Journée de l'Armée d'Afrique et des Troupes Coloniales (African Army and Colonial Troops Day), Lucien Jonas; Devambez Printers

Exhibition Label: “Machine in a Void: World War I & the Graphic Arts,” Mar-2010, Steve Goddard Soldiers from the French colonies played a significant role on the fronts in Europe and the Balkans, with the French army alone recruiting nearly 292,000 men from Africa and around 600,000 troops from the colonies as a whole. This poster shows Senegalese tirailleurs, or infantry, along with two French foot-soldiers and an Indo-Chinese soldier. Lucian Jonas was one of the more prolific illustrators during the “Great War.” Officially accredited as a military painter in February 1915, he travelled extensively along all sections of the front lines, producing thousands of paintings and illustrations that were published in hundreds of different publications and books. Jonas tended to mix facts with allegory, creating effective propaganda that embodied his nation’s wartime myths and helped shape how the War looked in the popular imagination. In portraying soldiers and officers as equals in the struggle against the Germans, he created an image of the French soldier as heroic and unflinching in their duty, prepared to give their lives for France. For this poster, Jonas expands that idealistic view to include troops from the French colonies. However, the ongoing French discrimination against the colonial troops can be seen in Jonas’s portrayal of the colonial forces as more savage and uncivilized in warfare than their French counterparts.