WW1 Ghosts (iii)

Michael Sandle RA (b1936)

A large etching on copper in black from 2005 from a series called WW1 Ghosts.

WW1 Ghosts was a commission by the Canadian Cascadia Publications Group with the subject chosen by Sandle, a profoundly moving reflection on the First World War.

The ghosts are the soldiers seen in this image carrying their bayonet rifles over a bridge towards a fallen soldier slumped over the side.

Signed, titled WW2 Ghosts (iii) and numbered 122/150.

About the series:

“The ‘ultimate’ three-dimensional form to emerge from the Ghost Series would be a memorial foot-bridge to one of the war’s ‘pals’ regiments’. Pals’ regiments were a British way of encouraging recruitment and esprit de corps by letting friends who volunteered together fight in the same units. It often led to communities being decimated for a generation. Sandle had in mind a group of pals from a district of the Yorkshire city of Leeds, who were killed almost to a man on the infamous first day of the battle of the Somme, 1 July 1916.

The First World War will always haunt the imagination because it was so peculiarly tragic, while its historical importance is beyond measure: the breakwater between the old world and the new – in Canada’s case, as the great memorial on Vimy Ridge proclaims, the very birth of a nation.

Sandle is not partisan. He accepts war, and especially the First World War, as a metaphor of the human tragedy. That each one of us, however well protected or equipped, crosses life’s bridge from the unknown to the unknown; that each day is a battle ‘fighting forces beyond our control, even within ourselves’. And that however many pals we may have, we ultimately face that dark conflict alone.”

John McEwen, author of ‘The Sculpture of Michael Sandle’ (Lund Himphries).

 

Measurements: 22.5" x 26.75" sheet

Condition: Super condition, never framed

This work has now been sold