The Kensingtons at Laventie
Eric Kennington, 1915
Image not available: work still under copyright
The Kensingtons at Laventie is a large oil painting on glass by Eric Kennington, completed in 1915. It shows a group of British infantrymen from the First World War, and the men pictured were Kennington's own comrades in Platoon No 7 of C Company, 1/13th Battalion of the London Regiment, the Kensingtons. Kennington had enlisted in 1914 and was wounded early in 1915, which ended his active service. The scene captures a pause after days in the trenches: the exhausted soldiers, standing in the snow beside a whitewashed wall amid the debris of war, wait for the order to fall in for a long march to billets out of shelling range. Kennington worked in reverse on glass, applying the outer layers first and the background last, and used gold to pick out metallic details, a method that keeps the colours bright in a way canvas oils rarely do. Shown in 1916, the painting caused a sensation and helped prompt the British government to set up an official war artists scheme.
- Painter
- Eric Kennington
- Date
- 1915
- Medium
- glass, oil paint
- Dimensions
- 140 × 152 cm
- Museum
- Imperial War Museum London, London Borough of Southwark