Menin Gate at Midnight | |
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Artist | Will Longstaff |
Year | 1927 |
Medium | Oil on canvas |
Subject | Ghostly soldiers marching across a field in front of the Menin Gate war memorial |
Dimensions | 137 cm× 170 cm(54 in× 67 in) |
Location | Australian War Memorial, Canberra |
Accession | ART09807 |
Website | www |
Menin Gate at Midnight (also known as Ghosts of Menin Gate) is a 1927 painting by Australian artist Will Longstaff. The painting depicts a host of ghostly soldiers marching across a field in front of the Menin Gate war memorial. [1] The painting is part of the collection of the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. [2]
Longstaff painted the work after attending the unveiling of the Menin Gate memorial, at Ypres in Belgium, on 24 July 1927. The memorial commemorated those men of the British Empire, including Australia, who died in the battles of the First World War and have no known grave. Walking around the streets of Ypres after the ceremony, Longstaff was said to have seen a "vision of steel-helmeted spirits rising from the moonlit cornfields around him". [1] Returning to London, Longstaff was reported to have painted the work in a single session, while "still under psychic influence". [1]
The painting was immediately popular. It was purchased by Lord Woolavington for 2,000 guineas and presented to the Australian government. [1] After a royal command viewing at Buckingham Palace for George V and the Royal family, the painting was displayed in Manchester and Glasgow. It was then taken around Australia, where record crowds paid to view the work. Longstaff oversaw the making of 2,000 prints, and 400 of those were given to the nascent Australian War Memorial to sell to raise funds. [1]
The success of this work led Longstaff to paint three later companion pieces with a similar ghostly, spiritualist theme as can be seen below: [1]
Name | Year painted | Thumbnail | Description | Location | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Immortal Shrine (Eternal Silence) | 1928 | Showing ghostly soldiers marching past the Cenotaph in London on Remembrance Day | The Australian War Memorial, Canberra [3] | ||
The Ghosts of Vimy Ridge | 1931 | Depicting men of the Canadian Corps at Vimy Ridge | Railway Committee Room, Parliament of Canada [4] | ||
Carillon | 1932 | New Zealand soldiers in Belgium hearing the bells in their native country | Archives New Zealand [5] | Multiple chromolithographs were produced for New Zealand schools. Several copies are now preserved at the National Library of New Zealand [6] |
Ypres is a Belgian city and municipality in the province of West Flanders. Though the Dutch name Ieper is the official one, the city's French name Ypres is most commonly used in English. The municipality comprises the city of Ypres/Ieper and the villages of Boezinge, Brielen, Dikkebus, Elverdinge, Hollebeke, Sint-Jan, Vlamertinge, Voormezele, Zillebeke, and Zuidschote. Together, they are home to about 34,900 inhabitants.
The Menin Gate, officially the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing, is a war memorial in Ypres, Belgium, dedicated to the British and Commonwealth soldiers who were killed in the Ypres Salient of World War I and whose graves are unknown. The memorial is located at the eastern exit of the town and marks the starting point for one of the main roads that led Allied soldiers to the front line.
The year 1927 in architecture involved some significant architectural events and new buildings.
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Sir John Campbell Longstaff was an Australian painter, war artist and a five-time winner of the Archibald Prize for portraiture. Longstaff was one of the most prolific portraitists of the Edwardian period, painting many high society figures in both Australia and Britain.
George Washington Thomas Lambert was an Australian artist, known principally for portrait painting and as a war artist during the First World War.
Events from the year 1927 in art.
William Frederick Longstaff was an Australian painter and war artist best known for his works commemorating those who died in the First World War.
James Buchanan, 1st Baron Woolavington,, known as Sir James Buchanan, Bt, from 1920 to 1922, was a British businessman, philanthropist, and racehorse owner and breeder.
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The Ploegsteert Memorial to the Missing is a Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) memorial in Belgium for missing soldiers of World War I. It commemorates men from the Allied Powers who fought on the northern Western Front outside the Ypres Salient and whose graves are unknown. The memorial is located in the village of Ploegsteert and stands in the middle of Berks Cemetery Extension.
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Menin may refer to:
Memorial gates and arches are architectural monuments in the form of gates and arches or other entrances, constructed as a memorial, often dedicated to a particular war though some are dedicated to individuals. The function, and very often the architectural form, is similar to that of a Roman triumphal arch, with the emphasis on remembrance and commemoration of war casualties, on marking a civil event, or on providing a monumental entrance to a city, as opposed to celebrating a military success or general, though some memorial arches perform both functions. They can vary in size, but are commonly monumental stone structures combining features of both an archway and a gate, often forming an entrance or straddling a roadway, but sometimes constructed in isolation as a standalone structure, or on a smaller scale as a local memorial to war dead. Although they can share architectural features with triumphal arches, memorial arches and gates constructed from the 20th century onwards often have the names of the dead inscribed on them as an act of commemoration.
Australian official war artists are those who have been expressly employed by either the Australian War Memorial (AWM) or the Army Military History Section. These artist soldiers depicted some aspect of war through art; this might be a pictorial record or it might commemorate how war shapes lives.
Between 1923 and 1936, the Imperial War Graves Commission erected a series of memorial tablets in French and Belgian cathedrals to commemorate the British Empire dead of the First World War. The tablets were erected in towns in which British Army or Empire troops had been quartered.
The Menin Road is a large oil painting by Paul Nash completed in 1919 that depicts a First World War battlefield. Nash was commissioned by the British War Memorials Committee to paint a battlefield scene for the proposed national Hall of Remembrance. The painting is considered one of the most iconic images of the First World War and is held by the Imperial War Museum.
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