The Road

In 1918, the British Ministry of Information commissioned Sargent to paint a monumental picture illustrating the cooperation of British and American troops during World War I.  Sargent spent nearly four months on the Western front in northern France, mostly in and around Arras, searching for appropriate subjects and making numerous studies.  After he returned to England, he made this sketch of a motif he had seen often--a road encumbered with troops and traffic.  Sargent believed the theme would work as a large composition if, as he said, "it can be prevented from looking like going to the Derby." In this freely painted preliminary sketch, trucks, tanks, and fresh troops approach the viewer directly at left, while wounded soldiers walk away at right. Old and new are mingled, with officers on horseback in the background and, ahead of them, a soldier riding a motorcycle. However for his final composition, Sargent abandoned this motif altogether, choosing instead to show a frieze-like procession of soldiers blinded by mustard gas walking from left to right. It became the subject of one of his most moving and monumental images, Gassed, commissioned by the British War Memorials Committee (now at the Imperial War Museum in London).