Lot Essay
'Guns' was Lewis's first one-man show containing fifty-four exhibits intended as 'a series dealing with the gunner's life from his arrival in the depot to his life in the line'. Produced during the period that he served as an official war artist but not commissioned by the authorities, the drawings depicted the devestation caused by the howitzer batteries as well as scenes more closely related to the artist's own time in battle, such as 'The Menin Road' and 'Ypres Salient'.
In an article Lewis wrote for 'The Daily Express', he wrote about the fact that the landscape of modern war is a product of deliberate industry: 'Ypres and Vimy ... were deliberately invented scenes, daily improved on and worked at by up-to-date machines, to stage war. There is, or was, no trace in one of the valleys before Ypres except of this agency'. The present work shows such a deliberately invented scene. (see P. Edwards, Imperial War Museum Exhibition Catalogue, 1992, pp.36-37).
In an article Lewis wrote for 'The Daily Express', he wrote about the fact that the landscape of modern war is a product of deliberate industry: 'Ypres and Vimy ... were deliberately invented scenes, daily improved on and worked at by up-to-date machines, to stage war. There is, or was, no trace in one of the valleys before Ypres except of this agency'. The present work shows such a deliberately invented scene. (see P. Edwards, Imperial War Museum Exhibition Catalogue, 1992, pp.36-37).