The landing at Anzac 25th April 1915

This painting is the earliest known artistic representation of the Anzac landing at Gallipoli in Turkey in 1915 by a professional artist who was also a participant. It is a vivid watercolour sketch of the Anzac forces coming ashore, showing men disembarking landing boats and dashing from the cove to the hills. It is highly likely this work was created shortly after the landing, with the memories of the event still fresh. Its significance primarily lies in the immediacy of the artist’s response to the Anzac landing and his personal experience of this important event in Australian history. In 1914, at the age of about 46, Moore-Jones enlisted in the British Section of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. He joined the main body of the force in Egypt on Christmas Eve 1914 before being posted to the 1st Field Company of Engineers, participating in the allied landing at Anzac Cove, Gallipoli peninsula in April 1915. The head of the New Zealand Expeditionary Forces, Alexander Godley, said of Moore-Jones’s Gallipoli works; ‘Nothing that I have seen or read on the subject of Anzac brings more vividly to my memory the pleasantest features of our sojourn there'.
Moore Jones was subsequently attached to Lt. General Sir William Birdwood's ANZAC Printing Section, undertaking topographical sketches of the landscape and plans of allied and Turkish positions. He was sent to Gallipoli to draw the area because there were no effective maps. In comparison to Godley’s views, Lieutenant General Birdwood, who commanded the Anzac Forces and for whom Moore-Jones served as aide de camp, wrote: “Many of Sapper Moore-Jones’s pictures were, I know, done while shells were whistling overhead, and they portray very faithfully the country in which we were operating, and being so full of detail as they are, give a good impression of the conditions of life in which our troops were working for some eight months.” Most revealingly, Moore Jones noted of his Gallipoli experience that ; ‘You can imagine what it must be like to live, day after day, facing plateaus that are covered with one’s dead comrades, whose faces had grown black by the time we could reach them, and the over-powering sickening stench. And what it meant to sit, eating one’s bread and jam surrounded by millions of flies who had been bred on dead bodies’ . While Moore-Jones is known to have sketched during the battle and completed the majority of his large series of Gallipoli watercolours in the following weeks and months, as well as upon his return to London in November 1915, two key elements of this painting suggest it was produced atypically close to the landing itself. Firstly, despite the size of his oeuvre, it is his only known work depicting soldiers ascending the hill at Gallipoli during the landing. All of Moore-Jones’s other Gallipoli works are either unpopulated landscapes or depict subsequent stages in the battle. Secondly, this work depicts Gallipoli Cove before the tracks and diggings in the hills, and the piers leading out from the beach, were constructed. It represents an important and topographically correct view of this landscape. As these features are depicted in all of the artist’s other representations of Anzac Cove, this suggests the work was painted in the weeks following the landing. His composition focuses on the ‘inhospitable physicality’ of the Gallipoli landscape which presented such an impending obstacle to the Australian and New Zealand troops who landed there. Moore-Jones’s close proximity to the soldiers allowed him to capture the minute Australian figures ascending the deep ridges in this work, while the Turkish soldiers remain hidden. This reflected the reality of the experience of the Australians who landed at this site in 1915.



Acquired through assistance provided by the Commonwealth's National Cultural Heritage Account 2014