Five Studies for 'Advance Dressing Station on the Sturma'

Henry Lamb 1883 - 1960

Summary

1. Final composational study. 2. Prelimonary compositional study. 3. Front view of a standing soldier. 4. Back view of a standing soldier. 5. Seated soldier with head in hands.

Display Label

Advanced Dressing Station on the Struma, 1916 1921 Henry Lamb 1883-1960 Oil on canvas This painting is a scene of medical aid being given to the wounded man on a stretcher, but is also symbolic of the pain and succour of the entire war with its almost religious composition. Lamb was commissioned in the Royal Army Medical Corps and sent first to Salonika (Thessaloniki) in Greece with the British Salonika Army in 1916 in late 1917 to Palestine. On his return Lamb, who had won a Military Cross for gallantry, began to turn his experiences into his most important works. A small number of drawings and watercolours were exhibited at Manchester City Art Gallery in 1920. One of these, Succouring the Wounded in a Wood on the Doiran Front prompted the Gallery Director, Lawrence Haward, to commission Lamb to turn it into a major painting as the beginning of a war art collection for Manchester. The River Struma was the site of a little-known campaign to repulse the Bulgarian invasion of eastern Greece and to achieve the ultimate liberation of Serbia from Bulgaria and the Central Powers. Manchester City Galleries 1921.4