拍品專文
The present work is a study for the large painting Halifax Harbour (77 x 132 in. coll. National Gallery of Canada, Ottowa) which was commissioned from Gilman by the Canadian War Records in 1918. The painting was to commemorate a catastrophe on 6 December 1917 when a French munitions ship 'Mont Blanc' blew up in the harbour with a cargo of 2,300 tons of picric acid, 10 tons of guncotton and 200 tons of TNT, killing hundreds outright and devasting the district of Richmond. The dredger is placed in the centre of the painting near the harbour buildings in the foreground.