Collection Online as of May 28, 2023
Studies of a Soldier Drinking, for Gassed (recto)
Part of a set. See all set records
John Singer Sargent
(American, 1856–1925)
Charcoal (stumped in places) (left figures) and graphite (right figure); squared in graphite (right figure)
Support: Cream(3) modern laid paper (Michallet) (discolored)
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.)
Gift of Jane Iglauer Fallon in memory of Harold Fallon 1997.256.a
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.