"LEST WE FORGET"

LEST WE FORGET

EBEN FARRINGTON COMINS (American, 1875-1949)
Oil on canvas, 84 1/2" x 72" (7 ft x 6 ft)
Signature, "EC" cypher, date (19)'18 upper right

This monumental oil was painted for the World War I U.S. FOURTH LIBERTY LOAN poster and also used for Canada's VICTORY LOAN DRIVE poster.

Like Picasso's Guernica, Comin's work simultaneously universalizes and particularizes the agony of war in a way that surpasses the specific historical incident portrayed.
The crucified figure dominating the canvas’ left half is based on a 1915 news story titled “Torture of a Canadian Officer”, citing reports from soldiers wounded at Ypres (Belgium) that one of their officers had been crucified to a wall “by bayonets thrust through his hands and feet” before being “riddled with bullets”. The Allies repeatedly used versions of the account in war propaganda, including the US propaganda film The Prussian Cur (1918). Only in 2002 was the crucified soldier’s identity finally established as Sergeant Harry Band of the Central Ontario Regiment of the Canadian Infantry (reported missing in action on 24 April 1915 near Ypres). Band’s body was never recovered; he is commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing.

COMINS studied at Harvard, the Boston Art Museum, Ecole des Arts in Paris, and in Italy. In 1903 he exhibited three paintings at the Paris Salon. He also exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy, Carnegie Institute, Corcoran Institute, and at the Buffalo, Saint Louis and Panama Expositions. He maintained a residence and studio in Washington DC
His poems "Two Colors" and "The War, Colors" are in the manuscript department of the U.S. Library of Congress; his painting “Reconstruction” is the collection of the Red Cross at in their National Headquarters in Washington DC. (ref : National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC, Vertical File # 933.1214.1)

Provenance : 1960’s private purchase from a residence in Washington DC

Condition : 2006-2012., professionally conserved without in-painting, mounted on appropriate stretcher of comparable period, original canvas relined onto cuben fiber

# 01014 sga ........................................................................................ $ 84,000.