What is the name of that painting about the use of Mustard Gas in WW1?

Question

It's English I believe. I'm reasearching chemical warfare in the first world war for a history thing at college. The painting is in the Imperial War Museum in London, if that helps at all...
Thanks for your help :)

Answer 1

This painting is called Gassed and is painted by John Singer Sargent. I've seen it in the IWM too and its very moving.

Sargent, the son of an American doctor, was born in Florence in 1856. He studied painting in Italy and France and in 1884 caused a sensation at the Paris Salon with his painting of Madame Gautreau. Exhibited as Madame X, people complained that the painting was provocatively erotic.

The scandal persuaded Sargent to move to England and over the next few years established himself as the country's leading portrait painter. This included portraits of Joseph Chamberlain (1896), Frank Swettenham (1904) and Henry James (1913). Sargent made several visits to the USA where as well as portraits he worked on a series of decorative paintings for public buildings such as the Boston Public Library (1890) and the Museum of Fine Arts (1916).

In 1918 Sargent was commissioned to paint a large painting to symbolize the co-operation between British and American forces during the First World War. Sargent was sent to France with the British painter, Henry Tonks. One day Sargent visited a casualty clearing station at Le Bac-de-Sud. While at the casualty station he witnessed an orderly leading a group of soldiers that had been blinded by mustard gas. He used this as a subject for a naturalist allegorical frieze depicting a line of young men with their eyes bandaged. Gassed soon became one of the most memorably haunting images of the war.

While in France Sargent also painted The Interior of a Hospital Tent (1918) and A Street in Arras (1918). John Singer Sargent died in 1925.

I don't know if its connected to the famous poem below me.

Answer 2

Here's a reference to battlefield art, and the "Gassed" picture.(URL's below)

It should be noted that the "blinding" from mustard gas was almost always temporary, and the covering of the eyes with a damp cloth was to relieve the pain of the keratitis, not a symbol of permanent disability.

From "Mud, Blood and Popycock" by Gordon Corrigan:
"Throughout the course of the war the British lost 487,994 dead from all causes on the Western Front. Of these deaths 5,899, or 1.2 percent of the total, were attributable to gas."

The chapter "Frightfulness" deals with gas at some length.

Answer 3

Are you thinking of Wilfred Owen's great poem
Dulce et Decorum Est
(which is an abbreviation of the Latin Dulce et Decorum Est pro Patria Mori: How sweet it is to die for one's country)

Here's the poem, there may be a painting, but I don't know of it. But then I'm a poet, not a paintr.

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.