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Jean-Louis Forain
The Marker (La Borne), 1916
Impressionist painter and social satirist Forain worked as a war correspondent for the Parisian newspaper Le Figaro. In 1916, Germany provoked the Battle of Verdun, pursuing a strategy of attrition to exhaust the French military's resources that tragically claimed 700,000 lives.
Here, Forain renders a mass of lifeless bodies at the foot of a mile-marker for the French town of Verdun. The spiked helmet of a German soldier is barely visible buried among the casualties.
Variations of this composition appeared in the Allied press, and leaflets were distributed behind enemy lines as psychological warfare, sending a prophetic message of doom to Germany. |