Women at War: The Homefront

Women on the Homefront: "Women Making Shells" by Mabel May

“Women Making Shells” highlights the wartime work that women did in Canadian factories on the homefront. In this depiction, Mabel May chose to portray women in a Montreal factory. 

Mabel May was commissioned by the War Memorials Fund in 1917 in order to document the Canadian wartime experience on the Homefront [1]. May was one of the few female artists to be commissioned by the Fund. As a woman, May was not permitted to travel overseas to the Western Front because it was considered too dangerous to place female artists on the battlefront [2]. 

Women Making Shells conveys the reality of munitions work which took place in noisy and dark factories. Upon the outbreak of WWI, over 12,000 Canadian women signed up for the munitions workforce in order to contribute to the war effort [3].

May’s wartime work was consistent with the impressionist style she adopted throughout her artistic career. The impressionist style of art uses colour, tone, and texture to capture the feeling of a specific moment as opposed to a completely accurate depiction of a given scene. 

It is interesting to compare May’s wartime work with her pre-war impressionist style. One art historian used May’s 1913 painting, The Regatta, to emphasise May’s tendency to use figures to direct the viewer’s eye toward the main focus of the work [4]. This same technique was used by May in Women Making Shells to direct the viewer’s attention to the wartime task at hand–that being the manufacturing of shells.

Ultimately, this painting pays homage to a talented female artist as all of the Canadian women who worked on the Homefront.