Focus on Anzac, the Landing 1915 and discuss the Reception.
The painting was commissioned in 1919 for £500 by the Australian High Commission in London, as part of an official war art scheme. Lambert started work on London and completed the work in 1922. It was unveiled on ANZAC Day (25 April) 1922 in Melbourne. The work was immediately popular with over 14,000 viewers in the first week of exhibition and over 770,000 by the time the exhibition closed in 1924.
[V]isitors to the Museum ... complain there is a lack of fire, a lack of action and of the terror of war, but on the facts ... we must accept that men equipped as these men were, moving upwards on this particular place, without any idea of where the enemy was, what they had to do, would look just like this small swarm of ants climbing, no matter how rapidly, climbing painfully and laboriously upward through the uneven ground and spiky uncomfortable shrubs
Painter and critic Alexander Colquhoun in a contemporary review stated Lambert's work showed "rare dramatic and artistic skill" and "speaks ... of a declaration of sacrifice and achievement in a way that no other war picture has done".
ANZAC Day 1922 Melbourne Alexander Colquhoun