Lens-Arras Road, looking on to Vimy village, Lens and Henin Liotard in the distance, 1918 (c)

Lens-Arras Road, looking on to Vimy village, Lens and Henin Liotard in the distance, 1918 (c).

Oil on canvas, signed and dated lower left ‘Hughes-Stanton 1918’, by Herbert Hughes-Stanton (later Sir) (1870-1937), 1918, exhibited Royal Academy 1919 No 580.

The view is from about halfway along the road from Arras, going north towards Lens, and looking down onto the village of Vimy from Vimy Ridge. Here, on 9 April 1917, four divisions of Canadian infantry recaptured this four-mile long strategic height, which had been occupied by the Germans since October 1914. Fortified, it commanded the flat countryside for miles around. Careful preparations by the Canadians helped to make the assault a brilliantly successful one, forcing a German withdrawal and pressing forward the allied front line. Along the roadside, canvas baffles were stretched between poles in order to obscure the Germans’ view of allied movements. Depicted travelling northwards along the road is a French howitzer battery, with the gun dismantled into three sections for transportation.