'A Wonderful Setting for the Tragedy': the First World War drawings of George Lambert

George W Lambert was one of the greatest painters of Australian bush life. He was born in Russia in 1873 to an American father and English mother, but moved to Australia after the death of his father. He spent several years as a jackaroo on his great uncle's farm in Warren, NSW. During this time he developed a love for bush life and the culture of the Australian horseman, which was a theme he explored throughout his artistic career. In 1899 he won the Art Gallery of NSW's prestigious Wynne Prize for landscape with this evocative painting of a drover and his horse team on the wool track in rural NSW. The following year he won the New South Wales Society of Artists Travelling Scholarship, which took him to London where he was working when the war broke out. A patriotic man, like many of his fellow artists Lambert felt duty-bound to serve his country in the war, but was unable to enlist for the Australian Imperial Force in London. He instead joined a voluntary unit called the United Arts Rifles, through which he trained recruits in horsemanship.  

In Palestine, Lambert found a landscape that captured his imagination with almost as much force as his home country. 'Of all the places I visited', he wrote, 'the region around Jericho was the most attractive from the artistic point of view ... an inspiring background of hills ... beyond the Jordan the Mountains of Moab, standing out in jagged serrated masses of colour in strong light and shade'. His fascination with the Middle East continued long after his return to London, and his experiments with colour and form during this time certainly influenced a generation of Australian painters. However, it was the 'sweating, sun-bronzed men and beautiful horses', of the Light Horse that impressed him the most. These soldiers reminded him of the Australian bush and the masculine pioneer lifestyle of his youth. While at the front as well as back in his London studio, Lambert made close studies of Australian soldiers. These were often preparatory drawings of poses or equipment for his grand battle paintings, but he was also an acute observer of character and emotion. In this portrait of an unidentified Light Horse veteran, Lambert's sympathy and empathy for the man are obvious. The traces of his wartime service might be read in his stoic expression, rendered with subtlety and tact by a man who had shared the the war experience. 

Lambert continued to work on the commemoration of the war long after its end. In 1928 he received a commission from the Roman Catholic Sailors and Soldiers society to create a life-sized bronze sculpture of a recumbent soldier. He made four sketches in preparation for the final design, which he modelled at full-size with artist Arthur Murch. Lambert represented the uniform and equipment of the soldier with great accuracy, but this is a vision of heroic sacrifice that grants the digger an ideal death far removed from the reality of trench warfare. Though he seems to gesture with his right hand towards a bullet hole in his chest, the young soldier nevertheless appears serene and at peace in death. The sculpture was known informally as the 'Monument to the unknown soldier' until the creation of the official tomb to the unknown soldier in 1993.