The Great War
In 1918, one of the greatest painters of the Western World was dispatched to the Western Front to gather some artistic impressions of Western Civilization gone mad.
John Singer Sargent was 62 when he went to paint what was to be called, “The Great War”.
“Best known for his bravura society portraits and dazzling, sun-filled watercolors, the cosmopolitan American painter John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) might seem an unlikely candidate to document the Great War.”
In truth, Sargent was sent to “commemorate the joint efforts of American and British troops for a proposed Hall of Remembrance. He ultimately abandoned his assigned theme, choosing instead to depict the impact of modern chemical warfare.”
“Gassed (below) — an epic, frieze-like composition depicting soldiers blinded by mustard gas being led to treatment — was based on a scene that he had witnessed at Le-Bac-du Sud on the Arras-Doullens Road in August 1918. Along the side of the road, hundreds of injured soldiers convey the devastating human toll and horrific scale of the war.”
