An imagined World War I battle scene

The present work is an intriguing and wonderful insight into the early machinations of one of 20th century Britain's most promising artists who's life was tragically cut short. Not only does this drawing show the beginnings of a greatly talented draughtsman - Leonard Whistler in his book believes the work was executed when the artist was around the age of 10 - it also shows he was an artist of fantastical imagination, the whole battle scene being one presumably constructed from his mind's eye. Indeed there is something sadly prophetic about the subject matter of this early work. Whistler sadly was to die too young, like many others, in the Second World War. On the 18 July, 1944 his tank, after crossing a railway line, drove over some felled telegraph wires beside the railway which became entangled in its tracks. He and the crew got out to free the tank from the wire when a German machine gunner opened fire on them, preventing them from getting back into their tank. Whistler dashed across an open space of 60 yards to another tank to instruct its commander, a Sergeant Lewis Sherlock, to return the fire. As he climbed down from Sherlock's tank a mortar bomb exploded beside him and killed him instantly.