During the first world war, 124,702 British soldiers were victims of gas attacks. They suffered blisters, burns or temporary blindness and 2,308 of them died. In July 1918, the Ministry of Information sent American society portraitist John Singer Sargent to the front. There he witnessed the aftermath of mustard gas attacks and was inspired to make a six-metre wide tableau called Gassed depicting a procession of wounded men stumbling, blindfolded, towards a dressing station, while in the foreground more men lie dead and dying, their bodies entangled. Recently cleaned to reveal a rosy evening light (and even Tommies playing an...