Desolation on the Front

Unsigned original lithograph. 

Printed by Avenue Press, printed in black in a special edition limited to just 15 copies. The cost at the time for an unsigned one was five guineas in 1920.

As the title implies, the landscape is flat and desolate with mud and water and broken duck boards with a few leafless tree trunks.

Horton described such a scene: 'We look upon a man-made desert stretching to the horizon on which we can distinguish no landmarks but clumps of what were once trees clustered round little hamlets, but now lifeless sticks, bereft of branches, with no sign of any human habitation remaining above ground.'

The poster is unusual for Brangwyn in that it is lifeless, without humans, and for that reason even more poignant.