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Ernest Procter:
Army Ambulances by the Docks, 1919
Framed (ref: 2588)

Signed and dated ‘19’

Watercolour and gouache on paper, 12 1/2 x 19 1/2 in. (31.8 × 49.5 cm.) sight size

Tags: Ernest Procter gouache watercolour war

Provenance: From the collection of Philip Rieff and Alison Douglas Knox.
Literature: Meaburn Tatham and James E. Miles (eds.), The Friends’ Ambulance Unit
1914–1919 – A Record, Swarthmore Press, London, 1920.

This gouache depicts the final repatriation of army ambulances and supplies,
possibly from Dunkirk, in 1919.

Between 1916–17 Procter was a member of and official artist for the Friends’ Ambulance Unit (FAU) in Dunkirk, a voluntary organisation founded by individual members of the British Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), in line with their PeaceTestimony.The FAU operated from 1914–19 and was chiefly staffed by registered conscientious objectors such as Procter . Altogether it sent more than a thousand men to France and Belgium, where they worked on ambulance convoys and ambulance trains with the French
and British armies. Procter later served on theWestern Front with two units
of the Section Sanitaire Anglaise, at Nieuport Bains and atVerdun. He was
appointed OfficialWar Artist for the Ministry of Information from 1918–19.