Jack Dempsey

Lambert arrived in Egypt in January 1918. This was the final year of the war and many of the Australian troops were exhausted and resting in their camps. Lambert painted many of the men in camps and enjoyed making studies of the 'sweating, sun-bronzed men and beautiful horses' [Gray, A., George W.Lambert Retrospective: heroes and icons, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2007, p. 23.] This drawing depicts a soldier sitting on a horse carrying a rifle with the barrel pointed upwards. The soldier is wearing a slouch hat, uniform with lanyard, calf-length leggings, riding boots and spurs. The horse is branded XY398 and is standing still with off hind leg slightly in front of near hind leg. The soldier is John Albert Dempsey, known as 'Jack'. Dempsey was a horse breaker from Leeton, NSW and he served with the 2nd Remount Unit. Sergeant-Major Jack Dempsey directed the work of the rough-riders, under the command of Major Paterson, who described him as "a six-foot-two Australian, straight as a stringy-bark sapling and equally as tough.... He put his living into riding buckjumpers in shows in Australia, and he can tell an outlaw through a galvanised iron fence" (A.B. Paterson, happy dispatches, pp. 181-82).