
Not on display
- Artist
- Augustus John OM 1878–1961
- Medium
- Oil paint on canvas
- Dimensions
- Support: 730 x 540 mm
- Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Purchased 1941
- Reference
- N05268
Display caption
Gallery label, July 2008
Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you.
Catalogue entry
N05268 A CANADIAN SOLDIER 1918
Not inscribed.
Canvas, 28 3/4×21 1/4 (73×54).
Purchased from Arthur Tooth & Sons (Knapping Fund) 1941.
Exh: Alpine Club Gallery, March 1920 (17 or 18, repr. as frontispiece); Sheffield, August–October 1956 (40).
Lit: John, 1952, pp.124–8.
Repr: Apollo, XX, 1934, p.165; Rothenstein, 1944, pl.34; Allan Gwynne-Jones, Portrait Painters, 1950, pl.137.
This picture is one of many paintings of Canadian soldiers which John executed at the end of the 1914–18 war.
At the beginning of the 1914–18 war John was considered unfit for military service (he had damaged his knee while mule jumping in Ireland), and it was not until the end of 1917 that he obtained a commission under Lord Beaverbrook as Official Artist to Canadian War Records. The artist was given the rank of Major and was sent to France where he was posted to the Canadian sector, which stretched from Béthune to Arras. John toured round this area making notes, and it was in a large house at Aubigny that he drew and painted his soldiers. It was also during this time that John collected material for the decoration of the Canadian War Memorial in Toronto. The latter was never built, and only the large cartoon which John drew in preparation for the painting survives; it was sold at Christie's, 20 July 1962 (184, repr.).
Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, I
Explore
- history(5,803)
-
- military: World War I(673)
-
- Western Front(140)
- clothing and personal items(5,986)
-
- helmet(275)
- gun, rifle(203)
- nationality(18,324)
-
- Canadian(154)
You might like
-
Augustus John OM Colonel T.E. Lawrence
1919 -
Augustus John OM Viscount d’Abernon
1927–32 -
Augustus John OM The Orange Jacket
c.1916 -
Augustus John OM Madame Suggia
1920–3 -
Augustus John OM Head of Romilly, the Artist’s Son
c.1924 -
Augustus John OM Lyric Fantasy
c.1913–14 -
Augustus John OM Rachel
c.1917 -
Augustus John OM Woman Smiling
1908–9 -
Augustus John OM Blue Cineraria
c.1928 -
Augustus John OM The Little Railway, Martigues
1928 -
Augustus John OM W.B. Yeats
1907 -
Augustus John OM Theodore Powys
c.1932 -
Augustus John OM Galway
1916 and 1920 -
Augustus John OM Washing Day
c.1915 -
Augustus John OM Dorelia Standing before a Fence
c.1903–4