| Over 15,000 Canadian soldiers died in the mud at Passchendaele where the well-prepared Germans were aware of the coming offensive and supplied with mustard gas to deliver by shellfire. After the First World War, painter Mary Riter Hamilton (1873-1954) undertook a "special mission" for the British Columbia War Amputees Club — she was asked to paint French and Belgian battlefields for The Gold Stripe, a veterans' magazine. Hamilton spent seven years in Europe and, between 1919 and 1922, painted over 300 scenes of battlefields. In 1927, she donated 227 of her paintings to the National Archives. Oil on cardboard
C-104640 |