Standish Backus, Jr. (April 5, 1910 – October 12, 1989) was a United States military artist.
Born in Detroit, he attended Princeton University, where he obtained in 1933 a degree in architecture. He then spent a year at the University of Munich studying painting. After a brief period in Maine studying watercolor under Eliot O’Hara, he relocated to Santa Barbara, in 1935 and began working full-time as an artist. At the start of the Second World War he commissioned as an ensign in the Naval Reserve in 1940, and became an active-duty officer in 1941. He spent most of the war assigned to Net and Boom Defenses in the South Pacific.
He transferred to a special graphic presentation unit in 1945 and spent the last year of the Pacific theater as a combat artist. By the end of the war he had obtained the rank of commander. He left active service in May 1946 and taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara from 1947 to 1948.
Standish Backus #33 Watercolor, 1946
The Japanese Director pointed out the various types of casualities, the fractures, the contusions, the loss of hair, the blood degeneration, the dysentery-like cases of radiation after-effects, and mostly the burns. Among the latter were the cases of girls wearing flowered prints who showed the pattern etched in burns on their bodies where the dark patches had been.When Naval investigation teams went into Hiroshima City after the bombing about a month later, inhabitants generally stayed away. This sense of isolation amid the ruins left the teams with an eerie feeling as they worked.
Painting, Watercolor on Paper; by Standish Backus; 1946; Still Life, Hiroshima Standish Backus #30 Watercolor, 1946Painting, Watercolor on Paper; by Standish Backus; 1946; F
Torn and seared she seemed a part of the rugged upheaved terrain -- and the handy rice workers would gaze out over her -- perhaps toward distant Hiroshima. Then they would turn again to their task, night soil had to be spread, the crops reaped.Hiroshima, 1945 Standish Backus #20 Watercolor, 1945
Standish Backus, Jr. (April 5, 1910 – October 12, 1989) was a United States military artist.
