Planning for official artists to cover the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in World War I began in May 1917, a month after the United States declared itself a belligerent. The Committee on Public Information had been established in April to coordinate propaganda for the war effort, and the idea for official artists originated in the Committee's Division of Pictorial Publicity. The Army commissioned eight artists, most of them experienced magazine illustrators, to record the activities of the AEF in France.
In May 1918 the artists were all captains in the Corps of Engineers. Once in France they were attached to the Press and
Censorship Division of the Intelligence Section of the AEF's General Staff. Armed with credentials authenticated by both French and American officials and with their rank of captains, they toured the American battlefields, using whatever transportation they could find, to create their impressions of the war. Although officially banned from participation in actual combat, more than one found the opportunity to join the troops at the front to observe firsthand the effects of close combat.
By the end of the war the artists had produced almost 500 pieces of art before returning to civilian life. Since at that time the Army had no way to properly care for the artwork it had commissioned, the Smithsonian Institution assumed responsibility for the collection, where it remains in the care of the National Museum of American History.