HENRY LAMB (BRITISH, 1883-1960)
Gun Crew
oil on panel
81.5 x 77.5 cm. (32 x 30 1/2 in.)
Painted in 1944

Provenance
The artist, thence by family descent

Henry Lamb was born in 1883 in Adelaide, Australia, the son of Professor Horace Lamb and his wife, Mary, and one of seven children. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to England, where his father accepted a position at the University of Manchester, and Lamb was subsequently raised in Manchester. Although he initially pursued medical training in Manchester and at Guy’s Hospital, he left the profession in 1905 to focus on art.

However, with the outbreak of World War I, Lamb returned to medicine, serving as a surgeon in Macedonia and Palestine. After the war, he was appointed an Official War Artist and created the monumental Irish Troops in the Judean Hills Surprised by a Turkish Bombardment (1919), now in the Imperial War Museum - a significant work that complements Stanley Spencer’s Travoys Arriving with Wounded Soldiers (1919) in capturing the harrowing experiences of war.

During World War I, Henry Lamb served on the front lines and, after being demobilized, was commissioned to capture the conflict through his art. This led to iconic works like Irish Troops in the Judaean Hills Surprised by a Turkish Bombardment (1919), now housed in the Imperial War Museum. By the time World War II erupted, Lamb, at 57, was appointed a full-time war artist by the War Artists’ Advisory Committee. In this role, he produced over 100 paintings and drawings, including striking portraits of servicemen and evocative scenes of the domestic war effort. The current piece showcases a gun crew loading shells into an anti-aircraft battery, the type of which defended Britain’s southern counties. A smaller version of this composition is part of York Art Gallery’s collection.