Studies of a Soldier Drinking, for Gassed (recto)

1918–19

John Singer Sargent

(American, born Italy, 1856–1925)

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Culture

America

Medium

charcoal (stumped in places) (left figures) and graphite (right figure); squared in graphite (right figure)

Support

Cream(3) modern laid paper (Michallet) (discolored)

Measurements

Sheet: 48.1 x 62.6 cm (18 15/16 x 24 5/8 in.); Overall: 48.1 x 62.5 cm (18 15/16 x 24 5/8 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Jane Iglauer Fallon in memory of Harold Fallon 1997.256.a

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Location

Not on view

Description

In 1919, Sargent exhibited a large painting at the Royal Academy of Art in London called Gassed. The Dressing Station at Le Bac and on the Doullers-Arras Road. The British War Memorial Committee had commissioned the work from him as a way of honoring the sacrifices of World War I. The subject was based on a scene the artist actually witnessed during his visit to battlefields in France in 1918. This drawing is a study for one of the soldiers in the painting, which now hangs in the Imperial War Museum in London.