Focus on this artwork and explain the abstract.
Gassed is a very large oil painting completed in March 1919 by John Singer Sargent.  It depicts the aftermath of a mustard gas attack during the First World War, with a line of wounded soldiers walking towards a dressing station.  Sargent was commissioned by the British War Memorials Committee to document the war and visited the Western Front in July 1918 spending time with the Guards Division near Arras, and then with the American Expeditionary Forces near Ypres.  The painting was finished in March 1919 and voted picture of the year by the Royal Academy of Arts in 1919.  It is now held by the Imperial War Museum. It visited the US in 1999 for a series of retrospective exhibitions, and then from 2016 to 2018 for exhibitions commemorating the centenary of the First World War.
John Singer Sargent dressing station Western Front mustard gas Royal Academy of Arts Ypres First World War centenary of the First World War. British War Memorials Committee American Expeditionary Forces gas Imperial War Museum Arras Guards Division oil painting