Gassed by Sargent: The Blind March of World War I (1919)
Blindfolded soldiers form a human chain, each hand on the man ahead, moving through mustard-gas aftermath like a procession that has forgotten how to see. John Singer Sargent's Gassed (1919) is enormous and quiet at once - a society portraitist's eye turned on World War I's chemical wound, where the sky is still strangely luminous and the ground is full of bodies waiting. Quick facts Artist: John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) Date: 1919 Medium: Oil on canvas Collection: Imperial War Museum, London Notable fact: Commissioned as a war memorial painting; depicts mustard-gas blinded troops after a Western Front attack John Singer Sargent, Gassed , 1919. Imperial War Museum, London. From Glamour to Triage Sargent had made a career of silk, marble, and brilliant faces. The British War Memorials Committee sent him toward something else. Gassed keeps his clarity of grouping and light, then spends it on men whose eyes are wrapped and whose path is a rope of trust. Bea...