John Singer Sargent's painting from the first world war entitled Gassed. The aftermath of a gas attack with soldiers being led across the battlefield.
If you saw this painting hanging on Imperial War Museum’s wall, you would have immediately noted its tremendous size – 231 cm to 611 cm. Then you might have probably noticed it’s topic. Gassed depicts the aftermath of a mustard gas attack, with a line of wounded, blind soldiers walking towards a dressing station. The painting provides a powerful testimony of the effects of chemical weapons. Mustard gas is a persistent vesicant gas, with the effects that become apparent only several hours after exposure. It attacks the skin, eyes and mucous membranes, causing large skin blisters, blindness, choking and vomiting. Death can occur within two days, but suffering may be prolonged over several weeks. Here we have the horrible scene of management of the gas victims, their relative lack of protective clothing, the impact and extent of the gas attack as well as its routine nature – show must go on regardless the victims. Sargent visited the Western Front in July 1918 near Arras and then near Ypres. As an American painter, he was asked to create a work embodying Anglo-American co-operation. Sargent’s painting refers to Bruegel’s 1568 work The Parable of the Blind, with the blind leading the blind. It also alludes to Rodin’s Burghers of Calais. The painting was completed in March 1919. It wasn’t liked by everyone – some considered it too heroic, like Virginia Woolf, but Winston Churchill praised its “brilliant genius and painful significance”. I’m not sure if it should be described as “too heroic” it shows a group of broken and helpless men that occupy the entire foreground of the painting, and continues behind the stepping men, makes that claim even less credible. This is the depiction of people of no future, who devoted everything to fight in a war that changed the modern world Zuzanna Stanska
Size: 13549px × 5075px
Location: Ypres, France
Photo credit: © steeve-x-art / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
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