Gazés

On the 21st of August 1918, near a dressing station at Le Bac-du-Sud in northern France, Sargent watched a barrage of mustard gas come through. He was 62, sent out by a British committee to make a picture about Anglo-American cooperation, and this was the thing he could not stop seeing. Men blinded by the gas, eyes bandaged, each with a hand on the shoulder of the man in front, being led in a slow line toward help. He painted them nearly life-size, stepping carefully over the bodies of others lying on the ground. Look to the back of the canvas and there is a detail that keeps unsettling people. Behind the wounded, a game of football is going on, the war still ordinary a few hundred yards away. The Royal Academy voted it picture of the year in 1919.