal family, politicians, and Commonwealth high commissioners . Afterwards, serving military personnel, veterans' associations, and other organisations march past and lay their own wreaths. Until the Second World War, the service was held on 11 November. It was moved to a Sunday to avoid interrupting wartime production, and has been held on a Sunday ever since. According to Paul Fussell , an American literary historian specialising in

13770-546: The Cenotaph; the procession continued through the night and into the next day. Within a week, the Cenotaph was 10 feet (3 metres) deep in flowers and an estimated 1.25   million people had visited it so far, while 500,000 had visited the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior. Lloyd George wrote to Lutyens, "The Cenotaph is the token of our mourning as a nation; the Grave of the Unknown Warrior is the token of our mourning as individuals." Throughout

13940-450: The Elder and Younger painted peasants, but rarely townsfolk. In the 18th century, small paintings of working people remained popular, mostly drawing on the Dutch tradition and featuring women. Much art depicting ordinary people, especially in the form of prints , was comic and moralistic, but the mere poverty of the subjects seems relatively rarely to have been part of the moral message. From

14110-479: The German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier , was invited to lay a wreath at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday 2018 to mark the centenary of the armistice, the first time a German representative had been present at the commemorations. The funeral of Queen Elizabeth II on 19 September 2022 included a procession through Central London. Military personnel, including members of the royal family who were in uniform, saluted

14280-490: The Great War , "If it was not to be on Whitehall then the Cenotaph as we know it would have appeared somewhere else in due course." Several of Lutyens's sketches survive, which show that he experimented with multiple minor changes to the design, including a flaming urn at the top of the Cenotaph and sculptures of soldiers or lions at the base (similar to the lion heads on Southampton Cenotaph). Lutyens submitted his final design to

14450-425: The IWGC and his memorial commissions elsewhere) was responsible for Lutyens's elevation to the status of a national figure. A few days after the unveiling, Lloyd George wrote to Lutyens: "the Cenotaph, by its very simplicity, fittingly expresses the memory in which the people hold all those who so bravely fought and died" in the war. In 1921, Lutyens was awarded the Royal Institute of British Architects ' highest award,

14620-579: The IWGC in France, and to Maya Lin 's Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. Jenny Edkins , a British political scientist, also draws a parallel between the Cenotaph and the Vietnam Memorial and the unexpected public acclaim that both received immediately after their unveiling. Edkins believed that the apparent simplicity of, and lack of decoration on, the two memorials provided for a "collective act of mourning". Another architect, Andrew Crompton, of

14790-708: The Impressionists for the label. The development of increasingly accurate representations of the visual appearances of things has a long history in art. It includes elements such as the accurate depiction of the anatomy of humans and animals, the perspective and effects of distance, and the detailed effects of light and color. The art of the Upper Paleolithic in Europe achieved remarkably lifelike depictions of animals. Ancient Egyptian art developed conventions involving both stylization and idealization. Ancient Greek art

14960-578: The Office of Works in early July, and on 7 July received confirmation that the design had been approved by the foreign secretary, Lord Curzon , who was organising the parade. The unveiling of the monument, built in wood and plaster by the Office of Works, was described in The Times as a quiet and unofficial ceremony. It took place on 18 July 1919, the day before the Victory Parade. Lutyens was not invited. During

15130-560: The Palace of Whitehall in 1658. During the Great Plague of London in 1665, people boarded coaches at Whitehall, then at the edge of urban London, in an attempt to escape. The King and court temporarily moved to Oxford to avoid the plague, while Samuel Pepys remarked in his diary on 29 June, "By water to Whitehall, where the Court is full of waggons and people ready to go out of town. This end of town every day grows very bad with plague". By

15300-416: The Renaissance, such images continued in book illustrations and prints, with the exception of marine painting which largely disappeared in fine art until the early Industrial Revolution , scenes from which were painted by a few painters such as Joseph Wright of Derby and Philip James de Loutherbourg . Such subjects probably failed to sell very well, and there is a noticeable absence of industry, other than

15470-460: The Unknown Warrior's journey to the abbey took place in coordination with events at the Cenotaph. The king was to unveil the Cenotaph, this time with Lutyens in attendance, along with other members of the royal family, the prime minister, and Randall Davidson , the Archbishop of Canterbury (the Church of England's most senior cleric). The Unknown Warrior was brought to Whitehall, his coffin resting on

15640-455: The archbishop following the gun carriage to the abbey. The public response exceeded even that to the temporary Cenotaph in the aftermath of the armistice. Whitehall was closed to traffic for several days after the ceremony and wounded soldiers, other veterans, and members of the public began to file past the Cenotaph and lay flowers at its base. The volume of people wishing to lay tributes was such that there were delays of up to four hours to pass

15810-436: The architect, Lutyens was faced with a "constant stream" of war memorial commissions from the unveiling of the temporary Cenotaph until at least 1924. He went on to design more than 130 war memorials and cemeteries, many influenced by his work on the Cenotaph. His Southampton Cenotaph was unveiled in 1920, while the permanent monument on Whitehall was still under construction. His later cenotaphs include Rochdale, Manchester , and

15980-504: The centre of the British government. The initial design for what would become the Cenotaph was one of a number of temporary structures erected along the parade's route. The prime minister, David Lloyd George , learnt that the French plans for a similar parade in Paris included a saluting point for the marching troops and was keen to replicate the idea for the British parade. How Lutyens became involved

16150-525: The ceremony from 1937. The broadcast has run almost continually since its inception, interrupted only for the Second World War, making it one of the longest-running annual broadcasts in the world. The Cenotaph was designated a Grade I listed building on 5 February 1970. Listing provides legal protection from unauthorised demolition or modification. Grade I is the highest possible grade, reserved for buildings of "exceptional" historical or architectural interest and applied to 2.5 per cent of listings. The Cenotaph

16320-688: The commemoration service organised by the Western Front Association , the Belgian Cenotaph Parade , or anniversaries such as Anzac Day (25 April). In 2000, relatives of soldiers executed for desertion or cowardice during the First World War joined the Remembrance Sunday parade for the first time, and in 2014 a representative of the Irish government laid a wreath on Remembrance Sunday for the first time, in memory of Irishmen who fought in

16490-520: The contrast between the relative "classical-idealism" of the Carracci and the "naturalist" style of the Caravaggisti , or followers of Caravaggio , who painted religious scenes as though set in the back streets of contemporary Italian cities and used "naturalist" as a self-description. Bellori , writing some decades after Caravaggio's early death and no supporter of his style, refers to "Those who glory in

16660-440: The cultural effects of the world wars, "to sense the British obsession with the Great War, all that is necessary is to stand at the Cenotaph [...] on any Remembrance Sunday and listen to the two minutes of silence", which he describes as "appropriately shocking in the context of the customary hum of traffic." Other annual ceremonies are also held at the Cenotaph, such as commemorations by individual regiments, veterans' associations,

16830-565: The early 15th century and gradually spread across Europe, with accuracy in anatomy rediscovered under the influence of classical art. As in classical times, idealism remained the norm. The accurate depiction of landscape in painting had also been developing in Early Netherlandish/Early Northern Renaissance and Italian Renaissance painting and was then brought to a very high level in 17th-century Dutch Golden Age painting , with very subtle techniques for depicting

17000-634: The elite. In the West, classical standards of illusionism did not begin to be reached again until the Late medieval and Early Renaissance periods and were helped first in the Netherlands in the early 15th century, and around the 1470s in Italy by the development of new techniques of oil painting which allowed very subtle and precise effects of light to be painted using several layers of paint and glaze. Scientific methods of representing perspective were developed in Italy in

17170-401: The famously ugly Socrates , were allowed to fall below these ideal standards of beauty. Roman portraiture , when not under too much Greek influence, shows a greater commitment to a truthful depiction of its subjects, called verism . The art of Late Antiquity famously rejected illusionism for expressive force, a change already well underway by the time Christianity began to affect the art of

17340-444: The film, rather than being manipulated into a "preferred reading". Siegfried Kracauer is also notable for arguing that realism is the most important function of cinema. Aesthetically realist filmmakers use long shots , deep focus and eye-level 90-degree shots to reduce manipulation of what the viewer sees. Italian neorealism filmmakers from after WWII took the existing realist film approaches from France and Italy that emerged in

17510-423: The food is given as much prominence as the workers. Artists included Pieter Aertsen and his nephew Joachim Beuckelaer in the Netherlands, working in an essentially Mannerist style, and in Italy the young Annibale Carracci in the 1580s, using an unpolished style, with Bartolomeo Passerotti somewhere between the two. Pieter Bruegel the Elder pioneered large panoramic scenes of peasant life. Such scenes acted as

17680-700: The former headquarters of the British Army and Royal Navy , the Royal United Services Institute , the Horse Guards building and the Admiralty , on the opposite side. Government buildings on Whitehall, from north to south, include The Admiralty Buildings, the Department for International Development at No. 22, the Department of Energy and Climate Change at No. 55, the Old War Office ,

17850-476: The garden was a seat in the form of a rectangular block of elm set on stone, which Charles Liddell—a friend of Lutyens and Jekyll and a librarian at the British Museum —christened the " Cenotaph of Sigismunda ". From 1915, the British government prohibited the repatriation of the bodies of men killed overseas, meaning that most bereaved families did not have a nearby grave to visit and thus war memorials became

18020-413: The habit of assembling compositions from individual drawings or as a deliberate convention; the large displays of bouquets in vases were atypical of 17th-century habits; the flowers were displayed one at a time. The depiction of ordinary, everyday subjects in art also has a long history, though it was often squeezed into the edges of compositions or shown at a smaller scale. This was partly because art

18190-415: The lack of Christian symbolism on the Cenotaph and suggested the inclusion of a cross or a more overtly Christian inscription. Lutyens objected to the proposal, and it was rejected by the government on the grounds that the Cenotaph was for people "from all parts of the empire, irrespective of their religious creeds". The only other significant alteration Lutyens proposed was the replacement of the silk flags on

18360-514: The lack of religious symbolism. Lutyens was a pantheist , heavily influenced by his wife's involvement with Theosophy . He opposed overt religious symbolism on the Cenotaph and in his work with the IWGC, a position which did not endear him to the church. Roderick Gradidge , an architect and author of a biography of Lutyens, commented on Lutyens's use of geometry—"He [Lutyens] recognised that in this careful proportioning system he had hit on something that people could recognise though never understand;

18530-489: The later 1920s, several proposals emerged for modifications to the Cenotaph, including the addition of life-size bronze statues at its corners, and installing a light inside the wreath at the top to emit a vertical beam, but all were rejected by the Office of Works on Lutyens's advice. The statues in particular would have added a literal element to the memorial which Greenberg (writing in 1989) believed would have been at odds with its "open symbolism and abstract character". After

18700-425: The lines on the pylon is straight. The sides are not parallel but are subtly curved using precise geometry so as to be barely visible to the naked eye (entasis). If extended, the apparently vertical surfaces would meet 1,000 feet (300 m) above the ground and the apparently horizontal surfaces are sections of a sphere whose centre would be 900 feet (270 m) below ground. The use of curvature and diminishing tiers

18870-458: The literary historian Alex Moffett, the poems about the Cenotaph convey the different narratives of the First World War and the way in which it should be remembered, in much the same way that the monument itself is open to interpretation. The poetry also expresses the conflict between sombre commemoration of the dead and celebration of victory, "a tension that many have read within the Cenotaph itself". According to one study of British war memorials,

19040-703: The long sides. The memorial is austere, containing almost no decoration. The permanent Cenotaph was unveiled by King George V on 11 November 1920 in a ceremony combined with the repatriation of the Unknown Warrior , an unidentified British serviceman to be interred in Westminster Abbey . After the unveiling, millions more people visited the Cenotaph and the Unknown Warrior. The memorial met with public acclaim and has largely been praised by academics, though some Christian organisations disapproved of its lack of overt religious symbolism. The Cenotaph has been revered since its unveiling, and while nationally important has been

19210-576: The main work is in the Ministry of Defence Main Building off Whitehall. A 1936 novel by Irene Rathbone with an anti-war theme, They Call it Peace , concluded with a scene set at the Cenotaph in which two women complete pilgrimages to the monument, one to honour the dead and one feeling that the deaths were in vain. The cultural response to the Cenotaph also includes poetry such as "The Cenotaph" (1919) by Charlotte Mew , "The Cenotaph in Whitehall" (1920) by Max Plowman , "The Cenotaph" (1922) by Ursula Roberts , "London Stone" (1923) by Rudyard Kipling , "At

19380-460: The memorial and it took the intervention of the police to create space for Lloyd George to lay a wreath. The French president, Raymond Poincaré , also laid a wreath; King George V and Queen Mary sent a wreath but were not present at the Cenotaph. A two-minute silence was observed, after which veterans' groups marched past. The government, caught by surprise by the strength of feeling, resolved to lay on an organised event for 1920. Suggestions that

19550-455: The memorials reflect the complexity and ambiguity of the British response to the Great War". No date was announced for the completion of the Cenotaph at first, but the British government was keen to have it in place for Remembrance Day (11 November). In September 1920, the announcement came that the Cenotaph would be unveiled on 11 November, the second anniversary of the armistice, and that the unveiling would be performed by King George V . For

19720-446: The mid-19th century onwards, the difficulties of life for the poor were emphasized. Despite this trend coinciding with large-scale migration from the countryside to cities in most of Europe, painters still tended to paint poor rural people. Crowded city street scenes were popular with the Impressionists and related painters, especially ones showing Paris. Medieval manuscript illuminators were often asked to illustrate technology, but after

19890-420: The monument was responsible for Lutyens becoming a national figure, and the Royal Institute of British Architects awarded him its Royal Gold Medal in 1921. For several years afterwards much of his time was taken up with war memorial commissions. The First World War produced casualties on a scale previously unseen by developed nations. More than 1.1   million men from the British Empire were killed. In

20060-499: The name of naturalists" ( naturalisti ). During the 19th century, naturalism developed as a broadly defined movement in European art, though it lacked the political underpinnings that motivated realist artists. The originator of the term was the French art critic Jules-Antoine Castagnary , who in 1863 announced that: "The naturalist school declares that art is the expression of life under all phases and on all levels, and that its sole aim

20230-415: The naturalism of influential late 19th-century writers such as Émile Zola , Gustave Flaubert and Henrik Ibsen into opera. This new style presented true-to-life drama that featured gritty and flawed lower-class protagonists while some described it as a heightened portrayal of a realistic event. Although an account considered Giuseppe Verdi 's Luisa Miller and La traviata as the first stirrings of

20400-457: The neighbouring Rising Sun pub. The headquarters was moved away from Whitehall in 1890. Downing Street leads off the south-west end of Whitehall, just above Parliament Street. It was named after Sir George Downing , who built a row of houses along the street around 1680 leading west from Whitehall. Following a number of terrorist attacks, the road was closed to the public in 1990, when security gates were erected at both ends. On 7 February 1991,

20570-492: The nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there were numerous joining of melodramatic and realistic forms and functions, which could be demonstrated in the way melodramatic elements existed in realistic forms and vice versa. In the United States, realism in drama preceded fictional realism by about two decades as theater historians identified the first impetus toward realism during the late 1870s and early 1880s. Its development

20740-440: The occasion, the government designated the Cenotaph the official memorial to all British and empire dead lost during the First World War. It subsequently became the official memorial to British casualties from later conflicts. Late into the planning, the government decided to exhume an unidentified serviceman—thenceforth to be known as the Unknown Warrior —from a grave in France, and inter him in Westminster Abbey . The last leg of

20910-685: The painting of portraits as low down the social scale as the prosperous merchants of Flanders , and some of these, notably the Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck (1434) and more often in religious scenes such as the Merode Altarpiece by Robert Campin and his workshop (circa 1427), include very detailed depictions of middle-class interiors full of lovingly depicted objects. However, these objects are at least largely there because they carry layers of complex significance and symbolism that undercut any commitment to realism for its own sake. Cycles of

21080-399: The palace in 1547. Charles I owned an extensive art collection at the palace and several of William Shakespeare 's plays had their first performances here. It ceased to be the royal residence after 1689, when William III moved to Kensington Palace for his health to escape what had become dense urban surroundings. The palace was damaged by fire in 1691, following which the front entrance

21250-399: The parade and a central saluting point would unite the nation in celebrating the victorious conclusion to the war and commemorating the sacrifice of the dead. Although Lutyens apparently produced the design very quickly, he had had the concept in mind for some time, as evidenced by his design for Southampton Cenotaph and his work for the IWGC. Lutyens and Mond had previously worked together on

21420-529: The parade, 15,000 soldiers and 1,500 officers marched past and saluted the Cenotaph—among them were American General John J. Pershing and French Marshal Ferdinand Foch , as well as the British commanders Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig and Admiral of the Fleet Sir David Beatty . The Cenotaph quickly captured the public imagination. Repatriation of the dead had been forbidden since the early days of

21590-536: The position that truth can be discovered by the individual through the senses" and as such, "it has its origins in Descartes and Locke , and received its first full formulation by Thomas Reid in the middle of the eighteenth century." While the preceding Romantic era was also a reaction against the values of the Industrial Revolution , realism was in its turn a reaction to Romanticism, and for this reason it

21760-488: The public since 1963. Oliver Cromwell moved to the street in 1647, taking up residence in Wallingford House. Two years later, Charles I was carried through Whitehall on the way to his trial at Westminster Hall . Whitehall itself was a wide street and had sufficient space for a scaffold to be erected for the King's execution at Banqueting House. He made a brief speech there before being beheaded. Cromwell died at

21930-414: The pure study of nature and wished to depict the whole range of individual varieties of forms in the human figure and other things. Leon Battista Alberti was an early idealizer, stressing the typical, with others such as Michelangelo supporting the selection of the most beautiful – he refused to make portraits for that reason. In the 17th century, the debate continued. In Italy, it usually centered on

22100-424: The reality of war. The Tomb of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey , inaugurated on the same day as the Cenotaph and another of London's most famous war memorials, has also been contrasted with the Cenotaph. Edkins observes that the Tomb was intended to "provide a grave for those who had none" and to become a focal point for the mourning of those buried overseas, but that the Cenotaph became much more popular as

22270-474: The reverse of the 1928 Armistice Day memorial medal by Charles Doman . Examples of the Cenotaph featuring in artworks commemorating national events include the ceremonial paintings commissioned in 1920 by the government and the king from Frank Owen Salisbury to mark the unveiling of the Cenotaph, titled The Passing of the Unknown Warrior, 11 November 1920 . A study for the work hangs in Buckingham Palace ;

22440-567: The scale of destruction. The experience influenced his later designs for war memorials and led him to the conclusion that a different form of architecture was required to properly memorialise the dead. He felt that neither realism nor expressionism could adequately capture the atmosphere at the end of the war. Lutyens's first war memorial was the Rand Regiments Memorial (1911) in Johannesburg , South Africa, dedicated to casualties of

22610-441: The scene of several political protests and vandalised with spray paint twice in the 21st century. The National Service of Remembrance is held annually at the site on Remembrance Sunday ; it is also the scene of other remembrance services. The Cenotaph is a Grade I listed building and forms part of a national collection of Lutyens's war memorials. Dozens of replicas were built in Britain and other Commonwealth countries. While there

22780-457: The service was informal and crowds gathered round the memorial to pay their respects and lay tributes, but the ceremony gradually became more formal, and has changed little since the 1930s. Whitehall is closed to vehicle traffic and a two-minute silence is observed at 11:00   am. After the silence, the crowd sings traditional hymns, accompanied by military musicians. The monarch and the prime minister (or their representatives) then lay wreaths at

22950-403: The sides becoming narrower towards the bottom of the coffin. The base is in four stages from the top of the steps starting with the plinth, which connects to the base block. The plinth projects 3 inches (7.6 centimetres) from the base block on all four sides. Above it is the transition moulding which is in three stages— torus (semi-circular), cyma reversa , and cavetto —taking the lower part of

23120-532: The sides hanging from pegs. In another drawing he included an urn on top of the coffin and sculptures of lions flanking the base (similar to the pine cones on Southampton Cenotaph). Other experimental designs omit the flags, and one included a recumbent effigy atop the coffin (in place of an urn). A wooden model from an early stage in the design process is in the collection of the Imperial War Museum, as are several of Lutyens's original drawings; others are in

23290-472: The site eventually quietened and the construction contract was awarded to Holland, Hannen & Cubitts . Construction began in May 1920. Lutyens waived his fee, and Mond gave Lutyens the opportunity to make any amendments to the design before work began. The architect submitted his proposed modifications on 1 November, which were approved the same day. He replaced the real laurel wreaths with stone sculptures and added entasis —subtle curvature, reminiscent of

23460-572: The street dates from 1899 after a group of houses between Downing Street and Great George Street were destroyed. On 8 March 1973, the IRA detonated a bomb in front of the Ministry of Agriculture building in Whitehall, injuring a number of bystanders. On 7 February 1991, the IRA launched a mortar attack on 10 Downing Street in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Prime Minister John Major and his cabinet. By

23630-473: The street, on a site that had previously been Ye Old Ship Tavern in the 17th century. The revue Whitehall Follies opened in 1942, which drew controversy over its explicit content featuring the stripper and actress Phyllis Dixey . The theatre became known for its series of farces , reviving a tradition on Whitehall that had begun with court jesters at the palace during the 16th century; these included several plays featuring actor-manager Brian Rix throughout

23800-464: The street. The street is about 0.4 miles (0.64 km) long and runs through the City of Westminster . It is part of the A3212 , a main road in Central London that leads towards Chelsea via the Houses of Parliament and Vauxhall Bridge . It runs south from Trafalgar Square , past numerous government buildings, including the old War Office building, Horse Guards , the Ministry of Defence ,

23970-411: The structure just over 6 feet (1.8 metres) above the ground. Greenberg describes this section as "quietly establish[ing] the memorial's overall character: an outward appearance of simple repose which, on close observation, shows itself to be dependent on the more complex forms of its masses". At the top, the coffin is connected to the main structure by its own base of two steps, the transition smoothed by

24140-545: The structure was to be non-denominational. Lutyens met with Sir Frank Baines , chief architect at the Office of Works, the same day to sketch his idea for the Cenotaph and sketched it again for his friend Lady Sackville over dinner that night. Both sketches show the Cenotaph almost as-built. At the end of the war, there was considerable social upheaval and civil unrest in Britain and Ireland, and industrial relations were tense. The government, fearful that revolutionary ideologies such as Bolshevism might start to take hold, hoped

24310-591: The temporary Cenotaph with painted stone, fearing that the fabric would quickly become worn and look untidy. He was supported on this by Mond and engaged the sculptor Francis Derwent Wood for assistance, but the change was rejected by the cabinet. A diary entry by Lady Sackville from August 1920 records Lutyens complaining bitterly about the change, though documents in The National Archives suggest that he had been aware of it six months previously. The temporary Cenotaph, originally intended to remain in place only

24480-456: The temporary cenotaph should be re-built as a permanent structure began almost immediately, coming from members of the public and national newspapers. Four days after the parade, William Ormsby-Gore , Member of Parliament for Stafford —an army officer who fought in the war and was part of the British delegation at Versailles—questioned Mond about the Cenotaph in the House of Commons , and asked whether

24650-459: The term "cenotaph" came to be applied to almost any war memorial that was not itself a tomb. Lutyens designed several other cenotaphs in England and one in Wales, while replicas, of varying quality and accuracy, were built across Britain, along with many other monuments inspired to some extent by Lutyens's design. Examples include Leeds War Memorial and Glasgow Cenotaph . Whitehall Whitehall

24820-496: The term "illusionistic" might be used when referring to the accurate rendering of visual appearances in a composition. In painting, naturalism is the precise, detailed and accurate representation in art of the appearance of scenes and objects. It is also called mimesis or illusionism and became especially marked in European painting in the Early Netherlandish painting of Robert Campin , Jan van Eyck and other artists in

24990-411: The time the palace was destroyed, separation of crown and state had become important, with Parliament being necessary to control military requirements and pass laws. The government wanted to be some distance from the monarch, and the buildings around Whitehall, physically separated from St James's Palace by St James's Park , seemed to be a good place for ministers to work. The Horse Guards building

25160-486: The unveiling of the permanent memorial, members of the public continued to lay floral tributes as well as hand-written messages and personal memorials such as photographs, wreaths, and glass domes. The Office of Works struggled to decide what to do with the tributes and how to maintain an appropriate tone. It began preserving the messages so that they could be compiled into albums and given to the Imperial War Museum. By March 1921, officials had catalogued more than 30,000 items;

25330-550: The use of tanks in both World Wars and depicts five World War II tank crew members. The Gurkha Memorial is to the south of this, on Horse Guards Avenue to the east of Whitehall. Whitehall is also home to six other monuments. From north to south, these are of Prince George, Duke of Cambridge ( Commander-in-Chief of the British Army ), Liberal Party , Liberal Unionist Party and Unionists leader Spencer Cavendish, 8th Duke of Devonshire , Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig (known as

25500-527: The verismo, some claimed that it began in 1890 with the first performance of Mascagni 's Cavalleria rusticana , peaked in the early 1900s. It was followed by Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, which dealt with the themes of infidelity, revenge, and violence. Verismo also reached Britain where pioneers included the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the dramatist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900). Specifically, their play Iolanthe

25670-597: The vicinity of the Cenotaph. In 2000, anti-capitalist protesters spray-painted slogans on it and on a statue of Winston Churchill . In a 2010 student protest , a man climbed the base and swung from one of the flags. In June 2020, the base was vandalised with spray paint during Black Lives Matter protests , and the following day a protester attempted to set fire to one of the Union Flags on the Cenotaph. The Cenotaph and several other monuments were covered up temporarily to prevent any further vandalism, and counter-protesters (including some far-right activists) congregated around it

25840-451: The victory march in London made a deeper impression than the Cenotaph." After the Victory Parade, the temporary Cenotaph became a point of pilgrimage for many people, including grieving relatives. Deputations arrived from as far away as Dundee , and schools organised excursions to take children to see it. The crowds were particularly large on 11 November 1919, the first anniversary of the armistice. An estimated 6,000 people were crowded round

26010-452: The views of the Nazi Party, which he believed were the same as those Britain had fought against. Sears was arrested, charged with malicious damage, and fined. Some newspaper columnists and letter writers sympathised with Sears's actions, though others felt that his actions themselves desecrated the Cenotaph by using it to make a political statement. Following the Second World War, the Cenotaph

26180-530: The volume was such that they were forced to abandon their efforts at preservation. The office was keen to avoid being seen as a censor but also to preserve the character of the Cenotaph; officials thus removed some tributes which contained overtly political messages. A group of 5,000 unemployed men, on an anti-capitalist protest, paraded past the Cenotaph in 1921 and laid wreaths at its base; several with explicit political messages were removed. In 1933, Alfred Rosenberg , representing Nazi Germany , controversially laid

26350-427: The war's aftermath, thousands of war memorials were erected across Britain and its empire, and on the former battlefields. Amongst the most prominent designers of war memorials was Sir Edwin Lutyens , described by Historic England as "the foremost architect of his day". Lutyens established his reputation designing country houses for wealthy clients around the turn of the 20th century; his first major public commission

26520-469: The war, so the Cenotaph came to represent the absent dead and serve as a substitute for a tomb. Beginning almost immediately after the Victory Parade and continuing for days afterwards, members of the public began laying flowers and wreaths around the memorial. Within a week, an estimated 1.2   million people came to the Cenotaph to pay their respects to the dead, and the base was covered in flowers and other tributes. According to The Times , "no feature of

26690-477: Was "a work of genius because of its simplicity. It says so much because it says nothing at all. It is a form on which anyone could inscribe his or her own thoughts, reveries, sadness." He believed that, in designing an empty tomb, "the tomb of no one [...] became the tomb of all who had died in the war." He compared it favourably to another of Lutyens's major commemorative works, the Thiepval Memorial , built for

26860-450: Was because the abbey was "too cluttered with memorials and tombs of famous Englishmen to provide the appropriate place for pilgrimages or celebrations" compared to the Cenotaph's location in the middle of a broad avenue. Ken Inglis , an Australian historian, and Gavin Stamp , a British architectural historian, both suggested that the Unknown Warrior was the Church of England 's attempt to create

27030-405: Was bought for the Admiralty . The Old Admiralty Buildings now sit on the house's site. Banqueting House was built as an extension to the Palace of Whitehall in 1622 by Inigo Jones . It is the only surviving portion of the palace after it was burned down, and was the first Renaissance building in London. It later became a museum to the Royal United Services Institute and has been opened to

27200-412: Was carved by H.H. Martyn & Co. of Cheltenham. On the day of its unveiling, The Times praised the Cenotaph as "simple, massive, unadorned". Catherine Moriarty, of the Imperial War Museum's National Inventory of War Memorials project, observed in 1995 that the Cenotaph met with widespread public acclaim, and that the public adopted the unfamiliar name with enthusiasm. She described an empty tomb as

27370-405: Was countered with an anti-rationalist, anti-realist and anti-bourgeois program. Theatrical realism is said to have first emerged in European drama in the 19th century as an offshoot of the Industrial Revolution and the age of science. Some also specifically cited the invention of photography as the basis of the realist theater while others view that the association between realism and drama

27540-512: Was designed by William Kent , and built during the 1750s on a former tiltyard site, replacing an earlier guard-house erected during the Civil War. The building includes an archway for coach traffic and two pedestrian arches that provide access between Whitehall and Horse Guards Parade . The central archway is marked with "SMF" and "StMW", and denotes the boundary between St Martin-in-the-Fields and St Margaret's church parish boundaries. During

27710-403: Was displayed prominently, and was used for the museum's own remembrance services in the interwar period until it was destroyed by a bomb during the Second World War. The Imperial War Museum collections also include a wooden money-collection box in the shape of the Cenotaph, made from part of the temporary Cenotaph by St Dunstan's . The Cenotaph is made from Portland stone formed as a pylon on

27880-542: Was expensive and usually commissioned for specific religious, political or personal reasons, which allowed only a relatively small amount of space or effort to be devoted to such scenes. Drolleries in the margins of medieval illuminated manuscripts sometimes contain small scenes of everyday life, and the development of perspective created large background areas in many scenes set outdoors. Medieval and Early Renaissance art usually showed non-sacred figures in contemporary dress by convention. Early Netherlandish painting brought

28050-405: Was no set or agreed standard for First World War memorials, the Cenotaph proved to be one of the most influential models for such structures. Lutyens designed several other cenotaphs, which all shared common features with that at Whitehall. The Cenotaph has been the subject of several artworks and has featured in multiple works of literature, including a novel and several poems. The public acclaim for

28220-503: Was rededicated to include the British and empire dead from that war, and its dates in Roman numerals (MCMXXXIX and MCMXLV) were added to the inscription. King George VI unveiled the additions at a ceremony on 10 November 1946. No separate national memorial was built for the casualties of the second war; instead, remembrance services were expanded to commemorate the new dead, and veterans of that war and later conflicts joined an annual march-past. Several political protests have taken place in

28390-412: Was redesigned by Sir Christopher Wren . In 1698, most of the vast palace burned to the ground accidentally after a fire started by a careless washerwoman. Wallingford House was constructed in 1572 by William Knollys, 1st Earl of Banbury along the western edge of Whitehall. The Duke of Buckingham bought the house in 1622, and it was subsequently used by Charles I. During the reign of William III, it

28560-657: Was said to prefer realism over ideal beauty, and during the Ancient Roman Republic , politicians preferred a truthful depiction in portraits, though the early emperors favored Greek idealism. Goya 's portraits of the Spanish royal family represent a sort of honest, unflattering portrayal of important people. A recurring trend in Christian art was "realism" that emphasized the humanity of religious figures, above all Christ and his physical sufferings in his Passion . Following trends in devotional literature , this developed in

28730-415: Was that the original site had been "qualified by the salutes of Foch and the allied armies [and] no other site would give this pertinence." Mond agreed, telling the cabinet that "no other site would have the same historical or sentimental association." The cabinet bowed to public pressure, approving the re-building in stone, and in the original location, at its meeting on 30 July 1919. Concerns remained about

28900-486: Was the design of much of New Delhi, the new capital of British India. The war had a profound effect on Lutyens and following it he devoted much of his time to the commemoration of its casualties. By the time he was commissioned for the Cenotaph, he was already acting as an adviser to the Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC). In 1917, he travelled to France under the auspices of the IWGC and was horrified by

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