A new exhibition at Bushey Museum looking at the impact of war opened on Friday. This year is the centenary of the end of the Great War, as it was called at the time and 2019 marks the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the Second World War.

Communications today are such that we are bombarded with news of conflict around the world. This was not the case when Thomas Monro invited artists to his cottage in Merry Hill Road.

The only known conflict would have been between the poacher and the gamekeeper of the big house. By the time Herkomer arrived in Bushey some 40 years later, news as we know it was just beginning to filter through to the ‘sleepy picturesque village’, certainly by way of train from London.

The coming of electricity and the telegraph and telephone would have allowed the reporting of the Boer War, and by the time of the First World War Bushey and its resident artists would have been fully engaged in the war effort.

This exhibition endeavours to relate the story of Bushey artists and war in general, but with reference to the Armistice, progressing towards peace, which must remain the aim of us all.

Back from the War is an exhibition that encompasses war in general and how it affected the lives of Bushey artists through the years; some participated, some reported and recorded and some used their art for propaganda purposes.

The centenary of the end of the First World War prompts the showing of conflict but the aim has to be progress towards peace.

Artists such as Lucy Kemp-Welch, Miguel MacKinlay, and Paul Peter Piech are featured and there is a diverse collection of media on show; paintings, prints, drawings, postcards, and photographs.