description

Object description

image: A view of a desolate battlefield showing raging fires, thick smoke, shell holes full of deep mud, and corpses.

Label

Leroux served in the French Army during the First World War and saw action on the Western Front. The perspective he offers of the modern industrialised battlefield in 'L'Enfer' ('Hell') is clearly that experienced by the ordinary French infantryman. It is a soldier's view of the grotesque and distorted landscape, amidst shattered tree-stumps, sulphurous flames and choking smoke, desperately clinging to existence in a filthy, brimming shell hole. The imagery, which is painstakingly detailed, remorseless and without hope, was possibly inspired by the realities of front-line experience during the 1916 battles in defence of Verdun. Between February and December 1916 it has been estimated that the French Army lost nearly half a million men defending Verdun and its outlying fortresses from repeated German attacks. Both German and French forces were 'bled white' in ferocious fighting which saw intense artillery bombardments, the use of poison gas (phosgene was used for the first time) and liquid fire. The artist reminds us that the earth, which in peacetime sustains health and life, has been transformed in time of war into an uninhabitable 'Hell' and as such 'L'Enfer' may be construed as a most powerful anti-war image.

History note

Note: This artwork was relocated in August 1939 to a less vulnerable site outside London when the museum activated its evacuation plan.

Inscription

GEORGES LEROUX