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Alan Sorrell:
A Land Fit for Heroes, 1936
Framed (ref: 2591)

Signed and date

Pen and ink and gouache, 11 5/8 x 19 1/2 in. (32.1 x 49.4 cm.)

Tags: Alan Sorrell gouache ink pen and ink war WW-1 Paintings World War One and its Aftermath

Provenance: Richard Sorrell.

David Lloyd George promised the soldiers who fought for ‘King and Country’ that they would return to a ‘land fit for heroes’.The land they returned to had changed profoundly, yet it met hardly any of their expectations: of those lucky enough to return,most collected their civilian suit, a pair of medals and a small cash payment, then joined the ranks of those looking in vain for work; others collected a disability pension but were never able to work again.

Sorrell was fourteen in 1918, and had spent much of a sickly childhood in a Bath chair ; perhaps this made him more sympathetic towards the victims of the war.

In this harrowing picture, a statue of Britannia on a pedestal ironically surveys the scene: a civilian grandee with a hawkish expression watches a pathetic parade of war-wounded, some so grey-faced that they seem already to be ghosts.The picture, a grim foreboding of the carnage to come, called on Sorrell’s memories of the First World War veterans.

1936 Stanley Baldwin was Prime Minister (for the third time having be re elected the previous year)February – John Maynard Keynes's book The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money is published in the UK.   Summer Olympics open in Berlin, Germany, and mark the first live television coverage of a sports event in world history