Men of the Clyde

As today is Remembrance Sunday I thought this sculpture of the "Men of the Clyde" in Clyde Square, Greenock was appropriate.

Unveiled in 1975 the sculpture was created by Naomi Hunt and Malcolm Robertson and is inspired by the war artist, Stanley Spencer. The sculpture shows the men pulling a propeller.

Just after the outbreak of the Second World War the War Artists' Advisory Committee commissioned Spencer to record shipbuilding on the River Clyde. As his biographer, Fiona MacCarthy, points out: "His work was based at Lithgow's shipyard in Port Glasgow on the Firth of Clyde, concentrated on merchant ships under construction, and Spencer spent extended periods in Scotland during and immediately after the war. Spencer's war work came as a reprieve from his anxious isolation. He was able to immerse himself in the day-to-day activities of ordinary working people, intimately involved in the highly skilled processes of making with which he had always felt an innate sympathy. The Clyde shipbuilding paintings were conceived on an epic scale. Spencer's proposal was for a three-tier frieze 70 feet long. Eight of the projected thirteen canvases had been completed by the time the war artists were disbanded in 1946."

If you go large you can see the poppies on the cross ready for today's Remembrance Day Ceremony.