The Hall of Remembrance

Abstract

John Singer Sargent’s Gassed, painted in 1918–19 soon after he witnessed just such a harrowing scene on the Western Front, is moving enough when encountered at the Imperial War Museum in London. But the extraordinary cinematic width of this canvas was originally commissioned as the climax of a monumental building: the Hall of Remembrance. Intended to house an outstanding and powerful collection of paintings responding to the conflict, it would undoubtedly be cherished today as a profound memorial to the tragedy of the First World War. Commissioned to execute an immense canvas for the Hall of Remembrance, he went over to France in July 1918 with his old friend Henry Tonks. By the autumn of 1918, though, all hopes for realising the visionary Hall of Remembrance scheme had begun to fade. The increasing success of the Allied advance signalled the end of the conflict, and the Committee responsible for the hall acknowledged that it would soon be dissolved.