Title
Near Ailly
March 1916
Artist
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Details
- Place where the work was made
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Ailly
→
Eure
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France
- Date
- March 1916
- Media category
- Watercolour
- Materials used
- watercolour on cream paper
- Dimensions
- 15.4 x 11.5 cm
- Signature & date
Signed with monogram and dated l.l corner on the reverse, pencil "HWH March 16".
- Credit
- National Art Archive. Gift of Rene Hawkins 1996
- Location
- Not on display
- Accession number
- ARC117.17.2
- Copyright
- © Estate of HF Weaver Hawkins
- Artist information
-
Weaver Hawkins
Works in the collection
- Share
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About
This watercolour is from a series of three which the artist did of the French countryside behind the Front in March and May of 1916. Before the battle of the Somme, Weaver Hawkins’ regiment was mobilised in this countryside. He completed these watercolours using the small palette that his mother had sent him. They give no hint of the trench warfare that was raging nearby. Artist William Orpen was also impressed by this countryside during the summer of 1916: ‘No words could express the beauty of it’, the vivid floral colours and ‘the whole air…thick with white butterflies…everything shimmered in the heat…it was an enchanted land.’
