JEFFREY BROWN:

The Great War began in Europe in 1914. The U.S. didn't join until three years later, after an intense public debate over entering a foreign conflict.

Artists weighed in on both sides. John Sloan's After the War, a Medal, Maybe a Job in 1914 was one of the earliest anti-war drawings.

Marsden Hartley was conflicted. He lived in Germany and fell in love with a German military officer killed in the war, who Hartley depicted in a series of paintings.

Childe Hassam on the other hand, active in the pro-interventionist movement in New York, streamed flags across his canvasses in support of the allies.

And George Bellows, an early opponent of the war, was moved to support it by a U.S. government report, later disputed, of German atrocities.