German Soldiers riding past an abandoned Russian howitzer battery on the Russian front, 1918.

Ivan Alexeievitch Vladimirov travelled widely and served in the Russian armed forces before training as an artist. He was a war artist during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, the 1912-13 Balkan War and World War I (1914-18), going on to document the Russian Revolution and Civil War. However, he did so in two capacities, for he also sent work - created under the pseudonym of 'John Wladimiroff' - to the London-based journal, The Graphic, thus communicating the atrocities occurring under the Bolshevik government in the Russian empire from 1917-1922. An inscription on the old backboard locates the scene to the western battlefront somewhere near Dvinsk on the western Dvima river. Dvinsk was the name of what is now known as Daugavpils in modern-day Latvia during the time it was under control of the Russian Empire between 1893 and 1920. The fighting between Latvian, Polish, and also German troops as depicted here, against the Red Army, was heated in the area culminating in the Battle of Daugavpils in 1919. The work is signed using the artist's English pseudonym suggesting that this work was submitted to the English paper The Graphic. The newspaper ran at least two known features in 1918 using the artist's illustrations to portray the events of the civil war, however, whether this work was ever actually used in the publication is unknown.