"Match Sellers: Class of '17"— The AEF's Version of Sargent's Gassed

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American artist John Singer's Sargent's Gassed—a dramatic and powerfully moving painting of a column of blinded British Tommies being evacuated off a battlefield—is the most famous work of combat art from the First World War. Apparently inspired by Sargent's work, a Doughboy veteran named Kerr Eby later produced a similar work  (a charcoal drawing on paper) showing blinded and bandaged Doughboys in a comparable formation. His title Match Sellers refers to a future job possibility that would not require the use of sight.

Sargent's Gassed

Kerr Eby (1889–1946) was a Canadian-American artist who served in the AEF. Not an official war artist, he enlisted in the engineers and, because of his artistic skills, was assigned to a camouflage unit. In 1918, he participated in the battles of Château-Thierry and Saint-Mihiel. In the interwar period Eby became ardently anti-war. Match Sellers appeared in a 1936 collection of his works inspired by his military service titled War.

The Sort of Scene Eby Would Have Witnessed on the Western Front

Eby—despite his feelings about war—tried to re-enlist to serve in the Second World War but was denied because of his age. Determined to get to the battlefields, he joined a civilian combat artists program and deployed to the Pacific. He contracted a tropical disease while covering the war in Bougainville and would die at his home in Westport, Connecticut, in 1946.

Sources: Kerr Eby and Efforts Against War, Hillstrom Museum of Art