E01054
Photograph E01054 First World War, 1914-1918View of the slippery mud on a corduroy track in the Ypres sector, which made it necessary to use six horses to pull a GS wagon from the ditch.
Bringing up the guns Accession Number: ART03334
Description
Power had witnessed the opening phase of the Ypres campaign in Belgium during July 1917 and the role of the horses pulling artillery guns into position. Here, he depicts the 101st Australian Battery moving an18 pounder gun during the Third Battle of Ypres in Passchendaele, Belgium in October 1917. The drivers urge on their mounts, and the gunners assist on the drag ropes, but the focus is on what the horses were experiencing. The line of the harness leads the eye into the scene, considering each pair of horses in turn. In 1933 the painting was reproduced in ‘Australian Chivalry’ alongside a description of what was happening:
‘As fight succeeded fight the sodden, greasy battlefield became so churned up by the unceasing bombardments of both sides that ... after each advance the moving forward of the guns to fresh positions, in order to keep the enemy within range, called for superhuman efforts. Since the lines of the old roads were barely traceable, parties of engineers and pioneers and infantry, working at high pressure under frightful conditions of shell-fire and ""mustard"" gas, laid plank-roads across the boggy crater-field for the passage of the guns’.
Power was renowned for his paintings of horses, and, as the Memorial’s Director John Treloar wrote to official historian Charles Bean in 1921, ‘he has the advantage that he gets down to the work and finishes it’. Power was appointed an official war artist with the rank of Honorary Lieutenant and worked in France and Belgium attached to the 1st Division Australian Imperial Force in 1917-18 and was assigned many further commissions after the war.
Details
Accession Number
ART03334
Artist
Classification
Art
Object Type
Painting
Physical Description
Medium: oil on canvas
Measurement
Framed: 171.5 x 258 x 12 cm
Unframed: 147.3 x 233.7 cm
Unframed: 147.3 x 233.7 cm
Medium
oil on canvas
Date Made
1921
Place Made
Gallery location
Main Bld: Concourse, Wall 1.2
Whole/Part
Whole
Item Count
1
Credit Line
Acquired under commission 1921
Copyright
Copyright expired - public domain
Conflicts
Places
Events
Units
Tags and Groups
Related Objects
More like this
Bringing up the rations near Suzanne
Art ART02350 First World War, 1914-1918Depicts a cart with rations and supplies on it being pulled by two horses. One soldier is seated on the horse, while one sits on the cart. They are moving through a war damaged landscape. Will Dyson w
Bringing up the guns
Art ART90405 First World War, 1914-1918A bronze panel depicting members of a gun crew pushing and pulling an 18 pounder gun up a slight incline. This work is taken from an original plaster cast of one of four bronze bas-relief panels comm
Bringing up the stew
Art ART02229 First World War, 1914-1918Depicts two soldiers wearing tin helmets, carrying a covered pot of stew across a war damaged landscape during the First World War. The drawing was reproduced in the publication 'Australia at War: Dra
E00899
Photograph E00899 First World War, 1914-1918Water sodden shell craters and boggy gullies, over which the advance was made by Australian troops between Albert Redoubt and Anzac Ridge, in the Ypres sector, during the latter end of September 1917.
Bringing up the guns
Art ART90084 First World War, 1914-1918This is the original plaster cast of one of four bronze bas-relief panels commissioned from Butler-George for the base of the pedestal of the Second Division AIF Memorial at Mont St Quentin, France i
E01055
Photograph E01055 First World War, 1914-1918A large group of men hauling up the guns by hand at Anzac Ridge, in the Ypres sector, when the ground was so boggy that it was impossible to use the horses.
