Two Soldiers at Arras

During World War I, Sargent traveled to the front lines as an official war artist for the British government. He spent four months along the Western Front in the Valley of the Somme. Horrified by the use of chemical weapons, he made a number of studies of soldiers suffering the effects of gas attacks. This closely cropped view focuses attention on two debilitated men lying in the grass. One still wears his gas mask, while the other clutches his eyes, underscoring one of the grave effects of exposure to mustard gas—temporary blindness. When Sargent returned from France, he synthesized his studies into a monumental composition, “Gassed” (1919; Imperial War Museums, London), a work that heroicizes soldiers blinded by the chemical agent being led to treatment.