Lot 303: Charles Sargeant Jagger , No Man's Land Bronze, Wood

signed bronze relief with brown patina, mounted on wood

16.5 by 49cm.; 6½ by 19¼in.

London, The Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours, Charles Sargeant Jagger Memorial Exhibition , War and Peace Sculpture , May 21st-June 20th, 1935, no.7, illustrated in the catalogue, for sale at 18 gns, touring to Birmingham, Liverpool, Sheffield, Lincoln, Wakefield, Halifax, Dunfermline, Rochdale, Perth, Hull, Doncaster and Stockport;
London, Imperial War Museum, Charles Sargeant Jagger War and Peace Sculpture Centenary Exhibition 1885 - 1985 , 1 May-29 September 1985, (another cast);
Sheffield, Mappin Art Gallery, Charles Sargeant Jagger , 19th October- 30th November 1985, no.28 (another cast).

Ann Compton, The Sculpture of Charles Sargeant Jagger, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, Hertfordshire, 2004, no.22, illustrated p.30 (another cast);
Charles Sargeant Jagger, "How to do it" Series 5. Modelling and Sculpture in the Making, Herbert Reiach Ltd., London, 1935, detail illustrated p.49 (another cast).

Conceived 1918-19, this cast is from the edition of seven cast in 1935. The best thing I have seen so far by any artist of the War (John Singer Sargent to Sir Martin Conway, 12υth February 1919, IWM First World War Artists Archive 240/6) Amongst the first WWI-inspired works by Jagger, No Man's Land has the undeniable air of authenticity, and was in part based on Jagger's own experience, first in the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign in the Dardanelles and later on the Western Front. The depiction of the dead renders the men of both sides equal and echoes similar sentiments seen in contemporary paintings such as Nevinson's The Harvest of Battle of 1919 and Sargent's Gassed of 1918-19 (both IWM Collection).